Teaching Global Governance in International Communication by Engaging US and South African Students in the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

This paper explores an on-going attempt to teach the interdisciplinary concepts of global governance for information and communications technologies through an active learning, geographically distributed approach. Using web-based collaboration tools and a distance-independent collaborative learning pedagogical model, graduate students from South Africa and the United States work in global virtual teams along with civil society activists involved in the United Nations-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The paper provides an overview of the concepts taught in the seminar (including cyberinfrastructure, international regime theory, global governance, transnational advocacy networks, global information and communication policy issues), the pedagogical model used, the socio-technical infrastructure developed for the seminar. Further, the paper explains the pedagogy of the seminar, were we highlight how we use synchronous and asynchronous collaboration technologies to change how we approach the course, including: online office hours, collaborative work amongst groups, and actively planning and administering class. The paper presents an overview of the structure of the seminar, which includes: (1) welcome and introduction; (2) theory; (3) information policy issues; (3) simulation and role playing; (4) global virtual teams; (5) involvement of distributed experts; (6) revision and public presentation; and (7) includes screenshots of the technologies used in the seminar. Finally, the paper ends with comments conclusions about teaching international communication in a geographically distributed manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]