Avondale enhances learning opportunities by offering international study tour electives as credit towards students’ degree programs. Study tours are available in history, visual communication, music, business and biblical studies. Preparation includes lectures, discussions, research, tutorial presentations and a written assignment. A post-tour assignment brings together the insights acquired on the trip. Study tours enrich theoretical learning with first-hand experience, generate an enthusiasm for learning that has no equal in the classroom, and develop global perspectives of value in subsequent professional life.
Bible lands study tour
In July 2011 Dr Wayne French, Lake Macquarie campus chaplain with a keen interest in archaeology, led sixty-two students on a study tour of Bible lands: Egypt, the Sinai peninsula, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, Greece and Italy. The tour gave special attention to sites associated with Israel’s exodus from Egypt, the footsteps of Christ in the gospels, Paul’s missionary journeys, and the seven churches of Revelation. Highlights included climbing Mount Sinai, a communion service at the garden tomb in Jerusalem, a baptism in the River Jordan, and scripture readings at key locations. The tour also included historic sites at Petra, Jerash (Jordan), Gallipoli and Pompeii. Students said the tour made the Bible live as they saw the places where the events occurred. It also gave many their first experience of cultures outside Australia.
Bible lands tour: Josh Hamilton chats with an Egyptian at the pyramids of Giza. Photo: Colin Chuang
History study tours
This year’s history tour studied aspects of French history associated with sites in the south of France and in and around Paris. The previous tour (2008) focused on the history of ancient Greece and Rome. The tours enhanced students’ skills of historical investigation as they analysed and interpreted the source materials available at the various sites and museums. Students experienced at first hand the geography, locations and cultures relevant to the history they had studied, gaining clearer understandings of the political, social and ethical issues facing people in history.
“Actually seeing the buildings, sites and ruins in person
. . . has made the people in history . . . more real to me,” one student wrote. Another said, “History has quite literally been brought to life. It has freshly re-dawned on me that the history I study was the reality of people, communities and humanity.”
Students commented that the experience of operating in alien cultures and language environments also enriched their personal and spiritual development.
“It was clear that on-site experiences made a massive difference to the students,” said Associate Professor Daniel Reynaud. “The level of visible connection to the past and the immediacy with which they connected was evident in levels of excitement and verbal feedback.”
Following the tour, Associate Professor Reynaud and Dr Maria Northcote delivered a refereed paper on the educational value of international history tours, which they presented at the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australia Conference, Griffith University, Queensland (2011).
Visual Arts/Visual Communication
The 2011 tour studied art and architecture in Chicago and New York, cities whose museums and galleries exhibit an astonishing wealth of art from ancient times to the present. Highlights in Chicago included the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Museum of Contemporary Art; and in New York the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. The 2009 Visual Arts tour went to Paris, Amsterdam and London.
An architecture guide briefs Avondale students on buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park, Chicago. Photo: Andrew Collis
Business
The 2011 business tour studied selected industries and corporations in Singapore, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Italy, Monaco, France, Switzerland and England. Locations included the Lego factory in Denmark; Airbus, Volkswagen and BMW in Germany; Swarovski Crystal in Austria; Nestlé-Calliers in France; and the London Stock Exchange in England. The tour supplemented the theoretical base of students’ studies with practical applications in “real world” situations. Students were able to observe best practice in a range of international businesses, improving their understanding of the internal workings of organisations and enhancing their awareness of the broader social, cultural and environmental factors that influence business processes.
Music
The 2010 music tour studied the music, composers and performers associated with Vienna, Salzburg, Venice, Paris and London. Highlights included concerts at tour locations.
Tags: Learning and Teaching