Connecting Classrooms for Collaborative Learning

Abstract

Teachers are increasingly engaging students through experiential learning and incorporating new technology in the classroom. In this unique collaborative project we brought together two American politics courses (one taught at a college in one region of the United States and another taught in another) via web conferencing to work on a project in which our students designed and conducted an exit poll in each geographical location. Additionally each class worked together via video conferencing to design the survey instrument and to discuss election outcomes. The data allowed for analysis of vote choice and the ways in which geography and other variables affect it. In bringing the two classes together via web conferencing we successfully introduced diversity of viewpoint from an ideological perspective which otherwise would not have existed and cultivated civic engagement.