Final Thoughts

This course has been for the most part a unique and rewarding experience. The structure of the course I thought was ideally composed with its outline essentially being broken down into three parts: pre travel, travel and post travel. Although I do think exploring and even trying a different approach such as traveling at the very end of the course would be a good consideration. The most significant aspect I got out of the course were the numerous topics we explored and how they all came together in the end to provide a general knowledge of how globalization is impacting the world on many different fronts rendering both good and bad consequences. Another realization I made is that, withstanding all the negative aspects of globalization, every country and all peoples decisively benefit from this new wave transnationalism. Thus, I take the positions that states and people should embrace this paradigm shift and therefore work together toward the goal of channeling this movement in a positive direction. The initial draw to this course was the opportunity to travel aboard and I thoroughly enjoyed adventure overseas. The knowledge of the geographical area and the history of the area as provided by the professors along with all the interactions with the classmates made the trip not just educational but a solid culture broadening experience as well. One aspect of the course I found difficult to get used to was the blogging and Wikipedia stuff…I’ve never used it before and failed to find them extremly useful outside of simply reading and thinking about my classmates thoughts on a particular subject. In fact I found the whole experience of an online class much more difficult in terms of grasping the depth of knowledge of a particular subject within the course because without the face to face interaction, conversation and debate the concepts never really solidified in my mind- in essence a lot of the topics remained simply at the surface level. As I continue to take classes at Webster I don’t think I’ll actually do another online course- unless of course there is an exciting travel abroad component! The good ole fashion teacher and pupil setup is my much preferred method of academic engagement. With that said it still remains another valuable part of my academic journey: the experience in valuing different cultures while at the same time realizing first-hand that the American culture is a global brand, walking through hundreds of years of world history and educating myself on global issues was truly a great experience that I’ll never forget.