Honors College students forge global connections

Dr. Harper, director of the Honors College, coordinates a program for OU students to work live with students from Australia and South Korea.

Honors College students at Oakland University were awake extra early recently, working live across the world with students and faculty in Seoul, Korea, and Adelaide, Australia.

Beginning at 6 a.m. at Oakland, the virtual workshop event was lead by Dr. Graeme Harper, director of the Honors College. Through this connection, OU students were able to explore writing, researching and learning in a global environment, while forging new connections with students and faculty at the Sogang University in Korea and Flinders University in Australia.

“Video link technology can spectacularly bring the world together,” Dr. Harper said. “But just as importantly, we can conduct real-time global research. It sometimes means that we need a little more coffee when we’re working in the mornings like this, but this kind of virtual global connection always leads to substantial developments for students and faculty.”

The next step for students is to participate in a unique global publication project, where original critical and creative writing produced at the three universities will be published in English and then translated into the languages of the participating students.

“We’ll see our students’ work published alongside the work of students from Australia, writing in English, and students from Korea, some of whom will be writing in Korean and some in Chinese,” Dr. Harper added.

Images from this event will be included in a global video titled, “Making Our World,” set to debut this spring as part of the international Creative Universities initiative. In the video, seven different zones of the world will be linked to create original creative and critical works together, in many forms.

“By spring, Oakland students will be researching and creating work right here, but with their peers, globally. They’ll be making friends along the way, and getting their own research out there too,” Harper said. “That’s just the beginning of what we can achieve.”

To learn more about the Honors College, view the website.