A group of masters’ students from Georgetown University’s Washington DC campus are participating in an ongoing three-week study tour in the Georgetown campus at Qatar Foundation’s Education City.

The graduate-level programme, New Communication Technologies in the Arab World: Perspectives from the Gulf, which started last week, teaches the participants media and
technology.

The programme helps students reflect on the relationship between evolving information and communication technologies and transformative processes of globalisation. The highly interdisciplinary and interactive curriculum emphasises experiential learning through educational
partnerships.

The programme, which concludes on June 5, features guest speakers, experts, and practitioners from Al Jazeera, Qatar Museums, Qatar University, Northwestern University in Qatar, Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), and GU-Q’s Centre for International and
Regional Studies. 

GU-Q Professor Mohamed Zayani, a media scholar and the programme’s co-director, said it offers an alternative educational experience and curricula.

Programme co-director J R Osborn, assistant professor of Communication, Culture, and Technology at Georgetown University, said that a key focus is the relationship between technology and culture in the Arab world.

This year the programme coincides with the Al Jazeera Forum, which gives the students the opportunity to participate in the annual gathering of leading thinkers and strategists.

One of the components of the summer programme is the ability to use applied research methodologies to study the digital Middle East. Working with QCRI, students learn to use a tool that auto-tags and classifies social media traffic. They apply and administer this tool to social media traffic emanating from the Al Jazeera Forum and, once the Forum concludes, they analyse the data with QCRI researchers who specialise in new technologies.

GU-Q’s dean Gerd Nonneman said the mission of the summer programme meshes with the goals of Qatar National Vision 2030.

“The programme is a mixture of classroom learning and the sort of hands-on research and ‘immersion’ that becomes possible by leveraging the rich environment that Doha offers,” he explained.

The programme is offered in co-operation with the Communication, Culture and Technology Masters Programme and the Office of International Programmes, both based at Georgetown University’s campus in Washington, DC.