Mobility Without Border Crossing

Helping Students Gain Cosmopolitan Dispositions During Their Higher Education Studies

Higher education students need to be prepared for global lives. Mobility is one response but 99.4 per cent of higher education students do not experience it. This calls for alternatives to physical mobility which enable students to gain relevant skills and knowledge. Drawing on cosmopolitan literature this paper identifies the skills and attributes which students need as mindfulness, compassion, openness and criticality, together comprising a cosmopolitan disposition. One way to achieve this is through connectivist pedagogies, leveraging online media and applications to bring students together across countries. Examples demonstrate that a number of key principles need to be kept in mind in their design and implementation in order to help students gain optimal outcomes.