Ohio State students and faculty communicate with three universities in India, about 8,000 miles away, using innovative videoconferencing technology.
First offered in spring 2009, the two-credit hour Frontiers in Life Science Research course is the first of its kind on OSU’s campus, said Anil Challa, a post-doctoral researcher in biochemistry and the course’s technology coordinator.
“As I understand, as far as bringing all of these things together, we are the first on campus to do so,” Challa said. “Hopefully I’m not being presumptuous, but maybe even first in the world in some aspects.”
Completed in five Saturday morning sessions, Biochemistry/Molecular Genetics 694 connects 11 OSU students with nearly 60 Indian students and faculty from three universities in India: Anna University in Chennai, Osmania University in Hyderabad and Abasaheb Garware College in Pune.
Students participate in videoconferences and discussions, as well as collaborate with Indian students in a final group presentation.
Kelsey Gray, a third-year in biomedical science, said the nine-and-a-half-hour time difference makes it difficult to coordinate meetings, but she recommends the course.
“I think it’s important because, well, maybe not everyone, but I think a lot of people are going to end up having careers where they are working with people from other countries,” she said. “It’s definitely important to learn how to work with people across the world.”
Other students agree with the importance of international collaboration.
“Well, I think that with any kind of discipline anymore everything’s starting to go across borders, and globalization is huge right now,” said Andrew Merriman, a fourth-year in biochemistry. “The U.S. isn’t the center of everything anymore, so we need to branch out to other countries to progress.”
Amanda Simcox, an OSU molecular genetics professor who helps the course, said students are treated like colleagues rather than college-aged individuals.
“We sort of said ‘you are grown-ups and we know that there will be hurdles, but work like you would in the real world and figure it out,'” Simcox said. “I think we have given quite a bit of responsibility to the students and I think that’s a good thing.”
Merriman agreed the course is good practice for a career.
“I knew the time difference and technology might be a problem, but it’s been a good experience learning what that entails, and I feel like in the future, I will be much more prepared to undertake something of this nature,” he said.
Students communicate with their group members through Elluminate, a program used by OSU and two of the participating Indian universities. A $15,000 grant from the Office of Continuing Education covers the $300 yearly fee, as well as research costs, and the Learning Collaboration Studio on campus also provides high quality cameras and microphones, Challa said.
Aaron Detroit, a fourth-year in microbiology and genetics, said the technology can be both a benefit and a downfall because of technical difficulties.
Some students think this is unavoidable.
“As far as the technical problems, I really don’t think we can help it,” said Jennifer Wittwer, a fourth-year in molecular genetics and chemistry. “It is a bit of a setback and kind of unfortunate, but they are doing everything they can to fix that.”
Challa said sometimes connection problems can be fixed through trial and error, and Simcox said their most recent session ran flawlessly.
During class, participants typically see two screens. One contains PowerPoint slides and the other shows a video feed that displays all four sites, Challa said.
Discussions are led by Simcox; Venkat Gopalan, an OSU professor of biochemistry; Daniel Farrell, an OSU professor of philosophy; and Sharmila Anishetty, a researcher at Anna University.
Students also use clickers to participate in discussion and contribute answers to multiple choice questions, Challa said.
“We are bringing in an international component, which brings a kind of nice and subtle competition between students at the different sites,” he said.
Groups are required to work on presentations outside of the classroom, and Elluminate is accessible from any computer with an Internet connection. Most students use the audio function and chat window, but the program also allows users to “raise a hand” to indicate a question or create their own quiz for other users to answer, he said.
Simcox said the course is also revolutionary because it covers genomics (the study of genomes), proteomics (the study of proteins) and bioethics, which are not covered in their entirety in other major classes.
“There is no other course that matches science with the ethical implications, and I don’t think we often make a big effort to tie the two things together, so I think that’s the really novel thing,” Simcox said.
She said she hopes some student projects will be published in the Journal of Undergraduate Research. She is also organizing an internship program with the universities in India for future students.
