Becoming NET SMART – Dos and Don’ts in Teaching International Joint Courses

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Knowing how to make use of online tools without being overloaded with too much information is an essential ingredient to personal and professional success in the 21st Century. Delivering different class contents to our students online has increased dramatically during the last decade. Universities have entered the online education market in order to satisfy the growing demand of their students as well as to face their existing and growing financial and facility constraints. In pursue of happiness for both consumers (students) and employers (universities), educators jumped worldwide willingly on an intriguing new method of teaching: joint courses. This teaching method does not only incorporate the latest (video)technology into our teaching – highly appreciated by universities – but also ‘brings the world into the classroom’ by connecting students from different countries to work together on projects, case studies, or discuss current issues in any field. The joint course method can be very beneficial for teaching a wide variety of subject matters: Hungarian language, history, management, or sports. Knowledge as well as classrooms turned borderless at the beginning of the 21st Century!
But the question remained the same: how to use the new social and digital media tools intelligently, humanely, mindfully, and above all ethically? Several books and academic articles discuss the advantages of distance learning and online education but none of them addresses the legal and ethical issues of this method of academic collaboration between professors and universities. These issues are growing in number namely, related to intellectual property and copyright, right to participation and access to materials, or ethics of academic online/distance learning collaborations just name a few. After teaching joint courses between the US and Hungary for a couple of years this presentation overviews our experiences and addresses questions such as: What should be asked (contracted) clearly before we enter into a commitment to teach an international joint course? What are our expectations as educators? What is there in for our students? How should future international joint course development benefit for past practices?



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Dr Emese Ivan is an Assistant Professor of Sport Management at St John’s University (New York). Her teaching and research focuses on sport sociology, management, and role that sport plays in building a more just society worldwide. She has been teaching online and has participated in international joint course development since 2007. She is also the President of Hungarian Studies Association. Contact info: emese.ivan@gmail.com

Edit Nagy is Lecturer in Hungarian Language Program in the Center for European Studies at University of Florida. She will complete her Ph.D. in History at the University of Pécs, Hungary where she has got her M.A.'s in History (1999) and Hungarian Language and Literature (2001).
Her current research focuses on the Hungarian Economic History between 1945 and 1956. Previously she has worked on the Indebtedness of Hungary in 1970-80's and the Structural Changes of the Hungarian Economy during Communism.
She's been teaching at the University of Florida since 2004. Her language classes are Beginning/Elementary/Intermediate Hungarian 1-2, and her area studies classes are Secret Police under Communism; Socialist Control and Resistance (Eastern-Europe After 1945) and Socialist Economy behind the Iron Curtain. Contact info: nagyedit@yahoo.com