MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — Aline Germain-Rutherford, the director of the Middlebury College French School and associate professor at the University of Ottawa, has received the 2007 Jean Demal Prize from the International Association of Pedagogy in Higher Education for her project entitled “e-pedagogies interculturelles.”
Together with a team of scholars from Canada, Switzerland, and Cameroon, Rutherford-Germain has developed an online, self-paced, e-learning module to address the question of integrating and managing the cultural dimension in online education. The module offers practical guidance, experiential learning activities, and resources for online course designers and instructors.
The award was conferred at the 24th Congress of the Association of Pedagogy in Higher Education meeting in Montreal in May. The criteria for the prize are: innovative research in specific cultural and socio-economic contexts, depth and relevance of the theoretical framework of research leading to success in higher education, and sensitivity and openness to international cooperation.
Rutherford-Germain is the 3M National Teaching Fellow at the University of Ottawa. She holds a Doctorat en Didactologie et Didactique des Langues et des Cultures Secondes from the Université de Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle). She taught 18 summers in Middlebury’s French School, and was appointed director of the school in 2006.