The Wiley Handbook of Collaborative Online Learning and Global Engagement

17 Making Global Course Connections an Institutional Priority

Deirdre Johnston¹ and Irene López²

¹ Hope College, USA

² Kenyon College, USA

Making Global Course Connections an Institutional Priority

If global learning is as essential to students’ professional and personal success as we claim, inclusive excellence in teaching requires that global learning must be available to all. Yet, there are few opportunities across our curricula to consistently engage in global learning. How do we get widespread buy-in across all divisions of the academy and across all disciplines? And, in particular, how do we promote the integration of globally-connected courses within STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math), as these are often under-represented disciplines in global learning initiatives? In what follows, we delineate various ways institutions can make globally-connected courses a more integral part of their mission and on-campus curricula.

Defining Global Learning for Our Campus Communities

In promoting global education, we must also understand that what constitutes global learning is changing. For example, many international education offices across higher education have gone through recent name changes to become centers for “global learning” and “global engagement,” reflecting the realization that the boundaries of nation-states are porous and often don’t reflect how many citizens and non-citizens living within nation-states self-identify. There are multiple cultures ...