In the 21st century higher education faces a number of challenges: We need to prepare students
for the complexities of a highly interconnected world so that they can act as responsible
citizens within a global society as change agents. Transnational collaboration projects offer
unique opportunities for their education. They prepare students to work towards social change
across cultural and geographical boundaries and to move beyond the distinction between global
and local. Merging global and local means merging local learning engagement and impact with
global communication collaboration and knowledge production. The mix of global and local-
glocal- characterizes our approach to transnational collaboration and our teaching and learning
model. We introduce a glocal curriculum that aims to foster education in fields as diverse as
higher education for sustainable development e.g. global health the humanities philosophy.
The glocal curriculum is based on experiences from the Global Classroom: Liberal Arts Education
in the 21st Century a teaching and research project of Leuphana University Lüneburg (Germany)
and Arizona State University (USA). In this Handbook we present resources and reflections that
we developed to support the education of change agents who are willing to critically and
creatively contribute to sustainability transformations. The book covers three different stages
from (i) envisioning the glocal curriculum and its design to (ii) implementing and evaluating
the glocal curriculum and program to (iii) designing the glocal teaching-learning environment.
Using a workshop approach the Handbook provides valuable guidance for strategic university
development curriculum and program developers quality managers teachers and instructors who
are interested in innovative approaches that allow the development of critical and
transformative mindsets knowledge and skills in order to address the sustainability problems
of the 21st century.
