Global Cultural Awareness Details & Potential Projects

Global Cultural Awareness is the most commonly certified instructor-driven HIP at Motlow. 

The coordinator for this HIP is Liala Syler. For more info, email her at [email protected]  

TBR's minimum definition for GCA is: Global and cultural awareness courses are credit-bearing experiences in which students learn how to communicate across cultures while developing an understanding of global interdependence and how it is influenced by culture – understood as the values, beliefs, practices, traditions, heritage, rituals, and behaviors held by groups of people. These courses will provide tools to increase students’ critical analysis of the global and intercultural nature of society and practice ethical reasoning to successfully navigate this world.

TBR does require some sort of reflection assignment to be completed by the students in HIPs certified courses to assess student perceptions on how the HIP enhances their learning experience. The reflection can be woven into an assignment during the semester or as part of a post-test at the end of the semester. The ARC coordinator for this HIP will reach out to faculty members gather assessment info before the course is certified again. If faculty members plan to make changes to the course, they should make the coordinators aware of this to ensure that the course still meets the HIPs minimum definition.

If you are interested in certifying your courses for the Global Cultural Awareness HIP, submit your application through Curriculog following the guidelines found here. In your application, be sure to give a detailed explanation of how the material, assignments, and/or projects meet the GCA minimum definition. 

Global Cultural Awareness Repository of Ideas:

• Research project that asks students to examine aspects of culture (marriage, kinship, gender, politics, etc.) from a culture that is not their own.
• Multiple discussion assignments in which students participate in a dialog about cultural practices (marriage customs, gender roles, contemporary social problems, etc.) and addressing them in terms of anthropological techniques.
• Multiple discussion boards spread through the semester which ask students to apply knowledge of global cultural events and concepts.
• A mid-term exam which asks students to identify cross-cultural similarities and differences within the cultural contexts of the class readings regarding such topics as the inevitability of death, the “explanatory function” of literature and religion, the Great Flood in multiple literary texts, and the “trickster” trope found in Popol Vuh but also in the figure of Odysseus in Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey.
• Utilizing “Reacting to the Past” throughout the semester to provide students with an intense look into a culture or various culture's beliefs, values and behaviors through specific historic scenarios and games.
• Research project in which students choose a terrorist organization (current or past) for analysis.
• Integrating discussion of climate change, gender equality, human rights issues, racial disparities, etc. into biology courses with students showing their understanding of these concepts in discussion and test assignments.