Global learning is a critical analysis of and engagement with complex, interdependent global systems and legacies (such as natural, physical, social, cultural, economic, and political) and their implications for people’s lives and the earth’s sustainability. Through global learning, students should (1) become informed, open-minded, and responsible people who are attentive to diversity across the spectrum of differences, (2) seek to understand how their actions affect both local and global communities, and (3) address the world’s most pressing and enduring issues collaboratively and equitably.

Global Learning VALUE Rubric, AAC&U, 2014

Global learning is a process that prepares students for active and collaborative learning through engagement with diversity and focuses on complex problems that transcend borders.  

Landorf, H. Doscher, S. & Hardrick, J., 2018

Global learning engages students in experiencing, rather than exposing to, difference. Global learning prepares students for careers locally and globally. Global learning can happen in a classroom, in a lab, on campus, in the local community, and abroad.  Global learning can happen in person or online. At JMU, we focus on global learning for all. 

• Integrating global learning objectives into a course taught on campus
• Engaging diverse and particularly international student voices and experiences into the learning process.
• Creating a course and study abroad experience with attention to intercultural learning, ethics of engagement with difference, and problem-solving.
• Engaging in service learning or other community-based projects that include ethical engagement with diverse populations.
• Integrating Global Virtual Exchange into an existing course.
• Intentionally planning student learning outcomes for study abroad and study away programs (e.g., what makes the course taught abroad different from teaching the same course on JMU campus?).
• Planning pre-departure, in-country, and post-travel teaching and learning that include opportunities for reflection, debriefing, and mentoring.
• Carefully designing interactions between JMU international and U.S. students that consider power imbalance related to English language and cultural knowledge.
• International internships that incorporate reflection about one’s learning process.

The Center for Global Engagement encourages JMU faculty and staff to consider applying for the Global Initiatives Grant (GIG), a funding opportunity to support global learning. 

JMU faculty, staff, and administrators are encouraged to use the Global Engagement Reporting Tool (GERT) form to inform the Center for Global Engagement about global engagement activities you have conducted within the past year.