Though she's worked with many Chinese students in informatics and journalism at IU, professor Chris Ogan says she has a much better understanding of their culture and background after spending three months teaching at Hong Kong Baptist University.

"It was interesting to work with students in their own environment," she said of the nine master's and Ph.D. students in her communications theory class. "At the end of the class, when they asked me what the differences are between them and U.S. college students, I told them that they worked much harder and never whined. Then, one asked me for the definition of 'whine.'"

Currently on sabbatical, Ogan returned to campus long enough to report on her experiences in Hong Kong before taking off April 9 for the Netherlands to work on her project on Turkish migrants and the Internet.

She was invited to HKBU when officials from that school visited IU to learn more about media convergence, and Ogan helped explain and show convergence methodologies at this campus. She's still wrapping up after the HKBU experience, fielding e-mails from now-former students and reflecting on cultural and media differences.

"All classes are taught in English, so students had to navigate language as well as read through jargon and difficult ideas at a high level of scholarly work," she said. "And, the semester-long course was taught in half the time it usually takes. All of this would have been difficult in any circumstances."

Students never missed classes. They all had assistantships and worked during the week, and Ogan later learned that one also has two small children she sees only on weekends.

Aside from this work ethic, Ogan noted that students were forthcoming about media issues in their own country and interested in examining how Western philosophies apply.

"This was communications theory course, but instead of simply exporting Western theories, we talked about how these were adapted in different regions," Ogan said. "We also talked about what didn't transport well because of China's collectivism and Western countries' individualism. We worked to put theories in context, to see what's working and what is not."

Because democracy is at base of some of this theory, and eight of the nine students came from non-democratic mainland China, ideas were sometimes as tricky to explain as the language differences, she said.

With Hong Kong behind her, for now, Ogan will move on to the Netherlands and then back to Bloomington in time to teach a new course this fall, Future of Media, at the School of Journalism.