Integrating Critical Thinking Skills into the Exploration of Culture in an EFL Setting – US Embassy
Course Overview
This course is designed by World Learning. The exploration of culture in an EFL setting requires helping students engage in authentic situations to develop the ability to navigate across a variety of cultures. This intercultural ability requires language choices and awareness of oneself as a cultural being. It also requires critical thinking skills, which are themselves partially culturally defined. This MOOC presents participants with a working definition of culture and tools for analyzing, understanding, and negotiating differences between cultures. Participants explore what critical thinking is and why it is necessary for the development of intercultural competence. With a view toward preparing teachers to implement culture and critical thinking lessons into their current teaching contexts, participants of this MOOC will explore activities for teaching and evaluating culture and critical thinking. This is a self-paced course, which will be open for 12 weeks. Participants can complete coursework at any time during these 12 weeks. The course has 5 modules; each module will require approximately 3-5 hours of work.
The exploration of culture in an EFL setting requires helping students engage in authentic situations to develop the ability to navigate across a variety of cultures. This intercultural ability requires language choices and awareness of oneself as a cultural being. It also requires critical thinking skills, which are themselves partially culturally defined. This MOOC presents participants with a working definition of culture and tools for analyzing, understanding, and negotiating differences between cultures. Participants explore what critical thinking is and why it is necessary for the development of intercultural competence. With a view toward preparing teachers to implement culture and critical thinking lessons into their current teaching contexts, participants of this MOOC will explore activities for teaching and evaluating culture and critical thinking.
Welcome to the Integrating Critical Thinking Skills into the Exploration of Culture in an EFL Setting MOOC.
This MOOC is designed by World Learning, as part of the Online Professional English Network (OPEN). This program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. government and administered by FHI 360.
This MOOC presents participants with a working definition of culture and tools for analyzing, understanding, and negotiating differences between cultures. Participants explore what critical thinking is and why it is necessary for the development of intercultural competence. With a view toward preparing teachers to implement culture and critical thinking lessons into their current teaching contexts, participants of this MOOC will explore activities for teaching and evaluating culture and critical thinking.
Learning Objectives and Learner Outcomes
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
- Define critical thinking
- Describe themselves as cultural beings in relationship to their own and other cultures
- Develop their own beliefs about the teaching of culture in their context
- Learn and teach intercultural competence by practicing observation, multiple perspective analysis, and self-reflection
Expectations and Grading
Expectations
This course was designed with 5 units, with participants working on and offline between 3 and 5 hours for each module. This MOOC is open for 12 weeks, from January 9 to April 3, 2023. Participants are responsible for their own participation and are encouraged to complete course assignments for each module. If you have a question about course content for the course facilitators, please post it to the Content Support Discussion Board.
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Grading
Participants work through the MOOC in a linear fashion: in order to advance to the next activity, a participant needs to have completed previous ones. You are, however, welcome to return to previous readings and activities, and you are encouraged to return to discussion boards for further discussion. You must earn 70% or higher on each quiz in order to advance to the next activity. You may retake quizzes to try to earn a higher score.
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Assessment and Certification
Participants who complete all required activities and earn 70% or higher on the graded quizzes, before April 3, 2023, will receive a certificate and a digital badge.
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Netiquette
A MOOC is a very special encounter. Its participants are from diverse cultures from all over the world, and their interaction happens entirely online, without the direct supervision of an instructor. The quality of our online interactions will be much higher if everyone follows certain basic rules of etiquette – or in our case (online), netiquette.
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- Try to be clear and direct
Make sure that your content title reflects the content of your post and that your post is succinct and direct. - Make it easier for colleagues to read your comments
- Put a blank space at the beginning of a message and between paragraphs.
- Be brief and specific. This is especially important in Massive Open Online Courses which have thousands of participants. When writing a contribution, try to keep it within a 100-word limit.
- Be constructive
Respond to colleagues’ postings or comments in an encouraging and supportive tone. Think before you write or respond. Any criticism should be constructive—if in doubt, think about how you would feel reading a posting. - Be open to differences in opinion
Be open to other people’s opinions and try not to get emotional if someone disagrees with you. Make your learning experience a constructive and positive one by avoiding ‘flaming’. For example, capitals can be interpreted as shouting. Think before you push the ‘send’ button. Words are powerful and can hurt; avoid anything which could be misinterpreted in any way. - Accept others
Accept your peers’ differences, e.g., cultural and language differences. You are part of a community which means caring about your own progress and that of your colleagues’. - Cite other people’s work
If you use a quote or reference in your post; make sure that you cite it or provide a link to it. - No spamming
Please don’t send advertisements to your peers or use your peers’ emails in any way other than how they intend it to be used.
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About Canvas Network
Canvas Network is an open space for educators to share, experiment, analyze, and create.
OUR MISSION:
To promote OPENNESS, INNOVATION, and EXPERIMENTATION in education by providing educators access to professional development courses and programs that will help them thrive and succeed in their careers.
To Canvas Network ‘open’ means:
- Open entry and open access. Open entry for learners around the globe and continual access to course content after the course end date.
- Open content. Open licensing options and content sharing to Canvas Commons where other instructors reuse, revise, remix, retain, and redistribute content.
- Open platform and ecosystem. Open platform to integrate and innovate with third-party tools.
- Open data. Open, de-identified Canvas Network data for researchers to analyze and synthesize.
- Platform neutrality. Your course. Your goals. Your way. We provide the platform for open innovation and experimentation.
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About US Embassy
What does the US Embassy Do?
The primary purpose of an embassy is to assist American citizens who travel to or live in the host country. U.S. Foreign Service Officers also interview citizens of the host country who wish to travel to the United States for business, education, or tourism purposes.
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U.S. Embassy, London Embassy in London, England
The Embassy of the United States of America in London is the diplomatic mission of the United States in the United Kingdom. It is the largest American embassy in Western Europe and the focal point for events relating to the United States held in the United Kingdom.
Embassy of the United States, BeijingOffice in Beijing, China
The Embassy of the United States in Beijing is the diplomatic mission of the United States in China. It serves as the administrative office of the United States Ambassador to China. The embassy complex is in Chaoyang District, Beijing.
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