Overview
Cornell Transnational Learning (CTL) makes global connections by providing the learning and technical resources critical to building academic and research capacity.
Learning Modules
Transnational Learning creates customized digital learning packages drawn from over 600 lectures, covering topics in plant breeding, crop and soil sciences, agricultural economics, horticulture, animal sciences, communications, and more.
Using state-of-the-art production technology, CTL films lectures to create unique and effective learning presentations, complete with slides and supplemental materials (1).
Register here to gain access to high-quality learning modules, or if you have already registered, sign in.
Videoconferencing
CTL arranges and hosts videoconferences between institutions so that students and faculty can meet, discuss joint projects, and explore topics of mutual interest. For example, students in Africa can pose questions directly to professors at Cornell; faculty in Mexico can discuss joint initiatives with faculty in India.
Meeting someone face-to-face across national boundaries can make a solid impact, and our videoconferences bring people together across any distance in real-time.
Academic Support
Transnational Learning facilitates faculty consultations for students across the globe. During a consultation, a Cornell professor can guide a student at a partner institution in the direction of his or her research, guidance that is sometimes critically important in keeping research on track and in line with international standards, while providing a global context for the work.
CTL also facilitates students and faculty members in the developing world by helping them to visit the United States. Visitors can meet the broad range of international students and scientists studying in the U.S. and can observe the advanced tools and techniques used in the biological science research conducted at Cornell and other U.S. universities.
Transnational Learning goes a bit further to arrange trips for US students to visit partner programs in order to gain first-hand knowledge in the agricultural systems in developing regions. Students build international networks of peers working in their field, while learning about the constraints and opportunities facing researchers.
Communications Support
Transnational Learning offers professional technical expertise and consultations to partner institutions across the globe.
Students must stay in touch with their advisors while conducting field research. Agricultural science students in developing nations frequently are stationed in extremely remote areas and must rely on innovative strategies to keep the lines of communication open with their colleagues. Transnational Learning provides its institutional partners with the necessary communication technologies, such as cellular telephones, satellite modems, radio, and other wireless networks, and technical assistance to ensure that researchers stay connected.
Library Resources
Cornell University’s Albert R. Mann Library holds one of the world’s largest collections of literature in the agricultural sciences. As a Transnational Learning partner institution, you have access to select resources, such as reference assistance, TEEAL, and the gray literature repository.
Mann Library’s reference service provides answers to factual inquiries as well as assists users with in-depth research investigations and literature reviews. It provides updates on the latest research via regularly e-mailed database search results. The library also will provide copies of journal articles to students in partner institutions by e-mail or by postal airmail (whichever is more reliable).
The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library (TEEAL) contains the full text of more than 140 international scientific journals and is available to eligible developing countries. The digitized volumes, which are updated annually, indexed, and searchable, are a powerful tool for building capacity in agriculture by helping researchers, faculty, students, and extension workers quickly retrieve relevant and current scientific information. TEEAL can be made available (where appropriate) to students of Transnational Learning partner institutions.
Frequently, studies conducted in less developed nations are not published in major scientific journals and thus are lost to a large portion of the scientific community. This research, however, is often timely, regional, and deals specifically with the issues facing certain scientists. Transnational Learning, in association with Cornell’s Mann Library, is creating a repository for this “gray literature” that will be available to partner institutions.
- Presentations are distributed using technology appropriate to the infrastructure of your institution.