New team-taught classes provide global perspective

By Deborah O’Neil

The assignment: Devise a way to use technology, like the iPhone, to help Haiti rebuild.

Three teams of students, each led by a professor, gathered to brainstorm. Lively and thoughtful discussions centered on the need for coordinated communication in the relief effort, the limitations and potential of Haiti’s infrastructure, and the ways technology could have a positive and negative impact on Haitian life.

This is Global Learning for Global Citizenship in the classroom – interactive, problem-based, team taught. Global Learning for Global Citizenship is FIU’s bold new initiative to help undergraduates develop knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to become globally engaged citizens.

FIU piloted the first new Global Learning course in Spring 2010, “How We Know What We Know,” taught by professor Fred Blevens of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, English instructor Ben Lauren and FIU librarian George Pearson. The class aims to help students develop information literacy. Students had high praise for the Global Learning approach.

“I think it is great,” said Julian Pinheiro, a junior majoring in mass communication. “It’s opened my eyes more. Hopefully, FIU will do more things that have more interaction.”

The course is one of six Global Learning core classes that will be offered to new freshmen beginning this fall. Undergraduates will be required to take one core class and then a second Global Learning course within their major. The other core classes include:

Loosening Cultural Comfort, Gaining Global Perspective, co-taught by professors from history, global and socio-cultural studies and religious studies, will teach students how to understand the perspective of others and how to critique their own perspective.

Artistic Expression in a Global Society, co-taught by professors of music, art and speech communication, will provide students with an appreciation of language, music, and art, as well as the global dynamics that influence them.

Global Supply Chain and Logistics: Business, Technical and Legal Issues, co-taught by business and engineering professors, will explore issues surrounding international business and trade.

International Issues on Public Health and Nutrition, co-taught by professors in public health and environmental studies, will teach students about the impact of public health and nutrition on economic development and political stability in the world.

Our Coastal Environment from the Bay to the World, co-taught by professors from biology, international relations and global and socio-cultural studies, will explore the relationship between humans and the environment.

Rather than emphasizing what professors are teaching, Global Learning is concerned with what students are learning. As a result, the Global Learning curriculum is structured around dialogue, group interaction and problem solving.

Blevens says the approach worked in his pilot class. For each class, students had an assigned reading on a timely subject. After the professors talked about the reading with students, the class broke into small groups for team activities that build on the reading. There is no textbook and there are no tests.

“Everything is different,” Blevens said. “What we are bringing to the class is stuff we tried before, but it is being presented in a whole different way and it is being received in a whole different way.”

Junior communication major Rebeca Garcia says the class gave her greater awareness about what she sees and hears. “We understand it more and we’re learning how to apply it to our every day lives. We get to talk to people more and communicate and exchange ideas.”