Goodbye Jerusalem, back to the States

Thank you to all my new friends at Birzeit University for making my Fulbright semester interesting, enjoyable, and stimulating. I would particularly like to thank Marwan Tarazi and Osama Mimi, directors of the Center for Continuing Education and the Unit for Innovative Learning, respectively, for allowing me to join the team for four months.

I spent my time at the ULI learning how e-learning methodologies and technologies are applied in the professional courses that the CCE puts on. The paper that we presented on e-learning came out of the research that we did on the current state of e-learning in Palestinian universities.

More importantly for the future, however, were the connections we were able to establish between our institutions and with Birzeit faculty and personnel, so that we can continue working cooperatively into the future. With numerous electronic educational tools at our disposal, we will be able to work together in cyberspace.

I envision projects between academic students in the English Department at Birzeit and my students at Mankato, but also OL meetings in which we meet to discuss e-learning topics. At Birzeit, the watch word is "blended" or "e-enabled" pedagogy, meaning that they use both the classroom (F2F) and Moodle to deliver their course materials to students or trainees. At Mankato we do not blend, but rather teach either F2F or online. Perhaps we can serve as advisors to each other!