Global Learning Series: Topic Intro | Part 1
Global Learning Series
Part 1:
Significance and Strategies for the Classroom
Overview
What is Global Learning?
Global learning has roots in the Shared Futures: Global Learning and Social Responsibility initiative, which was launched by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) in 2001 to “enact global learning models that foreground questions of diversity, identity, citizenship, interconnection, and responsible action,” and to engage not only students who study abroad, but also those who cannot or do not. (For more on global learning at UC Davis, see the Global Affairs site.)
UC Davis’ Global Education for All, a Provost’s initiative coordinated through Global Affairs, builds upon AAC&U activity and frames global learning as the process of building key knowledge, skills, understandings, and networks that will help students collaborate effectively across cultural and geographic boundaries for the global good.
Global Education for All was initially conceived and developed with broad campus engagement in response to a call for “Big Ideas” that could shape student experience at UC Davis; it builds upon the university’s history of global engagement, teaching, and research about the US in transnational contexts, its commitment to just and inclusive impact on California and the world, and the rich diversity of our UC Davis community.
Active engagement with and by students is one of the notable components of global learning. According to Hilary Landorf, a leader in global learning and Executive Director, Office of Global Learning Initiatives at Florida International University, “Global learning was developed to produce new knowledge about the well-being of the global community, not to recapitulate old schema, beliefs, and biases” (Landorf et al., 31). Global learning recognizes that learners are empowered to create knowledge by viewing the world and the challenges that concern all of us not as mere problems but as opportunities to produce new knowledge. Consequently, creating new knowledge serves as a beacon of hope and an instrument of collaboration to address how we want to live on this planet together and how we behave towards others.
Why is Global Learning Important?
Global challenges, networks, and dynamics profoundly shape our lives. We need scholars, entrepreneurs, educators, artists, and employees who are ready to navigate across different cultural, political, and regulatory environments. And we need empathetic, curious leaders, caregivers, and community members who understand issues in cross-cultural contexts and collaborate to resolve them equitably. Global learning prepares UC Davis students to develop skills, knowledge, networks, and attitudes that will help them thrive in these roles.
UC Davis is not alone in recognizing that global learning is a critical dimension of higher education. The AAC&U Shared Futures initiative encourages purposeful global learning curricula that challenges students to reflect on “the interdependent but unequal world in which they live” and their sense of responsibility to "creatively and responsibly remedy its inequities and problems. ” Landorf (2018) expands upon this by noting that one goal of global learning is “to produce and spread widely new knowledge and new solutions for complex global problems facing people and the planet” (p. 41) and that, in doing so, it also supports institutional efforts to integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into curricula and pedagogy.
How Does Global Learning Take Place?
Global learning can take place through academic, co- and extra-curricular activity, as well as lived experience. It can take place on campus, but also in the broader community, virtually, and in other countries. Global learning is not fully achieved through a single experience, but rather developed through cumulative experiences over time, with opportunities for reflection and action.
At UC Davis, examples of global learning contexts include academic courses, study abroad and away programs, internships, externships, research, residential living and learning communities, student clubs and entrepreneurship, community-engaged learning programs, a Global Learning Conference, and more.
Many students come to UC Davis with relevant lived experience—for example having grown up in households profoundly affected by migration or other global forces. Harnessing these experiences or perspectives and fostering students’ recognition of their unique ability to contribute to dialogue, learning, and discovery also facilitates global learning.
The Global Education for All global learning outcomes are a resource for those at UC Davis who seek to design and implement global learning opportunities.
What are Global Learning Outcomes?
Three global learning goals, adapted from the AAC&U Global Learning VALUE Rubric (2014) by a campus-wide steering committee, outline in broad strokes guidance for global learning. Appendix 1 provides the Global Learning Outcomes Matrix (from Global Affairs) and can be used as a planning tool for instruction. Described below, each goal – Global Awareness, Global Diversity, and Global Action – includes specific outcome examples:
Global Awareness
Students examine actions and relationships that influence global systems from multiple perspectives, analyzing how complex systems impact self and others.
- Evaluate complex and overlapping systems in a global context, including natural systems (e.g. environmental, biological, chemical, physical) and human systems (e.g. cultural, economic, political, legal, health, social, and technological).
- Analyze how systems are constructed, influenced and altered, identifying differential and inequitable consequences, and how this shapes people’s lives around the world.
- Reflect upon interactions and interrelationships between our own experiences and natural and human systems in a global context.
Global Diversity
Students explore complex dimensions of diversity, equity, and inclusion around the world, including language, culture, and identity.
- Engage with differing perspectives and experiences while maintaining a sense of cultural perspective, including how culture informs our own beliefs and ways of thinking.
- Examine multiple and intersecting dimensions of cultural diversity (including, but not limited to, race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion, language, and class), discovering our own and others’ cultures and histories, including experiences of privilege and oppression.
- Expand our ability to cross boundaries associated with language, culture, histories, and status in order to bridge differences, recognize similarities, and collaboratively and equitably reach common goals.
Global Action
Students create strategies to apply knowledge, skills, and abilities to collaboratively and equitably foster global well-being and resilience.
- Create strategies to identify biases, navigate power relations, and continuously monitor intended and unintended consequences when addressing complex global challenges.
- Apply knowledge, skills, and abilities to contribute to society at multiple levels - locally, regionally, nationally, and globally - demonstrating cultural humility and ethical, informed, and responsible actions.
- Explore personal, academic, and professional opportunities that address real-life global challenges through collaboration across intercultural and disciplinary contexts in ways that account for cultural diversity, social justice, and planetary sustainability.
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Teaching Strategies
Once learning outcomes are established, instructional activities can be designed for both in and out of class learning environments.
In-class examples to integrate global learning:
- Examine Issues
Classes may incorporate globally focused or comparative perspectives to examine issues through a global lens. Course activities, projects, teams, online intercultural collaborations, and assignments may support engagement with global perspectives and/or action on global issues. Faculty may include content and speakers [and even co-instructors] that explore global diversity. - Transcend Boundaries
Virtual learning experiences with a global focus can transcend place-based boundaries because it allows connection with peers around the world through technology or participation in international internship experiences without leaving home. - Value Life Experiences
Recognize that life experiences such as immigration/migration, growing up speaking multiple languages, and helping family members navigate across cultural boundaries support global learning.
Outside of class activities to integrate global learning:
- Participate in Campus Events
Outside of classrooms, - Explore Communities
Global learning experiences may take students into regional communities to learn about an unfamiliar culture, work, or intern with businesses with a global footprint, and/or participate in community-engaged service learning to address global challenges. - Travel for Study
Encourage your students to consider travel for domestic study away or programs in other countries including study abroad, service learning, international research or fieldwork, or community and internship programs.
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Assessment Strategies
Assessment of global learning, using whichever global learning objective(s) you address in your course, can also take many forms. Reflective journals, team-based projects, discussions, international internships or fieldwork, even standard assessments such as exams and term papers can incorporate global learning if you keep a few things in mind:
- Be intentional
Integrate global learning into your goals and assessments, not as an add-on. Make sure that the global learning element of your course is visible to and actionable by the students-that is, make sure that both the global learning and the disciplinary aspects of the assessment are visible. - Be inclusive
Global learning is predicated on understanding and respecting differences. As you build assessments, incorporate different points of view or perspectives. - Be reflective
Be reflective and encourage students to be reflective. Deliberate reflection helps students increase their global learning. - Be collaborative
Global learning often focuses on wicked problems-- challenges that span disciplines and geographic areas and are best solved by working together. Finding ways for students to engage across places and disciplines is one useful way to approach the global learning outcomes. - Be simple
Building a global learning objective in your course should be direct, clear, and measurable. Bloom’s taxonomy and the UC Davis Global Learning Outcomes Matrix (Appendix 1) are invaluable tools for this.
- Acknowledgement
- Aliki Dragona (PhD, Faculty Director of Academic Programs at Global Learning Hub in Global Affairs) and Elizabeth Langridge-Noti (PhD, Director of Faculty Engagement in Global Affairs) developed this resource.
- Citation
- Dragona, A., & Langridge-Noti, E. (2021). Global Learning Series: Just-in-Time Teaching Resources. UC Davis, Center for Educational Effectiveness (CEE). Retrieved from https://cee.ucdavis.edu/JITT
- Additional Resources
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- For more on Global Teaching and Learning Resources from Global Affairs at UC Davis, visit this page.
- For more on Global Learning Goals and Outcomes from Global Affairs at UC Davis, visit this page.
- For a Subject Guide on Global Learning from Shields Library at UC Davis, visit this page.
- For the Global Learning VALUE Rubric from the Association of American Colleges and Universities, visit this page.
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