Enhancing college students’ global awareness through campus Toastmasters clubs

The main objective of this study is to investigate the effects of the 20 college campus Toastmasters clubs all over Taiwan, towards the enhancement of its student members’ global awareness. Within the concept of cooperative learning, promotion of global views by means of sharing various cultural concepts within the conducted Toastmasters meeting program, group works such as structured interaction and communication activities, and individual speaking activities, while not worrying about their grammatical errors are used as strategies. Using the qualitative research paradigm in terms of focus group and individual interviews, the current study gathers college student members’ global viewpoints along with their insightful observations in order to understand the implications of such cooperative strategies. Results indicates that co-curricular programs in existing campus activities, such as Campus Toastmasters clubs, is capable of developing the students’ global viewpoints and/or was able to help diminish their culture shock within a competitive diversely membered higher education milieu.