Global Community Projects Do you ever collaborate with regional or international partners on curricular objectives? Do your students ever participate in service learning? Are you curious about how to implement global citizenship, internationalization, or cultural competencies? Do you want your students to give back to the global community? Have you ever considered global community projects?
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Global community projects are an exciting way to infuse global citizenship into your curriculum. They stem from theories on service learning and social constructivism. Students work locally on a project that impacts the planet as a whole. Ideally, students would partner with other students around the globe to work on similar local initiatives. Projects can be humanitarian, environmental, artistic, or educational; the sky is the limit.
Variations Service Learning. There are many variations of global community projects. Hot trends in education right now include community involvement, global citizenship, and interdisciplinary studies. These all stem out of social constructivism and social learning theories from the ideas of Vygotsky around peer collaboration and problem-solving. Learning that has purpose, that gives back to the local or global community has meaning. It is real world and authentic. In particular, community-based learning supports international students and interculturalism (Diaz-Rico, 2012).
Examples Use your imagination. What could your students do for a global community project? What would be an appropriate project for your students? Only you know what would be authentic to your field of study, your curriculum, and your students. To get started, consider these ideas: Visual Arts •Cultural mosaic •Urban photo gallery •Play performance •World music documentary Health & Community Studies •Survey or questionnaire •Health awareness wiki •Online charity auction •Social media ribbon campaign Science & Technology •3D landscape maps •Water quality wiki •Tree planting initiative •Habitat for Humanity project 211
Business Administration •Marketing campaign •Leadership web conference •eFundraising project •Venture capitalist pitch Humanities & Social Sciences •ePostcard campaign •Anthology wiki •Online charity raffle •Historical documentary
Merits “Think globally, act locally” (author unknown). In our globalized world, we need to consider how each and every action we make impacts the entire planet. As students engage in global citizenship, community involvement, and civic engagement, they learn about their world through multiple lenses. If we connect service learning to curricular goals, it bridges theory and practice. When we engage with our global neighbours, we can learn so much about our ability to influence our world for the better. Global Citizenship. Critical global citizenship requires self-reflection and critical thinking of our impact on our world through many lenses including language and literacy, culture, faith, gender, and race (Eidoo et al, 2011) as well as the environment, politics, colonialism, the economy, human rights, terrorism, justice, conflict, the media, and so on (Davies, 2006). We can advocate for global awareness through engagement with other cultures with contemporary digital communication and collaboration tools. Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire suggests sending our old computers to developing countries and just talking with the youth on Skype about their worlds (personal communication, November 10, 2009). Community Involvement. Engagement goes up when students participate in cooperative community projects (Rocconi, 2011). Communities also benefit from student service learning projects. For example, when University of Pennsylvania students, from five different disciplines, participated in an urban nutrition initiative targeting obesity, at risk school age children showed greater self-esteem. They also consumed more fruits (up 68% from 39%) and vegetables (up 38% from 13%) (Johnston, Harkavy, Barg, Gerber, & Rulf, 2004). Building communities of practice benefits local and global populations.
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Civic Engagement. Service Learning fosters civic responsibility, team work, community benefits, critical thinking (Yu, 2011). It meets a community need and develops civics and communication skills (Yu 2011). When professors connect service experiences with academic objectives it closes the gap between theory and practice. Students form insights, solve problems, and build confidence as the reflect on their service experiences (Bleicher & Correia, 2011).
Challenges It is all too easy to confuse global citizenship with foreign aid. In a global community project, student groups from around the world contribute to the project from their perspective. It is in this way that students learn from each other. The project may impact locally or globally; it may even be for a charitable cause. One key challenge is obviously the boundaries between nations such as distance, time zones, digital divide, political strife, and language. Reciprocity. Bear in mind that global citizenship goes beyond charity (Eidoo, Ingram, MacDonald, Nabavi, Pashby, & Stille, 2011). There should be reciprocity, not paternalism. Rather than simply helping others, we should involve others in the process of meeting their own futures (Keith, 2005). Consider if there are meaningful interdisciplinary opportunities for several academic programs across several nations to work on various aspects of a global project from a local lens. Collaboration. There are many obstacles to connect students around the world. First, there is the time to form partnerships. Second, there is the technologies to connect like email, wikis, web conferencing, and social media; from country to country, shareware and social media are not necessarily the same, supported, or safe depending on the political state of the region. Third, language and customs may be different requiring students to communicate creatively. Despite these barriers, a well-designed global project can be extremely rewarding for students.
Instructional Design Use a backwards design approach. First, start with your learning outcomes. Second, create your assessments. Third, plan your instructional activities. Finally, choose a technology to enhance the lesson. Design. Consider your curriculum; look carefully at your accreditation standards, graduate attributes, program learning outcomes, course learning outcomes, and lesson learning 213
outcomes. Will a global community project fulfill the learning outcomes? How will you prepare students for a global community project? What technologies will you and your students need to learn in order to connect with global partners? Will global service learning enhance the learning experience? Develop. Browse the Internet for collaborative community projects online. iEarn, the International Education and Resource Network, has a collaboration center that connects students from around the world to collaborate on community projects. GlobalSchoolNet has an online project registry for global community projects and ePals has a feature to find a project by age, region, type, duration, and collaboration. UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, has global school projects across five sectors: Education, Natural Sciences, Social and Human Sciences, Culture, Communication and Information. Likewise, AIESEC, the Association internationale des ĂŠtudiants en sciences ĂŠconomiques et commerciales, has global leadership projects with industry partners for university students. Consider starting your own community project such as a fundraiser for a non-profit organization or an e-marketing campaign for a community event. Charity Village has resources on all kinds of registered charities by geographical region; Twibbon provides a digital ribbon for use in social media campaigns! Students might use their global community project towards their co-curricular record (CCR). Plan the project steps using the projectbased learning model of six steps: 1.State the Essential Question 2.Plan the Project 3.Create the Schedule 4.Monitor Student Progress 5.Assess the Learning Outcome 6.Evaluate the Experience (Edutopia, 2007) Deliver. Decide what students will do before, during, and after the project. Before the project, students might read an article, listen to a podcast, or watch a video. During the project, students may correspond and collaborate with their global partners on assigned tasks. After the project, students might reflect through a paper, presentation, or podcast. The project should be authentic, active, and applied.
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Technology To work with local and global community partners, one can use web-based shareware to collaborate. We can use email, open source discussion forums, or a learning management system (LMS); better yet, we can use tele, web, or video conferencing to communicate live. We can use emails, chats, wikis, blogs, journals, podcasts, and videos. We can create and share project work with Google Docs, Zoho Docs, or Dropbox. Additionally, we can use social media sites to meet, share, and post resources.
References Bleicher, R.E. & Correia, M.G. (2011). Using a “small moments” writing strategy to help undergraduate students reflect on their service-learning experiences. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 15(4), p.27. Davies, L. (2006). Global citizenship: Abstraction or framework for action? Educational Review, 58(1), p.5-25. Diaz-Rico, L. (2012). Strategies for teaching English learners. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Edutopia. (2007). How does project-based learning work. The George Lucas Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning-guide-implementation Eidoo, S., Ingram, L., MacDonald, A., Nabavi, M., Pashby, K., & Stille, S. (2011). “Through the kaleidoscope”: Intersections between theoretical perspectives and classroom implications in critical global citizenship education. Canadian Journal of Education, 34(4), p.59-84. Johnston, F.E., Harkavy, I., Barg, F., Gerber, D., & Rulf, J. (2004). The urban nutrition initiative: Bringing academically-based community service to the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Anthropology. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 10(3), p.100-106. Keith, N. Z. (2005). Community service learning in the face of globalization: Rethinking theory and practice. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 11(2), p.5-24. Rocconi, L.M. (2011). The impact of communities on first year students’ growth and development in college. Research in Higher Education, 52(2), p.178-193.
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Yu, D.D. (2011). Achieving service-learning goals in a financial accounting class project. New Horizons in Education, 59(1), p.95-105.
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