eJournal of Public Affairs: Recent Issue on Global Engagement

Congratulations to the eJournal of Public Affairs and to ADP’s Global Engagement Scholars on the publication of the latest special issue — focused on Global Engagement — Volume 4, No. 1 published on March 31, 2015. It’s what we’re reading!

Introduction Essay: Global Engagement: Educating Globally Competent Citizens
Dennis Falk and Darrell A. Hamlin
Global engagement is a multi-faceted concept, and there are many components to educating globally competent citizens (Falk, Domagal-Goldman, & Hoerrner, 2014; Hartman, 2014). This second special issue of the eJournal of Public Affairs, along with the first special issue released in December 2014, reflects the breadth of activities related to internationalized engagement for fostering global competence among students, educators, and institutions. Indeed, colleges and universities, particularly those affiliated with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), are engaged in a range of such activities, drawing upon a wide variety of valuable resources.

Article: Creating Courses about Global Forces: Global Challenges and General Education
Martin Shapiro, Lisa Anderson and Kris Clarke
This article describes the work of faculty members and administrators at California State University, Fresno to create courses in the General Education (GE) program taught around the Global Challenges framework developed by members of AASCU’s Global Engagement Initiative. The first course, H102, was developed in 2008 for the upper division GE program and was designed specifically and exclusively for the Smittcamp Family Honors College. Two new courses were developed in 2013, one that fulfills a lower division GE requirement in critical thinking, and an upper division GE course that fulfills the Multicultural/International requirement. The authors (developers and instructors of the courses) describe experiences teaching the courses, including how resources are selected, strong and weak assignments, pre- and post-semester survey results, developing the course as part of the GE program, and the unique experience of teaching an interdisciplinary course with the ultimate goal of creating more globally engaged students. Keywords: Global Challenges, General Education, Interdisciplinary, Honors, Critical Thinking.

Article: AASCU’s Global Challenges: Promise and Peril in the 21st Century Course
Tina Zappile and Shala Mills
In 2006, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) launched its Global Engagement Initiative and began developing a set of curricular tools for faculty to use in educating globally competent citizens. A national blended-model course was developed in 2011 and has now been delivered to more than 1,200 students on 15 campuses across the country and abroad. The blended-model course is the first in what AASCU hopes will be a series of National Blended Course Consortium (NBCC) courses. In this article, the authors share the AASCU NBCC model for the Global Challenges curriculum and offer case studies on how that curriculum has been successfully delivered on two campuses. Keywords: global engagement, AASCU, global citizenship, first year, general education

Article: Using Research to Examine Global Challenges
Amy Buddie, Kenneth Hill and Phillip Poskus
As a contributing partner to the American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ (AASCU’s) Global Engagement Initiative, President’s Emerging Global Scholars (PEGS) program at Kennesaw State University uses the nationally recognized, researched-based, Global Challenges concept to provide a foundation for its three-year leadership program targeting high-achieving undergraduate students. Delivered through KSU’s Tomorrow’s World Today course, this content provides a futurist’s look toward the year 2030 by examining key drivers of change such as economics, technology, security, governance, population, and resource management. Through classroom study and an international experience in Salvador, Brazil, the PEGS program partners with UNIFACS University, a Laureate institution. Students, faculty, and administrators from both institutions utilize undergraduate research in concert with intercultural relationship development as tools to better understand the geopolitical, social, academic, and economic challenges that face our world today and, more importantly, tomorrow. Keywords: Seven Global Challenges, undergraduate research, student leadership, intercultural competency

Invited Essay: Teaching Abroad: Creating Global Citizens and Global Teachers=
Denise Horn
This article discusses international study programs in light of faculty development. Based upon ten years of experience working with students abroad, I offer some insights on the difficulties and rewards for faculty who lead programs overseas. I point to reasons for the growth in study abroad programs, as well as the opportunities these afford for both faculty and students.

Invited Essay: Aggregating Latin American News Media for Fun (and Hopefully Enough Profit to Survive): The Ideas Underpinning the Latin American News Digest
John Green
This article describes a news service focusing on Latin America. The Digest provides access to 140 stories from Spanish and Portuguese sources every week. By subscribing to the Digest, an instructor can offer students links to translations and abstracts of dozens of articles including, editorials and commentary, coverage of politics, society, the economy, the environment, travel and tourism, arts and culture, and international relations among Latin American countries. The Digest can be used as a tool to engage students in contemporary politics and culture of any area of Latin America.

Feature: Research Note — The Soliya Connect Program: Two Institutions’ Experience with Virtual Intercultural Communication — (invited research note)
Steven Elliott-Gower and Kenneth Hill
In 2012, Georgia College and Kennesaw State University partnered with Soliya, a Washington, DC-based non-profit organization, to bring their students a unique international education experience: the opportunity to engage “virtually” in dialogue, via video-conferencing technology, with students around the world about Islam and the relationship between Western countries and Muslim-majority countries. In this article, the authors compare their respective approaches, examining course objectives, student learning outcomes, course structure, students’ experience with Soliya, and student learning outcomes assessment. The authors conclude with some observations about Soliya and, by implication, other virtual international education experiences as alternatives and/or complements to traditional study-abroad programs in educating globally competent students and citizens.

Feature: Research Note: Undergraduates’ Awareness and Perceptions of Globalization: A Comparison of U.S. and Chinese Students
Brett Zollinger, Fu Runfeng and Keith Campbell
Assessing current awareness of and attitudes toward predominant globalization processes among undergraduate students is helpful for future course design, particularly courses about globalization or those with substantial globalization components. Such assessments also provide research opportunities for understanding changing levels of awareness and attitudes among undergraduate students over time. This paper reports research about the knowledge and perceptions of globalization concepts and trends among undergraduate students. The analysis compares findings among U.S. undergraduates at a Midwestern university (Midwest U.) with those among Chinese undergraduates at a university (China U.) in an east-central province of the country. Findings from two years of research (i.e., 2012 and 2013) are reported.

Feature: Research Note: A Transformational Learning Model for Designing Internationalized On-Campus Courses
Shellley Smith
Internationalizing on-campus courses is a key part of creating globally engaged students. An internationalized course should provide students with the opportunity to: (1) openly engage and value new perspectives; (2) develop skills for critical analysis of the knowledge and perspectives encountered during the course; and (3) observe, participate in, and reflect on the information gained. This article presents a four-step transformational model for internationalizing on-campus courses and curricula Keywords: teaching and learning, internationalizing, course design, intercultural sensitivity, global engagement

Feature: Video – Tour of the Globe
Samantha Francka
Many college and university campuses have events that emphasize the intercultural component of global engagement. The following video provides an overview of such event that occurs at Missouri State University.

What We’re Reading: eJournal of Public Affairs Issue on Global Engagement

 

The eJournal of Public Affairs is a peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary, open-access journal published by Missouri State University and affiliated with AASCU’s American Democracy Project. By providing an academic, nationally refereed venue for such work, the eJournal aims to advance the status of public scholarship.

 

Editorial: Teaching Globally, Learning Locally

Dennis Falk and Darrell A. Hamlin
Dec 19, 2014 • Vol. 3, Issue 3

Demographic pressures, natural resource demands, environmental challenges, rapid technological change, economic integration, new security threats, and other transnational issues invite global engagement on the part of colleges and universities. As educators and citizens, faculty and administrators should want their graduates to possess the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to effectively communicate and collaborate across cultures in an effort to address pressing global issues.

 

Article: The AASCU Global Engagement Initiative: Educating Globally Competent Citizens

The Global Engagement Initiative (formerly Seven Revolutions Project), part of the American Democracy Project at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), focuses on educating globally competent citizens at colleges and universities. AASCU partnered originally with The New York Times Company, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and 10 AASCU member campuses to create a faculty toolkit, a national online blended-learning course, an eBook, faculty development workshops, and a student guide. All of these products focus on the promise and peril inherent in the global challenges of population, resources, technology, information, economies, conflict, and governance. The evolution of the partnerships, the products produced, and the distinctive aspects of the initiative are explained in this article.

 

Article: Assessing AASCU’s Global Challenges Blended Model Course

In 2006 the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) launched its Global Engagement Initiative and began developing a set of curricular tools for faculty to use in educating globally competent citizens. In 2011 the initiative developed a national blended model course. That course has now been delivered to more than 1,200 students on 15 campuses across the country and abroad. This paper explores the effectiveness of the national blended course in meeting its stated learning objectives. In 2013-14, pre/post-tests were conducted on three pilot campuses. The pre/post-tests indicate that students’ knowledge about global issues and ways to get involved in civic life increased after taking the model course. Progress toward some of the other learning objectives was less clear, and the authors make recommendations for further study.

 

Article: Study Abroad and Moral Development

Andrew Johnson and Danielle Hathcock
Dec 19, 2014 • Vol. 3, Issue 3

Why should students study abroad? The standard answer universities give cites three types of benefit: academic, cultural, and professional. We argue that this answer sells the value of study abroad short. Just as important as any of these benefits is the value study abroad has in promoting moral development. Drawing on key ideas of the seminal developmental psychologists Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, we make the case that study abroad can facilitate moral development, whether one understands morality in utilitarian, Kantian, or sentimentalist terms. It does so by helping students take the perspective of those who are culturally different, inducing the cognitive disequilibrium that is crucial to growth in moral and empirical knowledge, and expanding the scope of feelings of empathy.

 

Article: Service-Learning, Sustainability, and the Need for Cosmopolitan Experiences in Undergraduate Education: A View from Anthropology

To become citizens of the world, students must understand with their heads, hands, and hearts the complex realities that people live within in a globalizing but nonetheless richly diverse world. A short-term study-abroad program, while brief in duration, may profoundly affect student learning and, indeed, transform life paths by providing students real experiences of cosmopolitan consciousness. The program described below and represented by the accompanying videos focuses on immersive, service-based learning in Costa Rica for the purpose of exploring sustainability in its multiple registers—social, environmental, and economic. Student reflection and commentary from our Costa Rican host institution confirm that programs such as this contribute critical insight toward the formation of globally competent citizens.

 

Teaching and Learning Essays: The Challenge of Global Governance in the 21st Century: A Review of Three TED Talks

These three TED Talks address global challenges, and how we (the world’s seven billion inhabitants), our national governments, and the international community can make the world a better, safer, more prosperous place. In this review, we will summarize each talk, offer a brief critique, and then synthesize some of the most salient points of each. We will review the talks in chronological order.

 

Teaching and Learning Essays: Global Studies Reader, 2nd Ed.

In the Global Studies Reader, 2nd Edition, editor Manfred Steger offers an excellent compilation of 20 articles that address the varied and complex nature of global issues that are of concern today. Global studies (GS) has, according to Steger (2015), “emerged as a vibrant field of academic study that cuts across conventional disciplinary boundaries and subject markers” (p. 3). Within this book, Steger addresses GS from a problem-centered perspective and contrasts it to its more traditional academic cousin, international relations (IR). While IR is concerned almost solely with the actions of the state, Steger argues that GS goes beyond that to also look at social, environmental, and contextual (gender, poverty, etc.) problems with a much greater focus on applied public policy.

 

Teaching and Learning Essays: Using Literature to Increase Global Engagement in Higher Education: A Review of Four Novels

Today’s college students, much like our planet, are experiencing change at a rapidly increasing rate. Young people’s access to technology, and with it their susceptibility to cyber crises, connects them more than ever before to the driving forces in our global society. As educators grapple with how to engage students with these forces, they may look to programs or initiatives that seek to increase interpersonal connections and exposure to new environments. While these approaches carry with them enormous benefits, we cannot lose sight of the importance of inner-personal development and reflection. In addition to understanding how globalization affects populations, students must be able to articulate how global change affects them individually. Establishing this personal connection is key to their engagement on a larger scale.

 

Register Now for 2014 Global Challenges Institute in November at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

The American Democracy Project is pleased to announce that registration is now open for the 2014 Global Challenges Faculty Institute!

Thursday & Friday, November 6 – 7, 2014
Global Challenges Institute on Educating Globally Competent Citizens
The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey · Galloway, NJ

DEADLINE TO REGISTER: October 6, 2014

This two-day institute introduces participants to numerous tools for educating globally competent citizens. Global Engagement Scholars (faculty members) from 11 AASCU campuses describe how they have built courses and curricula around the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ 7 Revolutions framework to address seven Global Challenges: population, resources, technology, information, economies, conflict and governance. Institute leaders demonstrate the teaching materials and resources they have found most valuable in the courses they teach (including introductory, first-year, discipline-based and honors courses) and guide participants in anticipating how these same tools could be used effectively on their home campuses.??

Participants also have the opportunity to learn more about how to bring the new national Global Challenges blended learning course to their campuses. The blended learning model course, designed by the AASCU scholars, includes a variety of teaching methods to deliver and facilitate classroom materials and activities. The course is delivered through a variety of LMS platforms (including Blackboard, Moodle Rooms and Desire2Learn) and can be used as a turn-key course or customized as desired. Costs for the 2014-15 academic year are $50 per student for AASCU institutions; the fee includes a digital subscription to The New York Times.

Each Institute participant will receive a faculty toolkit for using the global challenges content in campus courses and programs. This practical and insightful Institute is ideal for colleges and universities that want to deepen their commitment to providing effective international education in a variety of disciplines. That’s why AASCU is excited to provide reduced registration fees for campus teams. While individuals are certainly welcome, campus teams of three to five may find the Institute most instructive

Who Should Attend?

• Campus teams seeking to enhance their curriculum related to global engagement
• Faculty members teaching courses with global content
• Administrators who are interested in internationalizing their campus curricula
• Anyone interested in educating globally competent citizens

To register, visit http://www.aascu.org/meetings/globalchallenges14/ by October 6, 2014.

To learn more about the Global Challenges curriculum, visit the following website: www.aascuglobalchallenges.org.

A Collaborative Alternative to MOOCs: AASCU’s Global Challenges Project

AASCU’s Global Challenges curriculum, which grew out of ADP’s Global Engagement Initiative, is featured in this month’s Diversity & Democracy issue from our friends at AAC&U. Shala Mills, the national coordinator of the Global Challenges Project and the chair of political science at Fort Hays State University (Kan.), describes the project — and ways in which it’s blended learning platform provide a collaborative alternative to MOOCs — in the article featured below. You can access the full article here.

A Collaborative Alternative to MOOCs:
AASCU’s Global Challenges Project

By Shala Mills

Volume 17, Number 2
Spring 2014

How can we best prepare students to be culturally competent, globally aware citizens capable of leveraging the knowledge and skills necessary to engage difficult global issues? Failure to provide such an education invites a grim future for all, but determining how best to do so can be daunting. To foster creative approaches to teaching about global challenges, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) created its Global Challenges Project. Conceived by George Mehaffy, AASCU’s vice president for academic leadership and change, the project (which I direct) uses technology effectively and cost-efficiently to support faculty as they educate students to become globally competent and engaged citizens. Massive Collaborative Design The Global Challenges Project is the first offering developed using AASCU’s Red Balloon model. The model draws its guiding metaphor from a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency exercise where teams used the Internet and social networking to locate red balloons scattered around the country. The winning team of five individuals found all ten balloons in less than nine hours by relying on a social network of some four thousand people. George Mehaffy (2010) thought that American classrooms could benefit from a similar model, one that relies on the “wisdom of the crowds” and uses technology to connect faculty and students in building content superior to what any single faculty member might be able to create alone.

To read the rest of the article, go here.

Call for Submissions: eJournal’s special issue on Global Engagement

Call for Submissions: Special Issue on Global Engagement: Educating Globally Competent Citizens in Colleges and Universities

Darrell A. Hamlin, Guest Editor, Fort Hays State University
Dennis Falk, Guest Editor, University of Minnesota Duluth

Mar 31, 2014

Demographic pressures, natural resource demands, environmental challenges, rapid technological change, economic integration, new security threats, and other transnational issues invite global engagement on the part of colleges and universities. As educators and citizens we should be concerned that our graduates possess the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to effectively communicate and collaborate across cultures in an effort to address pressing global issues. This special issue of the eJournal of Public Affairs focuses on how colleges and universities are preparing students to be effectively engaged in global issues, including participation in AASCU’s Global Engagement initiative.

The eJournal of Public Affairs is a peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary, open-access electronic journal published by Missouri State University in partnership with the American Democracy Project. In this special issue of the eJournal, we are looking for submissions, including manuscripts, videos, interviews, photo essays, multimedia, etc., that report on projects and approaches to student engagement with global issues.

As a multidisciplinary journal, we welcome submissions for this issue from the fields of anthropology, communications, economics, history, human geography, political science, and sociology, among others. We welcome submissions about any subject related to global engagement on campus and education of globally competent citizens.

Submissions should focus on describing best practices or successful models, or present quantitative and/or qualitative results of global engagement initiatives. We are interested in:

1) Innovative study abroad programs in terms of global engagement and service-learning;
2) Programs or initiatives that facilitate global engagement through communications technology;
3) Non-Western efforts to promote student global engagement; and
4) Efforts to conceptualize, teach, and assess global engagement at all levels—assignments, courses, programs, campuses, and systems.

Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

• Theories, conceptualization, and research related to global engagement and/or globally competent citizenship;
• Best practices in study abroad and/or international service-learning;
• Using communications technology to promote global engagement;
• Examples of innovation efforts to promote global engagement among faculty members, programs, or campuses;
• Innovative teaching and learning activities to promote globally competent citizenship;
• Assessing global engagement; or
• Integrating AASCU’s Global Engagement initiative in curricular or co-curricular options.

How to Submit:

Deadline to submit is July 15, 2014 (earlier submissions appreciated) and should follow the format outlined on the eJournal website.
Download the complete Call for Submissions here.