USU Students Create Training Materials In Egypt

Published in the Utah Statesman January 12, 2009

USU students crossed cultural barriers and thousands of miles to successfully create two training programs for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an organization that provides economic and humanitarian aid to countries across the globe. Collaboratively, the sixteen students created more than 80 hours of PowerPoint and 1,300 pages of textbook training content to deliver at a training program in Cairo, Egypt.

Joanne Bentley, assistant professor in the ITLS department and USAID project supervisor and mentor, said the “huge undertaking” joined undergraduate, masters and Ph.D. students from both the business and education colleges and three programs, accounting, business administration and instructional technology, within those colleges – a first for a USU study abroad trip.

“This is a monumental thing to have the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services and the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business to work together on this scale of project,” she said. “Never had two colleges collaborated on such a large scale project.”

Joanne said the students were asked to complete the project by Jed Barton, a USAID controller stationed in Egypt and a former Aggie. She said the project began at the end of last summer and students started working on the content at the beginning of fall semester.

“It was a mad dash to get the project all done on time. It’s a lot of pages to edit and document and format,” she said. “The students did a fabulous job – they worked so hard. At the end of the time we left Cairo they handed in all the deliverables on time in very high quality.”

Rosalie Gricius, graduate student in business administration, was one of the students able to participate in the project and on the trip. She said the two training programs the students created were to help USAID accountants and voucher examiners standardize their accounting practices. She said the team worked through documents sent by USAID employees, mostly non-English speakers, and organized them into two courses.

While working on the project and preparing to go to Egypt, Gricius said the team tried to become more aware of the cultural differences between the U.S. and Egypt.

“We know cultures see different things different ways. Some things acceptable in our culture are not acceptable over there,” she said.

Gricius said the students spent a lot of time making sure pictures, diagrams and even the color of the text were internationally appropriate, “not just indicative of United States culture.” She said the students also spent time learning about Egyptian culture and even some Arabic. While in Egypt, they were careful to dress appropriately and be respectful of the Egyptian culture.

Gricius said the students arrived in Egypt in two groups; one Nov. 14 and one Nov. 26. Of the 16 students who worked on the project, 11 were able to travel to Egypt. When the first group arrived, they found the training materials weren’t exactly what the trainers had in mind, due in large to assumptions on both sides and the cultural and distance barriers they faced when developing the program.

“Working cross culture and long distance, there were things we hadn’t talked about,” she said. “They did have a different focus on what the priority and training were going to be.”

Joanne further explained the programs the IT students had helped developed were a little too complicated and technologically advanced for some of the international trainers that weren’t very familiar with PowerPoint.

“We were creating PowerPoint based on American paradigm,” she said. She said the international USAID trainers wanted the presentations to use bright colors, with “cutesy” graphics, something not typical of any U.S. industry business presentation.

“It was like kindergarten on cultural steroids,” Joanne said. “It’s not what we would have designed for an industry.”

Joanne compared it to the first time many young U.S. students use PowerPoint or other computer programs; wanting to use all the colors and graphics available.

However, she said with help from the very talented IT students, they were able to completely recreate the PowerPoint and create the materials the trainers had envisioned.

Gricius agreed and said although it was a lot of work to change the PowerPoint, the trainers were very pleased with the students end product.

“They ended up being very happy with our finished product,” she said. “There’s always going to surprises, you just have to be cool and chill about it. We did have a misunderstanding, but I don’t know if it could have been avoided.”

Joanne said she was very pleased with how hard the students worked to fix the problem.

“International work has done best when you have relationships of trust, and that was really reinforced for the students on this project,” she said. “As we were able to meet the deadlines and give the deliverable even under unanticipated circumstances they trusted us more and more to work with them again in the future.”

Patrick Bentley, master’s student in the IT program and one of the team leaders (who is also Joanne’s husband), said he learned a lot about assumptions while working on this project.

“When we got over there we had assumed certain things and they had assumed certain things,” he said. “It didn’t work out how we thought it would ... but it helped a lot because it forced us to work hand in hand with people from all nationalities from all different countries from USAID.”

Besides working on the presentations and textbooks, Patrick also developed a “Train the Trainer” program to help some of the international USAID trainers. He said they originally planned on teaching this course when they first arrived in Egypt, but because of the complications with the materials the course had to take be pushed aside.

However, Patrick said depending on the 2009 USAID budget, he hopes to be able to travel to South Africa to teach the course later this year, which would also function as his Ph.D. project.

Joanne said it was amazing to meet and interact with the USAID trainers that had come from all over the world.

“Every person who attended the training and presented speaks English as a second language,” she said. “The USU team and the three Americans who work in Cairo were the only people who speak English as a first language out of the 78 people who worked on the project.”

Besides working very hard on the project, Gricius said the students also had the opportunity to travel around Cairo, visiting the Pyramids of Gizo, the Cairo museum, the Citadel and the Nile Delta area.

“It was really fun to see the differences in culture ... it was interesting to see people and watch how they live. They’re wonderful people.”

The Bentley’s both said they were very happy to be able to participate in this huge project.

“The impact of this project globally is really phenomenal,” Joanne said.

“Now it’s kind of sinking in,” Patrick said. “This really is an international, global thing that helps countries worldwide.”

–karlie.brand@aggiemail.usu.edu