Enhancing college students’ global awareness through campus Toastmasters clubs

Hsu, Tsu Chia; Lunghwa University of Science and Technology, Taiwan, ROC

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to investigate the effects of the 20 college campus Toastmasters clubs all over Taiwan, towards the enhancement of its student members’ global awareness. Within the concept of cooperative learning, promotion of global views by means of sharing various cultural concepts within the conducted Toastmasters meeting program, group works such as structured interaction and communication activities, and individual speaking activities, while not worrying about their grammatical errors are used as strategies. Using the qualitative research paradigm in terms of focus group and individual interviews, the current study gathers college student members’ global viewpoints along with their insightful observations in order to understand the implications of such cooperative strategies. Results indicates that co-curricular programs in existing campus activities, such as Campus Toastmasters clubs, is capable of developing the students’ global viewpoints and/or was able to help diminish their culture shock within a competitive diversely membered higher education milieu.

Date

2012-01-01

Type

mixed-method

Identifier

oai:ojs.www.consortiacademia.org:article/3
http://www.consortiacademia.org/index.php/ijrse/article/view/3
10.5861/ijrse.2012.v1i1.1

Copyright/License

All materials published remain the property of the author(s), who (by submitting their work) have licensed permission for our electronic display and for fair use by the readership. Therefore, expects readers to treat documents published here under the same fair use principles as in the printed scientific literature. Fair use, therefore, includes: online reading, downloading and/or printing for personal, academic and/or library purposes, and URL links to articles. Author(s) may freely maintain a link (through the use of Digital Object Identifier - DOI) of any of their published work on a government, educational, nonprofit, personal or other noncommercial website under their control. Text may not be published in commercial (for profit) media of any type, edited, revised or otherwise altered without specific written consent of the author(s). When excerpting published work, please ensure that the arguments, conclusions, findings and opinions of the author(s) reflect the original material. The journal also recommends copyright holders the use one of the Creative Commons Licenses, an easy, effective and increasingly common way for copyright holders to manifest their consent to Open Access. Many other open-content licenses will also work. Copyright holders can also compose their own licenses or permission statements and attach them to their works.Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher. The Editors reserve the right to edit or otherwise alter all contributions, but authors will receive proofs for approval before publication. In general, copyrights for articles published in the journal are retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. The journal/publisher is not responsible for subsequent uses of the work. It is the author's responsibility to bring an infringement action if so desired by the author.

Collections

Ethics in Higher Education