About Global Learning at CCNMTL

CCNMTL's Global Learning Initiative begins with Columbia’s commitment to a new level of global engagement and marries it to the power of network technology, creating new opportunities for collaborations that enrich the University's educational programs.

Globalization is most often associated with the increasing economic and cultural dominance of a very narrow cast of commercial interests and individuals. The ubiquity of American fast food, music, and movies are the most obvious symbols; meanwhile, the environmental repercussions of unregulated globalization are intensifying. Digital technologies are among the most important tools used to enhance and consolidate the power of the few. In the teaching and learning arena, the use of these technologies most often follows a commercial logic where the primary interest is to increase revenue by extending one institution's reach and access to additional students. The most creative, imaginative and transformative potentialities of these technologies have, heretofore, mostly remained untapped.

At the same time research universities, Columbia among them, have committed themselves to a new level of global engagement. This commitment has taken the form of creating more courses, programs of study, satellites of the university in other countries, research institutes, and events focused on global issues. Meanwhile, advances in networked communications are giving rise to new possibilities for teaching and learning.

CCNMTL's Global Learning projects are active demonstrations of distributed learning that mobilize the power of a diverse set of learners in different locations who can explore the multidisciplinary problems of our interconnected world. Instead of seeing distance as a barrier, these projects embrace diversity of location and culture to inform and enrich both individual and collective educational experience. Global Learning projects also have as their goal the development of new professional cultures and/or communities of practice. Areas of human concern such as health, the environment, education, and economic development become the natural subjects of the initiative.

Common Features of Global Learning Projects
Global Learning projects will share many of the following features:
* geographically disparate body of participants (faculty and students)
* emphasis on the value of local voices/experience
* collaborative work spaces and networked communications
* locally informed investigations or assignments
* common resource bank/library
* shared calendar of events or syllabus

Global Learning Project Criteria
We expect Global Learning projects to meet most of the following criteria:
* The project should include a geographically disparate body of participants (faculty and students), preferably including under-represented or under-served populations abroad.
* The project should have an emphasis on the inclusion of local voices, experiences, or expertise at the various participant sites in order to foster positive local change.
* The project should promote multi-directional flows of information among participating sites in order to work against traditional hierarchical patterns.
* Participants should be working together across distance on locally informed investigations or assignments.

**Faculty interested in learning more about the Global Learning Initiative or applying for a Global Learning project should email an inquiry to ccnmtl-globallearning@columbia.edu