Educating global citizens means a change of a mind.

The university's first mission is to shape the human capital through education. The second is to produce new knowledge though research. Engaging with needs of society and market demands by linking university activities to their own socioeconomic context is its third mission. One of the ways to fulfil the university third mission is through forming graduates into global citizens.

1. Are your university graduates able and motivated to act as globally responsible citizens and leaders in their academic discipline or profession?
2. Have your university graduates developed critical and creative mindsets?
3. Are your university graduates able to design novel solutions to emerging challenges, local and global? 

Globalisation goes on in both physical and virtual spaces, reinforcing the need for adaptable, flexible, resilient and innovative graduates in the society.

The pressure on higher education to deliver graduates who find their way in the complexities of the world today has increased; universities are beginning to accept this challenge.

Moreover, the global occurences of armed conflicts, with a glaring example of the war in Ukraine, demand that graduates are also culturally agile so they can both prevent future conflicts and help alleviate the current ones.

Gaining intercultural competence means going through a complex process.

Students and later graduates need the ability to interact effectively and appropriately with people speaking other languages and from different cultural backgrounds. This ability is called Intercultural Competence (ICC).

Our society is globally interconnected and it requires its members to foster effective, positive relationships which cross cultural boundaries. ICC helps in this process.

In the academic setting, ICC development is possible through an intentional process: goals must be set; teaching and learning practices must be reflected upon; language must be used appropriately; cultural awareness must be present. In the process, the attitude toward culture - one’s own and that of the other person - changes. The process takes time, both for the teachers and for the students.

Assisting students in becoming global citizens means becoming interculturally competent first.

Universities must educate global citizens for the world to thrive. Such institutions would want their academic teachers to identify and set learning goals with global competence already in mind. They would want these teachers to chart their own progress towards competence for teaching in a classroom, which is both international and local ("glocal"). Such universities would also welcome their teachers to take intercultural issues into consideration when design intended learning outcomes for the curriculum, the courses and the modules. Such scenario is a long term goal for many modernising universities.

In this course, however, we start from the beginning: with introducing academic teachers to intercultural competence and its relevance for their classroom.

To help your students achieve the learning outcomes you set out for them you need to understand them. Thus, you are learning the ICC concepts to become more engaged with the diverse, vibrant and progressive world of your students.

This class will help you achieve these goals in the shortest time possible.