WORLD CAMPUS AFLOAT: AN EDUCATIONAL ALTERNATIVE

Jerrold Lee Shapiro

One of the most uniquely successful educational innovations following the "learning by doing" principle is the World Campus Afloat program of Chapman College. WCA draws faculty and students from universities across the United States (and some foreign countries) in an effort to provide a variety of resources and programs designed to help students understand their world in a more personal way. Each semester the SS Universe Campus leaves an American port with approximately 500 university students, 60 faculty and staff members and a ship's crew of almost 200. For a full four-month semester, the "campus" will journey several thousand miles and dock in 10 or 12 foreign ports which serve as gateways to new cultures, new ideas and new experiences. Approximately one-half of the semester is spent in these foreign ports-of-call; the other half is spent aboard ship. While arrival in a new port calls for excitement and a chance for a wide variety of educational experiences, time on the ship is equally as meaningful. Much of the academic time aboard ship is spent preparing for the port and culture ahead, and/or incorporating the experiences of the port just left behind into some meaningful form. This is neither an easy nor quickly completed process. I sailed with WCA during the Spring 1974 voyage. I am still incorporat­ing and digesting the lessons of those four months. It is unlikely that my digestive system will pass it on for some time. In my capacity as Coordinator of Counseling Services and Associate Professor of Psychology, I was able to observe shipboard life, relationships between people and reactions to visiting a wide variety of places.

Most authors in the vanguard of innovative educational schema have continuously stressed the need for experiential learning programs and the importance of high positive motivation in a learn ing setting. Experiential models of learning via small groups, modeling of learning by teachers, and close, intimate interaction between teachers and students have uniformly produced positive results. In fact, if one were to categorize all the major recent

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innovations in educational curriculum and instruc­tion methods, one could well summarize it by arguing that educational innovation is a movement towards experiential education. All these programs focus on a learning-by-participation paradigm, and on the removal of resistance to learning as the primary goal of the teacher. Research into such programs suggests a high positive correlation between the amounts of learning that takes place and the amount of "learning-by-doing" the program allows.

If we can accept this notion of participatory learning as being optimal, then the WCA experience is a most logical and daring application of these principles. To say that WCA affords the student an opportunity to study his/her environment in a personal way is a major understatement. For example, understanding the philosophy of India from a book can be substantial, but to experience this philosophy in the day-to-day life of the Indian people with the clamor of sounds and smells and sights of Bombay or Delhi filling up one's senses makes for an understanding that goes far beyond the literary/academic experience. When confronted with gross inequality in distribution of wealth, with fat cows being led by starving children, with poverty and overcrowding beyond imagination, the sense and power of a notion like Karma becomes over­whelming. After a week in India, one must examine and re-examine his own values from a new perspective-the truly meaningful educational experience. Similarly, a visit to South Africa and a common scene of a telephone booth or toilet or bus or taxi with the sign Net Blankes (whites only) forces the confrontation of each individual with his or her own prejudices and feelings of worth. But such shocking in-port experiences are not the only kind. So much of the world's treasures open themselves up to the senses-the tastes of new foods, seemingly atonal music becoming beautiful, artworks and crafts being touchable, and the sense of communality with people of such different types is an impressive and unforgettable experience.

j .;..,.. Students on board the S.S. Universe Campus.

An understanding of our own back-home world can also become poignantly clear. Many of us from Hawaii visited the island of Bali, a tropical paradise with lush vegetation, active volcano and beautiful beaches, and saw with dismay the only building higher than two stories on the entire island-a 16-floor luxury hotel! The history of Oahu all of a sudden became real in an indelible way.

Of all the adventures however, the most signifi­cant are the people contacts. To live with and share food and conversation with people from different cultures in a first-hand way makes geography a joy, politics a fascination, and anthropology a lust. Sharing perspectives with students of third-world countries was a powerful learning experience for many of our students. Hearing others' perceptions of "Americans" allowed our American students to examine themselves and their own homeland, as well as to understand how and why the image is such. To speak with people from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Kenya, Senegal, Hong Kong, Japan, Turkey, Israel, Venezuela, Taiwan, etc., makes one recognize two essential psychological facts: the similarity of people's needs everywhere and the different means each culture has of allowing for satisfaction of those needs. Students handled the people contacts in a variety of ways, but it was an inexorable truth that the people we met in each culture were the critical factor in the type of experi­ence we had. One of my students wrote this after our visit to two Japanese ports:

"I feel like a sponge . . . studied Oriental art in college, but I felt the brush strokes here .. . . I always thought of the Japanese as quiet people, I guess that's not true of all . .. after living in a Japanese home, I knew that they were just like me and my brothers and sisters . .. raw fish wasn't that bad either . .. it just seems like I learned more about Japan in two weeks,

than I learned in 12 hours of courses back at the university." Another quote from a black student after our stay

in Kenya: "I just can't believe how lucky I am to see the

emergence of such a stable, black-controlled political system ... . Really felt like something important was happening that I needed to see ... it was weird to feel unnoticeable in a crowd and look at the white people as the unfortunate minority . .. pictures of Jomo (Kenyatta) are different than pictures of Nixon . ... I was home, but I was also a stranger and a student . .. treated to so many parts of life here. I have a newer, more complete feeling of my blackness here. I hope my parents will understand when I try to share it with them in America." Such examples of learning and reduced resistance

to learning allows for a very rapid and complete intake of information and insights of understanding. To suggest that these examples were commonplace is an understatement. Each and every person is struck by the experience and marked indelibly by his or her augmentation of knowledge.

While the in-port experie nce was dramatic and superbly educational, in some ways the shipboard experience was even more remarkable. If one would desire to study the development and growth of a new culture, he could hardly design a better laboratory than a ship. In a sense we were a floating city-self-sufficient, moving through crises like the water we rode on, alone, with land literally days away, and yet crowded, sharing facilities with hundreds of other people-living, loving, learning and growing. As a psychologist I was particularly interested in the effects of close quarters, school pressure, loneliness and homesickness on individuals and on interactions between individuals.

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In a special way, the close quarters and limited access for privacy have almost a pressure cooker effect in that relationships form faster, intimacy is enhanced, distance between faculty and students is reduced, and generally the shipboard community takes on a "family" atmosphere. Faculty and students eat together, play together, learn together and share all facilities. In this type of environment, the traditional teacher-student roles are drama­tically lessened. The ship becomes a learning community within which all members have some­thing to learn from each other. In fact, faculty members' success on board seemed directly related to their ability to remove the trappings of traditional academic distance.

Given the contingencies of shipboard life, some special problems in teaching had to be dealt with. For one thing, the traditional lecture and blackboard, term paper, textbook, and exam mode of teaching simply won't work in a WCA situation. Course materials need to be itinerary based-focused on the upcoming ports and those just left behind. Course­work must focus on the immediate and personal experiences of the students. Given the incredible variety of new experiences WCA offers, this is hardly a limitation. It is clear, however, that living, sleeping, eating and working in such close prox­imity with students is not comfortable for all faculty. Without a commitment and comfort with the WCA system, the shipboard education can be diminished by faculty's rigid application of land­campus criteria and methods.

From a counseling point of view, the constant excitement of a WCA semester and the close quarters produce a myriad of psychological prob­lems. The new environment fosters development of new lifestyles, philosophies, values and behavior patterns. Couples with long-standing relationships and deeply-ingrained habitual/behavioral patterns have to learn to modify their communication patterns. This seems a particular problem for faculty couples. One-room Jiving, constant companionship, close relationships with students and lack of privacy (it was virtually impossible to have a private quarrel) all put strains on a marriage. Add to this the need for developing new teaching styles and the lack of a familiar support system and it is no wonder that on our journey my co-counselor, Dr. Michael Diamond, and I spent fully one-fourth to one-third of our counseling time with staff problems. Simi­larly, for students, being so far away from family and friends can lead to insecurities, homesickness and conflict with previously-held value systems.

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With proper guidance, however, this can be a time of unlimited growth.

One further issue of educational import is the extent to which the WCA experience can be incorporated into back-home lives and universities. Significant personal growth can also be shared with others who have not personally participated in the journey. Another way to look at this is to examine the culture shock of entering an American port. Approximately one day out of Florida, our final destination, I brought a transistor radio on deck and picked up a commercial American station. It is difficult to describe the shock of hearing an advertising jingle for underarm deodorant after being around the world in four months. Without exception, each person who heard the broadcast stopped their current activity and lapsed into heavy concern for their re-entry.

The WCA experience is difficult to describe. The internal changes in values, feelings and under­standing are almost impossible to convey to those loved ones who said goodbye in February and greeted us in June. Re-entry and transfer of training to the back-home situation is likely the most difficult and most meaningful part of this educa­tional phenomenon. This is made particularly difficult because the returning participant cannot call on his old support system, and, very often, has little physical contact with his scattered brothers and sisters from the voyage. Often, strong rela­tionships between shipmates maintain at least for the duration of this transfer period.

In summary: Am I glad I went on WCA? Categorically, yes. Do I recommend it to students l Absolutely. Do I recommend it to faculty? Only if they're ready to let go of a lot of the security of traditional classroom scenes. Is it all fun and games? Hardly. Is it a good R & R cruise? No. Did I learn more from this experience than I would have otherwise? Assuredly. Would I go again? Certainly.

Jerrold Lee Shapiro is Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, College of Education, University of Hawaii. He received his A.B. (1964) from Colby College; M.A. (1967) from Northwestern University, and Ph.D. (1970) in Clinical Psychol­ogy from the University of Waterloo. He has taught at St. Bonaventure University and Chapman College World Campus Afloat. In addition to teaching in the Graduate Program in Counseling and Guidance, Dr. Shapiro serves as Consultant to the University of Hawaii's football team and Law School, the Department of Education, the U.S. Army and Air Force and is in pr,vate practice at the King-Kalakaua Clinic.