CFR Education Presentation — 2025 College and University Educators Workshop
About College and University Educators Workshops
In this session, Caroline Netchvolodoff gives a presentation on CFR Education resources with CFR Higher Education Ambassadors Roni Kay M. O'Dell and Joseph W. Roberts.
The goal of the workshop is to find new ways for college and university educators to encourage their students to learn about international relations and the role of the United States in the world. It provides an opportunity for educators to explore the wide array of CFR and Foreign Affairs teaching and research resources available to the academic community, participate in substantive briefings with subject experts as well as in group discussions, and share best practices and educational tools for bringing global issues into the classroom.
CFR Education Presentation
Roni Kay M. O'Dell, Joseph W. Roberts
FASKIANOS: Going to get started with the next session on CFR Education. And these materials are really important. Everybody make their way in. Fantastic. Thank you so much.
So, this next session is a CFR Education Presentation. And it will be led by my colleague, Caroline Netchvolodoff, who’s the vice president for Education here at CFR. So I’m going to invite her and the panel on the stage and let her take it from there.
NETCHVOLODOFF: Hi, everyone. Welcome. I think I’ve met almost all of you. And I apologize to those who have not shaken the hand of. But I’ve also had some great conversations with some of you too. So I look forward to connecting with the rest of you after this. But as Irina said, I’m Caroline Netchvolodoff. I’m the vice president of Education here at the Council. And I look forward to very briefly sharing with you an overview of CFR Education’s work, and how we hope to support you as you navigate this very challenging time we’re in, to say the least. After highlighting our work, I’m going to invite a couple of faculty up onto the stage who are going to participate in a panel discussion—sorry about this—in a panel discussion where they’ll share how they use CFR resources in their classroom. Can you hear me? Is this—I think it’s not working. Or on and off, yeah? OK, good. Great.
So, let’s start with a question. How many of you have students who have come to you with what they believe—something they’ve learned online that they believe to—that you either know is false, or assume to be false? (Laughter.) Right? I think almost everybody. I think we’re all aware that this is happening at an increasing rate. And of course, it’s one thing if the fact relates to a trend, like a color of the year, or a new pair of sneakers, or even some gossip about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. But unfortunately, more and more young people are getting mis- and disinformation about important global affairs issues online. They want and they need to be able to separate fact from fiction amidst the deluge of daily news. And they need to know how to find, evaluate, and use trustworthy information.
So, there is an acute need to strengthen what we, at the Council on Foreign Relations, refer to as global literacy. I think some of you were in a workshop earlier where we discussed global literacy, but for those of you who weren’t and for those of you who have not heard this, global literacy comprises the knowledge, the skills, and the perspective that are required to effectively engage as a citizen. Sadly, a significant gap exists today in students’ understanding of the world around them. So, just what does it look like when a student is globally literate? Let’s consider the following scenario.
A student is on TikTok, surprise, surprise, and sees a post about the war in Ukraine that says Russia had the right to invade Ukraine because it was provoked by NATO. A globally literate student would, number one, know that Ukraine is a sovereign nation. Two, possess the knowledge and critical thinking skills to understand that Russia’s invasion was against international law. Three, they would understand that what they’ve encountered online is not an accurate portrayal of the facts. There were other things that might mark them as globally literate, but just those would be a good start.
So, CFR Education, as you may have heard earlier during your time here, is the educational arm of the Council on Foreign Relations. And we provide content and programming to help strengthen global literacy. We know that educators like you cannot and should not be expected to be experts on every global issue, especially at the rate that our world is changing. That’s really our job. So, with over 700 free multimedia, nonpartisan learning resources, CFR Education supplemental materials help students gain the knowledge, the skills, and the perspective—again, global literacy—needed to navigate today’s complicated, connected world. We offer readings, videos, charts, maps, timelines, and more.
And we offer them on—I think most of you—on topics that align with what most of you are teaching. We also have simulations that invite you and your students to step into the roles of decisionmakers on the UN Security Council and the U.S. National Security Council. And as you know, simulations, which are a project-based learning tool, help students develop the skills that were just mentioned—critical thinking, persuasive speaking and writing, and collaboration skills, while giving them hands-on experience grappling with the challenges associated with addressing today’s most pressing global issues. And I think maybe the most important thing is that they support the development of productive civic discourse. I don’t think anybody would disagree that that is critically important today.
CFR Education can serve as a starting point for how to structure your classes, whether with essay and discussion questions, activities, sample syllabi, or other. We also offer webinars and events throughout the academic year to support your work, including an upcoming workshop on building a syllabus, which I encourage you to register for. So finally, on the breaking news front, we’re excited to announce that CFR Education now offers a comprehensive library of nonpartisan multimedia teaching and learning resources on climate change and its implications for global affairs.
We’ve leveraged these supplemental resources to create a free three-course specialization on Coursera called Climate Change and Global Affairs: Navigating a Warming World. It’s going to be available next week, in time for Earth Day. It’s a self-guided series. And it’s available to learners inside and outside of formal classroom settings. So all of you are—of course, we encourage you to look at this specialization. And we encourage you to sign up for it, particularly if you are interested in earning a certification in climate literacy from the Council on Foreign Relations.
But enough from me. I’m happy to welcome two CFR Education ambassadors to the stage to talk about their experiences using CFR Education resources. Come on up, Joseph and Roni Kay. And while they’re making their way here—(applause)—just a brief mention. The CFR Education Ambassador Program is a nine-month engagement that connects educators from across the country with resources, professional development activities, and a network of likeminded professionals committed to global literacy. We’ll be opening up applications next month. And I encourage you to send in an application.
You may have already noticed there are some participants who have a red dot on their name tag. They are CFR Education ambassadors. I’m sure they would be happy—including these two—they would be happy to answer any questions you might have. There’s some education staff, I see, who have crept into the room. Also happy to answer your questions. But welcome both. Hopefully this mic is now going to work. Or, maybe it’s not. And you’re just—great. Sounds like it is working. Thank you.
Welcome to you both. Before we dive in, it would be great if you could introduce yourselves and tell the audience a little bit about what you teach and where you teach.
O’DELL: Yeah, I would love to. So hello, everyone. Great to be here. I’m Roni Kay O’Dell. And I’m from Seton Hill University. I’m the coordinator of their political science global studies department, and professor there. And I teach a wide gambit of classes, as many of you do. So, I’ll show them in a minute on a slide, but I teach American foreign policy, international relations, U.S. government, political science, intro to political science, intro to global studies. So I teach a lot. When I get the chance, I get to teach on sustainable development and environmental governance, which is my specialty, or one of my expertise. But it’s a pleasure to be able to teach all these classes and to be able to tell you a little bit more, in a minute, about how I use CFR Education resources. So, thank you.
ROBERTS: Hi. I’m Joseph Roberts. I’m a professor and chair of politics and international relations at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. Like Roni Kay, I teach a little bit of everything. I teach diplomacy. I teach international negotiations. My specialty is Middle East politics, so I do a lot of Middle East politics, suicide terrorism, political violence, social movements. My newest thing is I teach a class using games to teach political science. So that’s a very popular one, because students think they’re going to play all the time and it—(laughter)—so—but it allows me to use some of these kinds of resources in a lot of different ways.
NETCHVOLODOFF: Great. And just so you know, we are going to be developing games as part of CFR Education in the coming year too, so keep your eyes and ears open about that too, because we recognize how popular games are and how much students like to play them. And any way we can engage them we are interested in doing so. So, why don’t we start out by having—Joseph, why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you have learned—excuse me—how you have used CFR Education resources in your classroom.
ROBERTS: So I think I use it in a couple of different ways. One of the things that I try to do is use the resources in terms of there’s a lot of highly curated readings that provide great information. They’re well-written. They’re accessible. They’re also relatively short. And as we have talked about a little bit at various points today and yesterday, reading is not fundamental anymore. (Laughter.)
NETCHVOLODOFF: What a quote. (Laughter.) It’s, like.
ROBERTS: And so I think being able to pull very good, high-quality information to get students to engage is important. This is a particular screenshot from one of the CFR readings—or CFR Education readings on what is inequality. And it’s a great article, but it’s even better as a source of data. The data is available in a CSV format so you can pull it down, you can give it to students to manipulate and do things with. And more and more data literacy is important. So allowing verified data that they can play with is important. And the CFR Education resources provide a really good source of that.
The other thing that I have used quite extensively, and we’ll talk simulations later, but I like the learning journeys. This particular one is on energy security. But, again, it can replace and supplement readings. So I teach a class on—it’s part of our general education. It’s capstone. And it’s about sustainability and our global—and humans global—or, place in the global environment. And so, thinking about energy security is important. And this is good because it’s multimedia. It plays to some of their sensibilities in terms of watching YouTube, and watching TikTok, and watching all of the other things.
And so it’s very good. Because it’s vetted information they’re not getting the bad stuff. And again, it’s also data rich, so you can link the CSV data from one thing to another thing and get them to work with multiple sources of data. And it’s really helpful. Students like playing with data that they know is verified and they don’t have to go find it on the World Bank site or, you know, the IMF site, which can be difficult to navigate.
NETCHVOLODOFF: Great. Going to turn to you, Roni Kay. How have you leveraged CFR Education resources for active learning in your classes?
O’DELL: Yes. Thank you for the question. I’m really excited to talk about the way I’ve used CFR Education resources, very similar to the way Joseph has done, but using pedagogy. So, active learning and learner-centered teaching are the pedagogies that I use in the classroom. And I’ve developed them over the years. I was telling a group earlier that I began my career by making a lot of mistakes, really. (Laughs.) And then, learning how to actually engage students. So, one of the things that I encourage you all to do is look up active learning and learner-centered teaching.
Active learning is about getting students from passively sitting in a classroom and expecting to just get information from us and then regurgitate it, to turning that classroom into a place where they are involved, they are engaged, they are doing things. So that’s active learning. Learner-centered teaching is where it goes a step further and asks them to take responsibility for their own learning. Now this is where the CFR resources really come in handy, because asking a student to take responsibility for their own learning is difficult. It’s a lot more work for you. It’s a lot more work for the students. But in the end, I think it really pays off.
So, I’ve given you a list of the courses where I’ve used active learning, learner-centered teaching, and CFR Education resources. The materials that I’m seeing—I’m listing here on the slide. And let me just give you a couple of examples. So, comparative politics. I’ve taught that several times. I’ve used the simulations of the National Security Council in that course. And what I’ve done is start out with the United States. We learn about the Security Council. We use the CFR Education resources, which are amazing on these simulations. They give you all of the readings so the students don’t have to go figure out who the secretary of state is, or what the secretary of state does. That that information is there. Videos are connected to it.
And it guides the students through. You can have them do it on their own, or actually inside the classroom, where you actually work through the materials together to prepare yourself for the simulation. And then you get to that simulation and ask the students to take responsibility for it. Then what I’ve done is used that example of the NSC simulation and gone to another country. So India, and what did they do? How do they make foreign policy? And that takes a little bit more work, because that’s not quite developed by CFR Education. But they don’t mind if you take their resources and use it how you need it in the classroom.
NETCHVOLODOFF: We love it when you do that, for sure. Yeah. (Laughter.)
O’DELL: And I’ll just say a couple more things. One is that on the last slide I do have a Substack that if you’re interested I talk a little bit more about this, so you can get a little bit more insight into using active learning and learner-centered teaching. And on the next slide, I just wanted to show you this example. This is an example of the UN Security Council. So the CFR Education resources also have this. This is my last iteration of it. The students are actively involved in creating the simulation. And that’s what I wanted to encourage you to do.
CFR Education resources really help with that because they are giving the responsibility to the student. The students take responsibility. You see in this picture they’re putting up the flag, they’re getting the room ready, and then we get into character. And that just asks the students to be responsible, to engage, to be excited. And they really become that. If you ask them to, they will do it. And it’s very exciting to have CFR Education resources to help with that kind of thing.
NETCHVOLODOFF: That’s great. Joseph, I know you’ve used simulations extensively too. So share a little bit about how you have done that.
ROBERTS: I do as well. I have to say, I’m very jealous of the blue tablecloths. (Laughter.) I have the flag. I don’t have the blue tablecloths. I’m going back and I’m ordering blue tablecloths. (Laughter.)
So I use a lot of the mini simulations. They’re wonderful because they’re single class—either fifty or eighty minute sessions. They’re very issue focused. Require very minimal setup. Often, if you’ve done a little prep beforehand, you know, sort of either in, you know, with a little mini lecture or a video that you’ve posted, you know, to your LMS, something like that, it gets them in the space. And then you can come in and simulate. I think I’ve done several that are on the NSC, the National Security Council. And they’re really well done.
But I think the thing for me that makes them most valuable is because I teach so many different classes I see the same students over and over and over again. And I can’t necessarily use a simulation of the NSC in one class, in the next class, in the next class. They’ve seen it before and they can kind of game the system, if you will, even if they get different roles. And the beauty of the CFR Education mini-sims in particular is they’re very adaptable.
So, I did one on reforming the UN Security Council. And rather than doing it, focused on the NSC, I took the same basic arguments that people were making about reforming the NSC and I shifted it, and made it individual countries that might want additional seats, or they want—maybe want veto power. And so they could take the same basic framework and use it in a different way or in a different context. And CFR Education simulations are really good about having that flexibility built in.
NETCHVOLODOFF: Great. Yeah, please.
O’DELL: Just to add on that, with the adaptability—the videos, the short sort of essays or blog posts, or even the CFR resources themselves, like the briefings, those are so useful to use in the classroom, outside of the classroom. And, as we’ve been talking about students have a hard time reading, well, connected to the videos, connected with the timelines, it makes it exciting and come alive for them. And so it’s a really great alternative to encourage them to get back into reading.
NETCHVOLODOFF: That’s great. I mean, I was going to save this for the end, but I will say that, you know, it’s so exciting for us to hear about these real applications, these classroom applications. And we can’t do what we do in CFR Education without understanding from you what your needs are. We’re so excited to have you here to—I’ve spoken to a lot of you, the team has spoken to a lot of you. But we really encourage you to share these sorts of stories with us and with each other. And to that end, we have a CFR ambassador group that I’m going to ask each of you to share a little bit about what the ambassador experience has meant to you. And then I know a little bit later we’re going to break into some more workshop-type activities, where you can give us feedback, and where we are eager to have it from you. So, you want to tell us a little bit about your experience with the Ambassador Program?
O’DELL: Yes, absolutely. So I was very excited to be accepted as an ambassador this year. And I think that the thing that has meant the most to me is connecting with people who are in the classroom—other people who are in the classroom. So often we are in our classroom, we’re engaged with the students. Maybe we have colleagues at our university that do the same thing as us, maybe not. But we, you know, talk to them a little bit. But sometimes, we feel a little bit alone in the classroom. And it’s amazing to connect with this group of ambassadors. As Caroline mentioned, fourteen of them are here.
But what we do is meet monthly, essentially. And I have to say, Logan, and Rania, and several of the other people—I’m forgetting your names—but they are amazing at putting together these meetings. They’re on Zoom. But we get to see each other. We get to break out into small groups and talk about just some of the things that Joseph and I have been talking about, which is how do we deal with issues in the classroom? If we’re going to teach climate change, what does that look like? How do we teach sustainable development, and what are the practices there? And knowing that you’re not alone, and then also being able to share and exchange those resources and network with people for possible articles on pedagogy, which I think might happen for me, is really exciting. So it’s a wonderful experience.
NETCHVOLODOFF: Yeah, it’s great. And I—you know, I have to say that it’s exciting for us to listen and watch you interact with each other. It’s also, selfishly, wonderful for us to gather feedback. So the ambassador group is a continuous feedback link for us. And to, you know, the point about simulations, we have a new landing page that’s launching next week. And we encourage you to access the landing page, but also give us your feedback. Did we get it right? Are there more things that we can do? Are there iterations that would roll the ball a couple of revolutions more? So, please do give us feedback about that and more. And, Joseph, would love to hear about your experience, too.
ROBERTS: So I think much of the same thing that Roni Kay said is true. For me, my most valuable experiences as a political scientist are in pedagogy environments, doing the kind of thing—I teach a lot of classes. I’m passionate about teaching. It’s what I like to do most about my job. And conferences are expensive. Doing the CFR Education Ambassador Program allows me to have that engagement and that contact with others who are around the country, around the world, who are doing the same kinds of things that I’m doing. And I think of myself as a very good teacher. I don’t know everything. I learn all the time.
And being in these Zoom calls, I can, you know, hear things and, like, oh, I hadn’t thought of that. Take my notes, and then go try it the next week. And maybe it doesn’t work as well as I had hoped, but I also have a resource. I can email that person and say, OK, I tried it. It didn’t work. I can come back and they can help me walk through. And so it’s more than just networking. The group of people are very, very open to sharing and collaborating in really meaningful ways, both in the classroom and, I think, on, you know, the scholarship of teaching and learning. And as a former journal editor for the Journal of Political Science Education, that’s where a lot of that work is so valuable because—and, you know, there’s not enough of it. They really, really want more and more pedagogy pieces to come out. And it’s going to come out of these kinds of collaborations.
NETCHVOLODOFF: That’s great. If you don’t mind, if the twelve other people who are out in the audience who have the red dot on your tag, who are ambassadors, could stand up, that would be great. And then the folks in the room can see who you are and maybe talk to you after the workshop in a little bit. But also thank you. (Applause.) And thank you so much for all the work that you’ve done this academic year, with each other and with us. We’ve really—we’ve very much enjoyed it. And it’s not over yet, so I think we have at least one more session.
I think at this point it would be great to open the floor up for some questions. Anybody? Great.
Q: Is this on? Peter Erickson, I’m at Colorado State University.
And I recently became the director of the International Studies Program there. And my question actually was about—you know, talking to people over the past couple days, lots of universities have international studies, global studies programs, concentrations. And I was wondering if CFR Education had ventured into this question of programming and, you know, tracks. And there’s, you know, thematic concentrations. So there’s a lot of stuff like that. And I was just curious what you’ve been up to.
NETCHVOLODOFF: I’m not sure if this gets exactly at your question, but coincidentally, we are in the process—as I mentioned during my earlier comments, we’re releasing a course on Coursera on climate change and global affairs. Shortly thereafter, I guess about four or five months from now, we are going to be releasing what’s called a specialization. So it’s three courses on introduction to global affairs. We are also working with Arizona State University. We’re launching a course in collaboration with them in late May.
Now, getting course credit through the ASU is eminently possible. It’s certainly possible through Coursera as well. We, the Council on Foreign Relations, will be issuing a certification in global literacy. We won’t be giving course credit, per se, but course credit is achievable. And students and dual enrollments—high school and college—can get course credit for both high school and college, as well as certificates that they can upload to their application to graduate school, to college, and they can put it on their LinkedIn profile. So we are moving in that direction slowly. These are pilots for us. But it’s exciting. And we think we’re going to learn a lot, and hopefully hone that process. So, to answer your question, yes, we’re on the path. And we are—we are in a learning mode.
Yeah.
Q: Sokol Celo, Suffolk University.
I have a question for both panelists. Have you seen any difference in terms of graduate versus undergraduate students, what tools work best for each of those groups?
O’DELL: That’s a good question. I can answer that by saying that I have used these tools mostly in undergraduate classes. But then, I also have taught sections of graduate courses online. And I have used the CFR Education materials in a couple of those, sort of in my Canvas pages. And that means, you know, I’ve created a Canvas page, and then I’ve put a link to the resources, and then I’ve asked students to go to them. And I would say that they—both undergraduate and graduate—I think that they’re perfectly applicable for that. And it’s just a matter of how you ask the students to engage with the material and at what level.
And so, you know, one thing I’ve done definitely with my undergraduate students is, along with introducing them to some of these easily accessible materials, like the videos or the short essays, et cetera, I will ask them to—I’ll introduce them to what’s called active reading. So, you know, reading this kind of stuff is not like reading a fiction book, right? And we actually need to tell them that and help them through that, because they need to know how to actively read. So I’ll have an assignment on active reading, and then I’ll ask them to go to it. And how was the active reading? How did the active reading assignment go? And then, what did you learn? With a graduate student, it’s a little bit, you know, higher level, but I think that they both work out well.
How about you, Joseph?
ROBERTS: So I’m at an exclusively undergraduate institution. So for me, I only get to practice on undergrads. That is going to change next year, because we’re finally getting back an MPA program that—for all kinds of university reasons—moved out. And so I think there will be some opportunity to do some things in that program moving forward. That being said, I have a lot of friends who teach in, you know, programs with graduate programs, both master’s and doctoral level, that use the same kinds of simulations, in particular, in those classes, and are finding very similar results. That it increases engagement, it increases critical thinking, it increases an engagement with the material in different ways than just simply reading it.
And it doesn’t replace—you know, in a graduate class, it doesn’t replace reading journal articles, and, you know, doing lit reviews, and things of that nature. But it supplements and gets them to think about different ways that they can approach information. And ultimately, I think it prepares them for when they finish graduate school, particularly in doctoral programs. They’re going to take it and then use it in their own classrooms down the road, which the evidence in the SOTL literature says that active learning does have an impact.
NETCHVOLODOFF: Yeah.
Q: Hello, everybody. Thank you for the panelists. Actually, my name is Jane Kani Edward from Fordham University in New York City.
So my question is—I learned a lot actually from your presentation. So, my question is about the active learning with CFR Education extended simulation. I like that, because all of us actually wanted our students to be engaged in the class discussion. My question is, what is the size of your classroom? Like, the classroom itself, and then the number of students in that classroom? And what size is the best for this kind of active learning? Because I teach sometimes thirty-five students, and our classes are—I don’t know how to organize it. So I just want to know the class size in terms of size of the classroom, and the number of students.
O’DELL: Yes. Thank you very much. So I can say that I have taught this—the types of simulations that I have described, I was describing earlier, with the NSC, with the UNSC, and just other sort of mini simulations, at that level of either twenty students to thirty-five students, and then down to about ten students, right? So I’ve taught at all those different levels. And you could do this with a hundred students. I haven’t quite done it with a hundred students, but it’s a different kind of simulation. And that’s what I love about the CFR Education materials, is that they actually help you think through it. So, there’s instructor guides on the website that kind of say, here’s maybe a suggestion for how you go through each part of preparing your students for the simulation. So, you can look at those and say to yourself, is this going to work with fifteen students? How will I modify it, if I have a hundred students? And that looks quite different.
NETCHVOLODOFF: Well, yeah, well, I mean, I think if you do have a hundred students, you assign multiple students to a single role. And we do walk you through how to do that. But there—you know, any questions you have, please send us. We are happy to answer that. But they are intended to be adaptable and flexible, and we want to make them more so. So I also think that I’ve gotten the signal that we’re out of time, as much as I want to hear from more of you. And I will circulate. And I know we’re about to break into groups, where we will get some more feedback from you. So, I just can’t thank you enough for being here, for your participation. It’s wonderful to see all of you and look forward to talking to you in the next hour. (Applause.) Thank you.
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