Bridging the communication gap of a foreign speaking instructor in Hands On Pedagogy

The globalization of education and particularly engineering education often results in pedagogical instruction being given by instructors not speaking the native language of the audience. Today English is the language frequently selected to bridge this communication gap through traditional oral translation either simultaneous or interactive. This single avenue of communication is simply not adequate to support teaching using project based learning (PBL) pedagogy. Multiple portals of communication drawing on more senses than just auditory is essential to successfully instruct students using the PBL approach. This paper describes the team teaching experience of an English speaking instructor and an English/Russian interpreter teaching a hands-on activity to a predominantly Russian speaking audience. Communications using auditory, visual, physical and other avenues were used to implement a design, build and test project. Their experience and the lessons learned are the subject of this paper.