Pilot Project 2: Ecuador Program

Ecuador project summary  (56 Kb)

The Center of Inquiry funded a pilot project developed by faculty from DePauw University and Wabash College to run in Summer 2003 and Fall 2003. During Summer 2003, twelve students traveled to Ecuador to study language and literature for five weeks.

Two innovative features of the program drove the Center of Inquiry’s decision to fund it. First, students participating in the program are required to enroll in a companion course during the fall semester. We saw this as an opportunity to study how a learning community, developed during an off-campus study program, might be sustained when students return to campus. As discussed during the last reporting period, this was the major focus of the consultation meeting held in October 2002. Second, students in the Ecuador Program study literature with the actual authors in situ, visiting cultural events and locations important to the literature. We wanted to explore how this supplement to traditional literary study impacted students.

For the study, we administered the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI)—a survey designed to measure intercultural sensitivity—to all students before and at the end of their time in Ecuador. In addition, an observation team consisting of a Center of Inquiry Research Fellow and two student interns visited the program for one week, interviewing students and shadowing them during class and on excursions.

The final report will be available during the next six months; some preliminary observations follow. One of the most apparent and impressive features of the program is the abundant opportunity for informal learning in the interactions between students and between students and program faculty. Students in the Ecuador Program were clearly immersed in the culture, displaying substantial knowledge of the surrounding area and, in some cases, of the history and politics of Ecuador.

With regard to how the program relates to liberal arts education, the most obvious connection is to "an institutional ethos and tradition which places a strong value on student-student and student-faculty interactions both in and out of the classroom"—one of three factors that we posit as necessary conditions for liberal arts education. Another possible connection is with developing the two intellectual arts identified by the Center of Inquiry as desired outcomes of a liberal arts education:

• An attitude of intellectual openness, especially to inquiry, discovery, new ideas and perspectives. The eagerness to grapple with difficult questions, to develop and act on provisional answers to these questions, and to continue to re-evaluate these provisional answers in light of experience.
• The ability and desire to adopt a critical perspective on one’s and other’s beliefs, behaviors, values, and positions whether this perspective leads one to a reaffirmation or revision of one’s current position.

To the degree that the Ecuador Program can affect "cognitive frame-shifting" as defined by Hammer and Bennett, the developers of the IDI survey, the program may be one way of fostering these outcomes. Cognitive frame-shifting is the ability to "recognize the added value of having more than one cultural perspective available to you" and to ‘take the perspective’ of another culture for the purpose of understanding or evaluating situations in either your own or another culture." However, to this point we have not seen any post-trip changes in IDI scores.

We shall interview the students again during the fall semester to track any subsequent development in their perception of the experience in relation to the companion course. In addition, we may administer the IDI survey at that time to track any changes in intercultural sensitivity. For more information contact either Daniel Rogers <rogersd@wabash.edu>, Assistant Professor of Modern Languages or Luis Aguilar-Monsalve <aguilarl@wabash.edu>, Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish.