Global Learning: Defining, Designing, Demonstrating

This joint publication of NAFSA and the Association of American Colleges and Universities provides a definition and rationale for "global learning," a term widely used but with differing meanings across higher education. This publication is organized into three sections, which correspond with three important and closely related steps that campus leaders are taking across the country and around the world to achieve global learning:

• defining global learning
• designing educational experiences
• demonstrating the global learning outcomes achieved

The last section also explores how to create projects and assignments that allow students to demonstrate competencies—i.e., to prove that they can apply the knowledge, skills, and perspectives that signify their development as global learners.

These steps constitute an approach that might be described as 3-D Global Learning, a reference not only to the three Ds described above but also to the multidimensional maps that colleges and universities are creating to guide their global learning efforts.