The Sommer Fonds: A Transcultural Experiential Learning Component

Research team

Grant recipients

Grit Liebscher, Germanic and Slavic Studies

Jessica Blackwell, Dana Porter Library

Anna Rohmann (Research Assistant, ICGS MA Student)

Matthieu Martin (Research Assistant, ICGS MA Student)

(Project timeline: September 2019 - August 2020)

Description

The project entails a collaboration between the Department of Germanic & Slavic Studies and the University of Waterloo Library Special Collections & Archives. The goal is to introduce and investigate an experiential learning component into a course in a language department, in which graduate and undergraduate students’ and professionals work with documents from the archive that involve translation work. The project is envisioned as a three-step process: 1) setting up the experiential learning component, 2) implementing this component into the course and investigating this implementation through a qualitative analysis of reflections, interviews, and work meetings, and 3) re-evaluating this specific project for future iterations of the course and creating a template for instructors who want to incorporate similar transcultural experiential learning components into other courses. Overall, we are interested in how the experiential learning component contributes to students’ skill sets, in particular translation and transcultural learning.