En Español»

:: Objective

• Are you interested in teaching global issues to college students?
• Do you want to expand your professional networks in other countries?
• Could your students benefit from learning in an international community?

The AAG Center for Global Geography Education (CGGE) provides open access to an online collection of undergraduate course modules examining important social, economic, and environmental issues.  CGGE modules are designed to improve the learning and appreciation of geography by connecting students worldwide and engaging them in international collaboration and dialogue -- all through the Internet.

• Download the Phase 2 Annual Report, Year 1 [PDF, 517KB]

:: Modules

The Phase 1 Nationalism, Populations, and Global Economy modules are still accessible at the links below. We are currently revising these materials and will introduce an entirely new structure for the Phase 2 project modules. Each module can be downloaded as a Blackboard™ course or viewed online using the links below. You can also download all of the CGGE Phase 1 Module Masters (file downloads as a compressed .zip). Consult your local Blackboard or university support site for technical assistance. The modules are optimized for Internet Explorer.
Module 01 POPULATION - Blackboard Course - Website - Instructor's Guide (pdf) Written by Osvaldo Muniz (University of La Serena), David Padgett (Tennessee State University), Michael Solem (AAG), and Waverly Ray (Texas State University).
Module 02 GLOBAL ECONOMY - Blackboard Course - Website - Instructor's Guide (pdf) Written by Martin Eaton (University of Ulster), Jean-Paul Rodrigue (Hofstra University), Michael Solem (AAG), and Alexis Buckley (Texas State University).
Module 03 NATIONALISM - Blackboard Course - Website - Instructor's Guide (pdf) Written by Antonio Luna (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Janet Smith (Shippensburg University), Michael Solem (AAG), and Waverly Ray (Texas State University).

CGGE Phase 2 will revise the library of instructional modules created under the first phase (Nationalism, Global Economy, and Population) while also developing three new titles: Water Resources, Migration, and Global Climate Change. This work will be informed by an extensive evaluation study that assessed the effectiveness of the first set of CGGE modules during classroom trials between September 2004 and May 2005. The evaluation identified several instances of how the modules could be improved to enhance student learning of international perspectives (you can access the CGGE Phase 1 project evaluation (.zip) report with appended data and research instruments).

In Phase 2, the CGGE modules will be redesigned to provide greater flexibility for undergraduate instruction.  Each will include a 5,000-word Conceptual Framework that establishes the global geographic significance of the issue explored by the module; several Case Studies illustrating regional and national dimensions of the issue; and a set of Activities that use the Moodle e-learning platform to support international learning collaborations among undergraduate geography students.

The modules will be published online in English, Spanish, and Chinese, with additional language support as the project develops over the coming years.  To preview the Moodle sites for the Phase 2 modules, please sign in as a guest at http://courses.aag.org.

:: Participation

Details about how to get involved in CGGE Phase 2 will be posted here in the coming months.   We will also support an electronic contact list for the project.   To become added to this list (it’s free!), contact Michael Solem (msolem@aag.org).

The CGGE Phase 1 modules were extensively tested by geography faculty in classroom trials involving over 500 students in ten separate countries. Evidence from these trials indicates the modules can successfully improve student learning of global geography, awareness of global issues, and appreciation for international perspectives.

Read more about the project's activities from 2003 - 2005 (pdf), and click here to view photos of some of the faculty and student participants.

Upcoming Presentations and Workshops

CGGE Phase 2 will sponsor a workshop at the 2009 AAG Annual Meeting in Las Vegas.  For details and to register, please visit the workshop page at www.aag.org/annualmeeting.

Workshops are also held at international meetings.   Recently, CGGE Phase sponsored workshops at the IGU Congress in Tunisia (August 2008) and the HERODOT Liverpool Conference (September 2008).   Information about future workshops will be posted here in the coming months.

Future workshops will be based on a model, “Expanding Geography Education Networks in the Americas,” held 19-21 May, 2007 immediately prior to the Geography in the Americas conference in La Serena, Chile. Funded by a $48,578 grant from the National Science Foundation, the workshop was designed to foster online collaborations among geography faculty and students in the United States and Latin America.

The workshop was attended by 30 undergraduate students, graduate students, and professors from U.S. and Latin American geography programs and organizations. Over the three days, the participants worked in small groups corresponding to the CGGE online course modules (global economy, nationalism, and population). Each group engaged in exercises illustrating processes of international collaboration, intercultural communication, and designing inquiry-based student activities. With this preparation, the groups proceeded to develop new lessons for the CGGE modules focusing on issues, data, and case studies in the U.S. and Latin America. The case studies and activities developed by the participants will be published in the Phase 2 modules.

View the workshop participants in action in the photo gallery»

The “Expanding Geography Education Networks in the Americas” workshop was organized by Michael Solem (AAG) and featured presentations by Phil Klein (University of Northern Colorado), Osvaldo Muñiz (Texas State University-San Marcos), Jan Smith (Shippensburg University), and Waverly Ray (MiraCosta College).

:: Project Staff