13044p

13044p

Refereed Paper with Presentation (20 minutes)

Katherine Watson, Coastline Community College, Newport Beach, USA, bizarrissime@gmail.com
 * Spherical thought: Over, above, beyond things flat! **

Spherical thinking comprises the notion that academic objectives, as well as human interests in general, lie on a curved plane as points equidistant from a center. Spherical thought crosses standard disciplinary boundaries as well as geographical or demographic ones, thereby comprising transdisciplinary dynamic, continuous interactivity. In the twenty-first century, such thought is commonly carried out, often enhanced, with the Internet. Exemplarily, European Union educators have proposed programs promoting Internet-enriched spherical thinking. And an EU-style curriculum has been effectively emulated in electronically delivered French language and culture courses at Coastline Community College, in California, USA, exploiting a simple four-phase template of praxis applicable internationally: Leap inside, jump outside, discuss dynamically, and conceive and achieve actionable results. Besides honing their language skills, Coastline’s intermediate-advanced learners of French online have come to understand how to examine in a spherical, transdisciplinary fashion certain questions formerly classed within defined cultural, professional, or academic domains and how to profit from such examination techniques to become responsible global citizens.

//Interactivity // Electronic online chat with attendant Power Point, with PPT used mostly for citations of the EU four-part praxis for achieving spherical thought through transdisciplinarity. Participants will be invited to present various real-world questions/topics and discuss them from transdisciplinary points of view, using the four-part praxis: Leap inside, jump outside, discuss dynamically, conceive/achieve actionable results.

All Audiences international thought, transdisciplinarity, collaboration, online research