The first step on a path toward creating a better world is bringing people from diverse perspectives together, particularly those who have the skills to spread that message.
That’s the vision of New Mexico State University Journalism and Media Studies assistant professor Gain Park. In late November, students from Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) in Seoul, South Korea, will arrive in Las Cruces to collaborate with NMSU students.
“NMSU-SKKU will work on a collaboration project to promote the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals including no poverty, clean water, and reduced inequalities,” Park said.
The students will gather at NMSU Monday, Nov. 27. Guided by Park, they will form smaller groups of four. Each group will engage in a focused collaboration to develop a video to address a global issue. Professors and sustainability communication experts from SKKU and NMSU’s Journalism and Media Studies and Creative Media Institute will support the teams to create a video that can be shared internationally. The videos will be shown publicly at a showcase on Thursday, Nov. 30.
“Student groups will select their own topics with their own reasoning,” Park said. “We expect that they’ll come up with unique solutions that can only be identified by young, creative, convergent minds and have the experience of publishing their products to yield behavior and attitude changes including their own.”
Park, who taught at SKKU before coming to NMSU, sees the program as a great way to expand her students' thinking by creating blended teams with students from half a world away.
“They're in the same age range, but the ideas each will bring into the project can be very different,” Park said. “So, I think one of the most important benefits for our students is to broaden their views and help them explore different perspectives.”
Four groups of students from Seoul and Las Cruces will have four days to come up with a campaign to tackle four global issues to impact global citizens through a short video.
Once the project is completed, the teams will determine which social media platforms to share their videos.
“SKKU and NMSU students have different cultural and social backgrounds, yet they share global issues as global citizens,” said said Seyoung Lee, the director of SKKU’s Knowledge Center for Innovative Higher Education. “Our goal in this project is to help the students learn from their differences and find universal values to overcome the differences to make real-life changes.”
SKKU’s Knowledge Center for Innovative Higher Education, which sponsored the program, will issue participation certificates to all the students who participate in the project.
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