Artificial intelligence is reshaping the expectations placed on university graduates—demanding not only technical fluency but the capacity to collaborate across cultural boundaries, reframe complex problems, and engage AI as a genuine cognitive partner. In response to these demands, this keynote presents the Living Challenges Global Initiative (LC Global), an international collaborative education program jointly developed by Chiba University of Commerce (CUC), the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH), and Gakushuin University (GU).
The LC Global model integrates three interdependent components: project-based learning, cross-cultural international collaboration, and AI-supported ideation. Students are not taught about AI—they work alongside it, using generative AI tools as thinking partners throughout the full arc of problem exploration and solution development. Interdisciplinary teams drawn from Japan and India address real societal challenges, bringing together diverse cultural, disciplinary, and experiential perspectives that neither group could access alone.
This keynote reports the design rationale and outcomes of the program's inaugural implementation, in which seventeen students formed four teams tackling challenges in education, food sustainability, disaster evacuation, and pet health management. Post-workshop survey results indicate strong and consistent gains: 100% of participants reported improved AI-assisted problem-solving ability and increased intercultural awareness, with 85% expressing overall program satisfaction. The session also presents an AI literacy instructional framework—including hallucination awareness and Retrieval-Augmented Generation—developed as an integral component of the program.
The talk concludes by distilling three design principles for educators seeking to build similar programs: scaffolding AI as a cognitive partner rather than a content tool, forming teams for epistemic diversity rather than efficiency, and assessing socio-technical thinking as a first-class learning outcome. The LC Global initiative offers a concrete, replicable model for institutions ready to move global collaborative learning from aspiration to practice.
