Successes and Challenges of An Online International Course On African Development.

In an increasingly global society, students need exposure to international experiences and perspectives. For the past 3 years, we have taught an international online class on African Development jointly between Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, the University of Eldoret in Eldoret, Kenya, and the University of Fort Hare in Alice, South Africa. We use Skype and Google Drive for regular, real time presentations and discussions on topics ranging from soil fertility to agricultural economics, gender issues in African agriculture, animal agriculture, and other topics selected by the students. The class schedule and presentations are made available on a class web site hosted on Google Sites, and Google+ is used to post information of timely interest. Thirty one students participated in the class during the spring semester of 2013, with approximately equal numbers of students from all 3 universities. Student response to the class has been very positive and we will report student responses to a common course evaluation instrument. We will also describe instructor perceptions of what works and does not work in this online course format.