Global Future(s) Curriculum Studio
In partnership with the Global Futures Initiative and the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship’s ITEL program, the Designing the Futures(s) initiative launched a first series of Global Future(s) Curriculum Studio projects in the fall 2015 semester.
A faculty cohort convened a series of meetings, workshops, and design sessions tailored to provide opportunities to explore new modes of teaching around topics with a global dimension. These academically rigorous and innovative curricular structures more deeply and effectively immersed students in creative and critical approaches to complex, interdisciplinary problems, and provided rich contexts to bridge theory and practice.
As part of the Studio, all of the projects intended to experiment with pedagogical practice and curricular structures, and to focus on themes of global significance. In addition, they were designed with the Magis Measures in mind, and engaged in the three key elements of a university outlined by President DeGioia: the formation of young people, inquiry and the creation of knowledge, and contribution to the public good.
Projects
Faculty Leads: Laurie King, Sherry Linkon, Brian McCabe
This interdisciplinary minor used project- and studio-based learning to help students build skills as researchers, activists, organizers, planners, and observers of city life while creating a vehicle for students to create meaningful change in Washington, D.C. and other cities nationally and internationally.
Engaging African Pentecostals Online
Faculty Lead: Alex Thurston
This project immersed students in high-impact research and digital learning to explore key questions about African Christianity, and global Christianity more broadly, from political and cultural perspectives.
Collaborative Environmental Research and Action
Faculty Lead: Dana Luciano
This project brought a multidisciplinary, humanities-based approach to bear on contemporary environmental crises, in part by asking students to engage representations of environmental catastrophe in literature, arts, and media.
Borders: An Online Course that Crosses Boundaries
Faculty Lead: Elizabeth Stephen
This project sought to develop the first online course offered in the School of Foreign Service during the academic year and took a multidisciplinary approach to explore the historical and modern forces that shape borders and their effect on the economic, social, and political fabric of countries.
Enhancing ITEL and Student-Centered Learning in Cultural Studies
Faculty Lead: Henry Schwarz
Built on the practices of studio-based design, mentored research, and project-based learning, this course asked students to develop independent research projects on the critical analysis of contemporary culture.
Enhancing Language Learning for the Professions with Computer-Mediated Communication and Focused Instruction
Faculty Leads: Joseph Cunningham and Anja Banchoff
This course allowed students to explore topics and themes relevant to professional language and culture in Germany and apply their knowledge routinely through online engagement with German professionals.
“What is Indigeneity?” Creating a Course and a Network
Faculty Leads: Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer and Bette Jacobs
This project advanced a network of scholars at Georgetown who studied indigenous peoples and created a flexible, project-based course that engaged students in mentored research to enhance their understanding of the multidisciplinary, practical, ethical, and human-rights synergies that come together under the rubric of indigenous studies.
Issues, Not Disciplines
Faculty Lead: Mark Giordano
This project developed an interdisciplinary course on biotechnology while exploring how the lessons from the experience can apply more broadly to curriculum development related to interdisciplinary issues, rather than disciplines across the university.