Global Course Connections “connects” courses offered on Alliance campuses in different countries giving the courses an international dimension that provides different cultural lens and enriches course content to develop a range of intercultural skills, including practicing deep listening, increasing awareness of others and one’s own cultural self-awareness, connecting across difference in a respectful manner, developing empathy, and discovering similarities, especially with people who on the surface seem quite different.
There will be 15 Globally Connected Courses in 2023-24 involving 18 Alliance schools. Faculty offering a connected course are invited to a workshop to work with their course partner on the design of their connection. There were 19 faculty members from 14 Alliance schools at the 2023 Global Course Connections workshop held at Antioch College July 31 – August 3, 2023.
The workshop was facilitated by Deirdre Johnston (Hope College) and Irene López (Kenyon College), who co-edited The Wiley Handbook of Collaborative Online Learning and Global Engagement.
Workshop sessions included:
- Introduction to Global Course Connections
- Understanding Institutional Culture
- Identifying Global Learning Outcomes
- Developing Shared Course Content & Learning Objectives
- Creating High Impact GCCs
- Creative Pedagogies
- Developing Global Competency
- Facilitating Cultural Interactions
- Addressing the Logistics of GCCs
- Assessing your GCC
Between sessions, faculty pairs had time to apply insights from the session to the design of their course connection with the goal that the connection design would be almost complete by the time the workshop concluded.
Workshop participants visited Young’s Jersey Dairy to enjoy ice cream and a round of (very competitive) putt-putt golf, and some had a tour of Antioch College’s Glen Helen Nature Preserve.
The call for courses for 2024-25 will go out early in 2024. The dates and location for the 2024 Global Course Connections workshop have not been announced.
