Global classrooms

Breaking boundaries

Improving communication

The Global Classroom was a project between Arizona State University and Leuphana University in Lüneburg, Germany. The Center for Biology and Society partnered with the School of Sustainability to create an exciting learning experiment that aims to develop a model for Liberal Arts Education. Video Technology (an ASU partner), Google Hangouts, and Adobe Connect allowed students in Germany and the US to meet for class and effectively communicate across the ocean. In the Fall, Leupahna students would visit ASU for two weeks, and in the Spring ASU would visit Leuphana for two weeks.

Read more

In ASU news

ASU launches global classroom, challenges traditional learning

Arizona State University, in coordination with Leuphana University in Germany, has launched an educational pilot project that will lay the groundwork for an intensive institutional collaboration in undergraduate education.

Read more

Classroom lessons go global at ASU through technology

Classroom walls have come down throughout Arizona State University, as biology students discuss sustainability with classmates in Germany, art students share artworks with peers in Taiwan and a genetics class gets front-row seats in a laboratory across campus.

Read more

In CBS news

Global Classroom Welcomes Second Cohort from Germany

On Monday September 8, 2014 Provost Robert Page, Sander van der Leeuw, former-dean of the School of Sustainability and Manfred Laubichler, Director of the Global Classroom, will welcome the second cohort of students from Leuphana University (Germany) working in the Global Classroom.

The Global Classroom is a joint grant between Leuphana University and Arizona State University.  Students and faculty participating the activities of the grant are priviledged to have airfare and housing costs covered by the grant.  The Mercator Foundation which funds the grant felt it essential to create a pathway for student and faculty participation with the least amount of barriers to encourage as many students as possible to apply for this ground breaking initiative. 

The Global Classroom is a three semester long course which uses videoconferencing to bring together two classrooms, worlds apart, into the collaborative learning environment of the Global Classroom. The ASU-Leuphana classroom experiment seeks to revolutionize the way large universities deliver a quality liberal arts education emphasizing intercultural collaboration, interdisciplinarity, team and research-based learning.

After a semester working at a distance, in September the Leuphana students will interact with their ASU colleagues in person and create transnational research teams that will develop innovative and transdisciplinary research projects dealing with the topic of urban sustainability. During the two week visit, the teams of students will also travel across the many and varied urban landscapes that Arizona has to offer.

The first order of business will be to give the visiting students a first hand experience of what a desert city has to offer as well as what the main sustainability challenges that it faces. Visits will include the utopian, urban scenarios of Arcosanti; the functional aesthetics of Frank Lloyd Wright; the Sustainability projects in the Gateway district; the Biosphere and the artists’ district of Roosevelt Raw in Downtown Phoenix.

The Center for Biology and Society is looking forward to hosting the students and instructors from Leuphana University!

Global Classroom student and faculty funding is processed through the Center for Biology and Society at Arizona State University. Lodging in Tempe, AZ for the Leuphana participants September 2014 will be at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel with additional lodging provided in Flagstaff at the Grand Canyon Hostel, Hampton Inn, and the Drury Inn & Suites.  

Lodging in Luneburg, Germany for the Arizona State University participants May 2015 will be at the DJH Youth Hostel near Leuphana University.