Michael Lockett, Gabe Wong, Nicklas Haglund, and Summer Issawi
This paper shares methods and findings from a recent cross-border digital experiential education design project. Students enrolled in a first-year writing course at Michigan State University formed small groups with fellow first-year students from Champlain College in Montreal, Québec. The cross-border student teams worked together, synchronously and asynchronously, to discuss region-specific cultural inquiry projects and curricular experience. Québécois students helped their Michigan-based peers develop and edit multimodal writing projects focused on personal cultural experience, and thereby learned about Michiganian cultural perspectives through both textual and conversational encounters. In turn, Michiganian students were able to gain similar insights from helping their Québécois peers with a parallel assessment task. By writing, reviewing, and sharing work through digital cahiers, students also experimented with digital collaborative tools and accessibility practices (Kress, 2003; Lockett, 2010).
