.. editorial welcome mountain hiking Action Week, 1st yrs .. alumni pillows Metchosin Day International Affairs alumni, Active Citizenship ToK graduation, 2nd yrs ice cream for a cause
	Global Citizenship: The Course by Leah Macfadyen (year 14) Research Associate Skylight (Science Centre for Learning and Teaching), UBC Faculty of Science Last week I went to see the film "The Constant Gardener" whose plot revolves around a woman's discovery that a major pharmaceutical company is testing lethal new drugs on the very poor of Kenya. I left the theatre angry - because although fiction, the plot is based on truth. And while I stomped, angry, along the street, I remembered my various UBC colleagues who expressed nervousness that my (our) new course "Introduction to Global Citizenship" would be 'too depressing,' because of all the problematic issues it describes, the lack of easy answers. And I thought,"THIS is what I want my students to feel at the end of the semester. I WANT them to be angry!" Angry enough to do something. Yesterday, I attended a lecture called "The meanings of global citizenship" by Professor Michael Byers of UBC's Liu Institute for Global Issues. (The text of his lecture shouldbe available this week at http://www.thetyee.ca). He correctly characterized what many of us already know: that universities like UBC attract top students and offer them good academic education - but largely fail to motivate these very privileged students to become change agents in the world. Perhaps, he joked "Vancouver is a city that is too beautiful to be smart," allowing its residents (and students) to slip into an easy good life and become apathetic about global problems. Preparing Students to be Global Citizens To be fair, the wish to inspire UBC student to greater global awareness has prompted a number of new "Global Citizenship" projects at the university in the last few years. President Martha Piper redrafted UBC's new mission and vision in recent years to read, "The University of British Columbia, aspiring to be one of the world's best universities, will prepare students to become exceptional global citizens, promote the values of a civil and sustainable society." (Sound familiar?) The problem, of course, is how to DO that in the context of a large research university...especially when few people agree on what "global citizenship" means, anyway, and students and faculty are consumed in their research work and study for increasingly specialized degrees. The Office of UBC International has responded to this challenge by committing UBC to a collaboration with four partner universities in the creation of a new "Certificate in Global Issues" - a group of full credit courses open to students in any discipline. What fell to me (I imagine the task finally reaching me, after bouncing around the university a bit like a ball in a pinball machine) was the creation of the core course: Introduction to Global Citizenship. To tell the truth, the task at first seemed overwhelming: the course was to be fully online, so that students from UBC, the University of Melbourne (Australia), the University of Auckland (New Zealand), the University of Nottingham (England) and Hong Kong University could all participate in it together. It was to be equivalent to a full-semester 'credit' course in terms of rigour and workload. It was to be interdisciplinary, and accessible to students in any discipline, so could not assume in-depth prior learning in any of the topics covered. Oh, and yes, no one could actually tell me what "global citizenship" meant... Involving UWC Alumni I've searched around for the right verb to describe my role in bringing this course together, and have finally settled on telling people that I "imagined" it. I certainly didn't do it on my own, and it wouldn't have happened at all without help from the UWC graduate network. I can hardly believe what an incredibly rich resource network we have at our fingertips. In June 2004, in haste, I sent email messages to the UWC email lists asking:					No course could be more naturally a product of the United World Colleges than the one that Leah Macfadyen (year 14) has "invented" and is now teaching on-line through the University of British Columbia. The initial ideas were developed in large part through interaction with UWC alumni, and finally four of the course modules were written by alumni with relevant expertise. Leah explains in this article the purpose and evolution of the course on Active Citizenship. "I feel very lucky: lucky to be able to wade into such a wild and wonderful interdisciplinary course, and lucky to be able to develop and teach a course that is trying to combine academic and theoretical content with discussions of ethics and personal responsibility...and with what some people call 'transformative learning,' that is, Pearson College type learning that seeks to change the way a student understands their role in the world."
						The course is 12 weeks long, and is structured as follows: Modules 1-2: Citizenship and “Globalness” The first two modules introduce and explore foundational concepts for any study of 'Global Citizenship'. Who is a citizen? What does 'citizenship' imply? Importantly, module 2 asks: 'Is it possible to be a global citizen?', and explores the real possibilities for a global perspective or ethics. Modules 3-6: Challenges to Global Citizenship Modules 3- 6 examine key challenges to global citizenship: intercultural communication challenges; the challenges of being informed in the face of media influence; social divisions of race, ethnicity, and culture; and finally, the challenge of redefining previous notions of nation and state to recognize diversity and multiculturalism. Modules 7-11: World Issues of Concern to Global Citizens The modules on world issues consider a number of fundamental questions that are of great significance to the international community: the requirements for a healthy society, wealth and poverty, consumerism, human impact on the environment, and sustainability. Module 12: Options for Participation and Action While discussions and assignment in modules 1-11 consider challenges and responsibilities, module 12 explicitly focusses on 'Politics, Participation and Civil Society.'
	"In your opinion, what are the most important content areas that students should be asked to think about in a course on global citizenship?" More than forty people responded, from around the world, with suggestions regarding topic areas, scope, assignments, activities, philosophy - and from this I was able to imagine and draft the outline of a course. Early this year, when I was still looking for indivdiduals to contribute specialized content modules to the course, I emailed the lists again, looking for people who might be interested in participating. I was deluged with responses - more than 30 people (and their friends!) wrote to offer their skills. Ultimately, four of the twelve course modules were written by UWC graduates: Heidi Hoernig (PC89) drafted a module on "multiculturalism and diversity"; Julian Lee (AC96-98) wrote a module on "nationalism"' Stephanie Lepsoe (PC01) created a great module on "Sustainability", and I myself drafted module one "An ethics of Global Citizenship." The last module "Options for Action," also has a UWC connection - the author, Dr Helen Yanacopulos of the UK's Open University, learned of the project and my "call for help" from a UWC graduate friend. Getting the course together over this summer was a real race - a reviewer panel (including Jane Johnston of Pearson College) helped me smooth the content and hook it all together to make a coherent course, and my wonderful online course designer turned the plain text into an online course at top speed through August, to meet UBC's promise that the course would be ready in Spetmber. Through it all, we fretted and worried about whether students would hear of it, and whether any would sign up. To my astonishment, by late August, registration was beyond capacity and the university decided to open a second section and hire more instructors. So, now we are in the thick of it, busy working online with students from UBC, Hong Kong and Melbourne. As I had hoped, they come from many disciplines: Commerce, Science, Law, Arts, Resource Management, Computer Science Communications. I feel very lucky: lucky to be able to wade into such a wild and wonderful interdisciplinary course, and lucky to be able to develop and teach a course that is trying to combine academic and theoretical content with discussions of ethics and personal responsibility...and with what some people call "transformative learning," that is, Pearson College type learning that seeks to change the way a student understands their role in the world. Leah P. Macfadyen, Research Associate Skylight (Science Centre for Learning and Teaching), UBC Faculty of Science #A150 6221 University Boulevard, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z1, Canada Tel: 1-604-827-3001; Fax: 1-604-822 4282 http://leahmac.notlong.com NEXT: INTO THE MOUNTAINS, HIKING