Crisis as Opportunity: Reimagining Global Learning Pathways through New Virtual Collaborations and Open Access during COVID-19

In the spring of 2020, as COVID-19 forced the suspension of most U.S. education abroad programs, study abroad students returned home, summer programs were canceled, and international educators pondered the unlikelihood of resuming fall 2020 study abroad; larger questions about the future of international education and global learning with limited student mobility weighed heavily, two small liberal arts colleges in Pennsylvania, Haverford and Dickinson, and the membership of the Community-based Global Learning Collaborative started reimagining the future of global learning. What drove us was our collective commitment to building just, inclusive and sustainable communities, a spirit of collaboration and a desire to seek out future-forward and innovative opportunities for continued global learning. Around the world, xenophobia and nationalism were on the rise. One of the clearest continuous mechanisms for combating those horrors, student international mobility, would cease. It was clear that global educators had to do something, but what? This article is a case study about how we began to answer the question of what we could do. It follows the evolution of our thinking, emergent projects, lessons learned and new collaborative pathways.