Learning circles fit well in the academic space as it helps students to learn collaborative skills that essential in their careers.  Here we profile learning circles used with students who are preparing for their learning abroad experience.  The action research learning circles also involve university students at Pepperdine School of Education and Psychology,  but since they are mid-career students, we list them as action researchers on the menu on the left.

 The Global Conversation course is meant to help students develop a better understanding of the environmental problems associated with economic globalization and thus to prepare them for active participation as citizens engaged in a “global conversation” in a civil society that is also global in its scope.  Increasing numbers of experts agree that the problems we face as a species are massive and only by understanding them within a global context, will we be able to find the solutions necessary for viable human habitation of the planet to continue.

• The Global Conversation has been taught since Fall 2007 by Dr. James Skelly, Visiting Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland

• Since then, students from nearly 50 US colleges and universities, as well as institutions throughout the world, have participated in “the conversation."