By MOLLIE ADAM
J Alumni News staff
Rachel Albin
During spring semester, 13 students were enrolled in the first half of a yearlong depth report on Bolivia — but one of the students was never in class.
The “absent” student was Rachel Albin, a news-editorial and Spanish major who plans to graduate in May 2011 and aspires to become a bilingual journalist. Albin was studying abroad in Mexico and participated in the first semester of NEWS 401 via Skype, a software application that allows users to make calls to other Skype users over the Internet for free — even international calls. Calls can be either audio only or audio and video, depending on whether the computers being used have cameras.
Through the cameras on her computer and on the instructor’s laptop in the Andersen Hall classroom, Albin was able to see the class and interact with the students and the teachers, Luis Peon-Casanova and Carla Kimbrough.
“It has been a great opportunity, but this experience is not like sitting in a classroom,” Albin said.
“There are 12 people in the classroom, and Luis opens his laptop and has my face on the screen. The class has to remember to turn me and pass me around so I can see who is talking and what is going on. If there is a PowerPoint or a presentation, it works best if they send me a link so I can follow along on my own computer instead of trying to read the screen.”
Although this is a non-traditional way to deliver education, Peon-Casanova thinks it has advantages.
“I got my master’s over the computer, and the experience was very strong. The difference is that you have to be disciplined and do all the work yourself,” he said. “It is more of a student-learning environment instead of the teacher. I think that way, your learning can lead to be more active because you have more of an ownership in what you do.”
Peon-Casanova likes using Skype because “it is so transparent, and it works so well.”
A passionate interest in Bolivia
The J school announced last fall that it would undertake a depth report about Bolivia as part of a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Peon-Casanova and Kimbrough asked students to apply for the class, and Albin was eager to be part of the project. She had wanted to visit Bolivia since she learned about the nation in a high school Spanish class.
But, in her application, Albin had to explain that she was going to be abroad during the first semester of the course. She told the faculty that she would do anything to be included and suggested Skype as an option.
Kimbrough and Peon-Casanova decided to make it work, and Albin and the rest of the students in the class spent the spring doing research about Bolivia’s geography, history and natural resources.
“I wasn’t totally confident that having Rachel appear via Skype would work, but it worked beautifully,” Kimbrough said. “Rachel has been an enormous asset to the class and has taken on one of the key topics — coca. I believe Rachel has a firm hold on the topic. Because of this experience with Rachel, I would be more likely to try this method again.”
Peon-Casanova said one primary focus of the class is to help students learn to approach journalism as “an integrated subject where you have to be able to interview, take your own pictures, broadcast and market your stories. Even if a student is primarily a writer, he or she is going to have to be versatile in different media in order to be successful.”
Bolivia’s situation is also unusual
The way the course is delivered to Albin isn’t the only unusual thing about the project. Bolivia itself is at a unique moment in history.
For the first time in its 470 years, Bolivia is led by an indigenous head of state, Evo Morales. Europeans have previously governed the nation, where 65 percent of the population is indigenous.
After studying about Bolivia during the spring and developing potential sources there, students visited the nation in June. They’ll spend the fall semester writing stories about what they found and creating a magazine and website. They may even develop educational materials to use in classrooms. They are still determining how to market the material they plan to produce.
Albin said she appreciated being able to take the Bolivia class via Skype because her experience in Mexico has been irreplaceable. She has improved her Spanish for her trip to Bolivia, but she also gained a stronger Latin American perspective.
Despite the unorthodox teaching and learning method, Albin and her instructors are happy she was able to be part of the depth reporting team.
“I’m excited to have Rachel along,” Peon-Casanova said.
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