One World, Many Stories: Finding Human Connection through Global Sociology

Abstract

This Teaching Note examines the implementation of a full-semester course model for digital exchanges between students across countries. The model, Global Understanding, created and administered by East Carolina University, is a platform for humanistic pedagogy that dovetails seamlessly with sociological content, methods, and principles. Through an examination of student writing products, this account considers how the course exemplifies humanistic pedagogy through (1) an expansion of a verstehen of a shared experience of the “human” in the world, (2) the integration of teaching source materials from conventionally defined “humanities” fields, and (3) a normative directive to forward global human understanding.