ABSTRACT
In recent decades there has been a significant increase in the number of colleges and universities across the United States making an institutional commitment to community-engaged learning. Moreover, experiential learning is one of the fastest growing segments of the study abroad market, further highlighting the extent to which the current generation of college students desires hands-on, skill-building experiences while abroad. This chapter investigates the implications of community-based pedagogies for the field of Russian as a foreign language (RFL) instruction, with an emphasis on how globally integrated community projects can bridge the on-campus curriculum with the abroad experience, and perhaps raise study-abroad participation in the process. The authors survey both US and Russian scholarship on this topic, as each tradition has developed its own place-based methodology and terminology. The authors then present a case study of their globally integrated work at Dickinson College and with the Dickinson-in-Moscow program, where students developed a historic walking tour of their hometown for the local Russian-speaking community, based on their study-abroad experience in Moscow. Special focus is placed on the way that the authors adapted their work to an online format during the COVID-19 pandemic, thereby harnessing the flexibility of digital tools, including virtual reality, for community-engaged pedagogy in a global context. The overarching goals and outcomes of the project are to connect communities, both local and global, using digital tools and while engaging students’ Russian-language skills.
