Professor uses technology to transcend borders in Skype class with Japan
by Tamsyn Jones
AMES, Iowa - A tense hush hung over the evening class in Curtiss Hall as Wendy White and Lorraine Lanningham-Foster fiddled with cords connecting a laptop to a complex web of technology and cyberspace that would, theoretically, link them to a Japanese classroom more than 6,200 miles away where a roomful of students waited in equal suspense.
"Hello, can you hear me?" asked White, associate professor of food science and nutrition at Iowa State University, as she peered expectantly into a small webcam broadcasting her image onto a hanging screen.
For a few anxiety-filled moments, nothing. Lanningham-Foster, ISU assistant professor of food science and nutrition, adjusted the volume on a speaker.
Then: "Yes, yes - I can hear you," came Naoko Hiramatsu's reply, as the University of Hyogo nutrition professor's smiling face popped into view on the screen.
The simple exchange signaled a leap for learning at Iowa State.
On April 21, the seeds of a chance encounter on a Bangkok bus blossomed into ISU's first joint trans-ocean food science class session conducted live through the Web - and a cross-cultural collaboration that may well be the future face of education in an increasingly globalized world.
The session was the capstone to a project in Lanningham-Foster's Nutrition and Health Assessment course in which ISU and Japanese student teams analyzed each other's diet records. Each ISU team was paired with a Japanese team, and each team member had a specific job.
"One served as the designated communicator in charge of all e-mail contacts," Lanningham-Foster said. "Another was the team representative at the joint session. The remaining team members did the diet analysis using Food Processor, one of our professional dietetics databases."
Chance meeting leads to collaboration
The story starts with a serendipitous crossing of paths, and an offhand comment, while White was sightseeing in Thailand after giving an invited presentation for the International Congress of Nutrition conference in 2009. She met two Australian colleagues, who invited her to join their group for dinner, which happened to include Hiramatsu.
"During dinner, I asked Naoko why we don't have more applications from Japan to our (nutrition) graduate program " and she said "Would you like some?" A year later, she came over here, stayed 10 days and gave three presentations in our department," White said. "A month later, I went to Japan and did the same."
That unlikely start culminated in the collaborative project that White said she and Hiramatsu envisioned as a way to give their respective students an opportunity to gain cultural insights while learning skills vital to their future professions.
"Many Japanese foods aren't in our food nutrient database and vice versa," White said. "So they've been learning a new skill, looking up Japanese food composition, in our case, and transferring the information to our database so they can run a single analysis and get a report, for example, of total fat intake."
Learning culture through the lens of nutrition
The live Skype session was the pinnacle of that cultural exchange, as both sides took turns presenting a food unique to their country's culture.
Kanami Nakano, a University of Hyogo student, approached the webcam on her side first to discuss, in practiced English, the significance of rice cakes in Japan.
"It's a custom to give mirror-shaped rice cakes at the New Year holiday," Nakano said. "Mochimaki is another important cultural use of rice cakes. When you buy a house, you throw them for safety and good luck."
Emily Morton, a junior in dietetics, presented first for Iowa State. Her topic: tuna noodle casserole.
"This is a very classic dish," Morton said. "It became more popular in the 1950's, as it's easy to make from packaged foods. It's also known as a family dish and is often used at potlucks."
While the presentations seemed simple, White said the value was significant.
"The story's really about bringing two cultures together, seeing the strengths and weaknesses in another culture's diet - and in your own - and building bonds between students," she said.
Widening horizons through Web technology
The technical success of the session was itself significant. Two days before the joint class, White said they hit a major obstacle during a test session with a different program.
"The lag time was terrible," she said. "Naoko saved the day. She contacted some of her exchange students for ideas, and someone suggested using the screen share feature of Skype."
There were other challenges as well, not the least of which were the language barrier, 14-hour time lag and the difference between ISU and Japanese academic calendars.
Despite the obstacles, the Iowa State students agreed the experience was valuable. Megan Thompson, a senior double-majoring in Spanish and dietetics, said she thought the project was "a great idea," and expressed surprise at how different she discovered American and Japanese diets to be.
So did dietetics senior Stephanie Rupp: "I thought it was a good project," she said. "It's important to widen our horizons on dietetics."
White and Lanningham-Foster plan to fine-tune the project based on this semester's feedback, and hope to eventually expand the partnership with University of Hyogo to include a study abroad travel course.