Lesson 1: What is "Global" "Civilization"?

1. Introductions: everyone introduces herself or himself and answers the question, "How am I globalized?" Instructor pulls out themes to be covered during course.
2. Class discusses what is "global" "civilization"? What is "globalization"? Instructor pulls out more themes for course.
3. Hand out syllabus, give an overview of planned course content.
4. Randomly assign a country to each student. Country cards contain data on population, GDP (current $), GDP per capita, and Human Development Index score. Have the students line up in order of each measure, discuss meaning of measure, tell them the world median or average for that measure, and hand out paperclips to represent population (normalized by 10 million) and paper to represent GDP (normalized by $10 billion). Have the students remark on different order for different measures, disparity among countries. Discuss inequality within countries as well.
5. Tell students about corporate entities larger than countries.
6. Wrap-up and quick evaluation.

Take-home point: countries are different from one another, and non-state actors are important too.