{"id":1865,"date":"2026-05-26T11:36:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T11:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/aflkings\/?p=1865"},"modified":"2026-05-26T11:36:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T11:36:32","slug":"mapping-global-value-chains-using-google-maps-for-assessment-for-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/aflkings\/2026\/05\/26\/mapping-global-value-chains-using-google-maps-for-assessment-for-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Mapping Global Value Chains: Using Google Maps for Assessment for Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Instructor:\u00a0<\/strong>Dr Christoffer Guldberg<\/p>\n

Email:\u00a0<\/strong>christoffer.guldberg@kcl.ac.uk<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Module:\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a07AAON221 The Political Economy of Development(25~26 SEM2 000001)<\/a>; 7AAON220 Global Governance and International Organisations;7YYDN023 Multinational Enterprises, Global Value Chains, and Local Development,<\/p>\n

Faculty:\u00a0<\/strong>Department of International Development, SSPP, Department for European and International Studies<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What is the assessment?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In a seminar, students work in small groups to map the journey of a product across the global economy, from raw material extraction to processing, manufacturing, logistics, retail, consumption, and waste or recycling. They add pins and routes to Google My Maps, https:\/\/mymaps.google.com\/<\/a> \u00a0linking each place in the chain to evidence from company reports, trade data, academic readings, NGO reports, or international organisations.<\/p>\n

It functions as a formative assessment because students receive feedback while they are still constructing their understanding and they develop a final product that can be evaluated and is more difficult to produce with GenAI (unlike written essays).<\/p>\n

Why did you introduce this approach?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Mapping global value chains allows students to see how everyday commodities connect distant places through unequal relations of power, value, labour, and ecological impact. This exercise helps students move from description to analysis. By building a map, they can see that global value chains are not simply linear movements of goods. They are structured by power, governance, value capture, risk, and uneven development.<\/p>\n

The activity is especially useful for teaching concepts in international development, political ecomony and business such as the concentration of value in branding, design, intellectual property, finance, and marketing and the role of industrial policy, labour regulation, standards, and sustainability initiatives.<\/p>\n

How do you set it up? <\/strong><\/h2>\n

Before the seminar, the lecturer prepares a shared Google My Maps template with two layers: Nodes<\/strong>\u00a0and Routes<\/strong>. Students are then divided into groups and are asked to choose a product chain, for example chocolate, smartphones, fast fashion, coffee, tomatoes, poultry, or cobalt-linked electronics. The students are more engaged if they are able to make their own choices of topic.<\/p>\n

Each group receives a short \u201cchain packet\u201d containing the product, possible lead firms, supplier countries, key ports or logistics hubs, and a starting list of credible sources. In class, students create a map with 8\u201312 nodes and several connecting routes.<\/p>\n

Each node must include:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What happens there<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 extraction, processing, assembly, logistics, retail, consumption, disposal.<\/li>\n
  2. Who controls or benefits<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 lead firm, supplier, trader, state agency, platform, retailer, standard-setter.<\/li>\n
  3. One risk or tension<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 labour precarity, price volatility, ecological harm, foreign-exchange exposure, monopoly power, weak regulation.<\/li>\n
  4. One source link<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 report, dataset, academic reading, company document, NGO source, or news item.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Students also draw routes between nodes and label them, for example \u201ccontainer shipping,\u201d \u201cair freight,\u201d \u201ccommodity trading route,\u201d \u201cinformal border trade,\u201d or \u201creverse logistics\/waste flow.\u201d<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Example seminar structure<\/strong><\/p>\n

    A 60-minute version works well:<\/p>\n

    0\u20135 minutes: Opening prompt<\/strong>
    \n\u201cWhen you buy this product, what places and workers made it possible?\u201d<\/p>\n

    Here, I usually ask students to take out their phones from their pockets (often iPhones) and I ask them to look at the back of the Phone where the Apple logo is. I ask them to locate where the headquarters of Apple is versus where the phone are assembled and where most of the money they pay for their phones end up, and why. This illustrates well intellectual property and research and design versus the actual tangible work of producing the phones.<\/p>\n

    5\u201312 minutes: Concept refresher<\/strong>
    \nThe lecturer briefly revisits key GVC concepts: nodes, routes, governance, upgrading, value capture, labour conditions, standards, and policy space.<\/p>\n

    12\u201315 minutes: Task briefing<\/strong>
    \nGroups distribute roles among their members: mapper, source-checker, analyst, and presenter.<\/p>\n

    15\u201338 minutes: Mapping work<\/strong>
    \nStudents build the chain collaboratively, adding evidence-based pins and routes, including links to articles and other data.<\/p>\n

    38\u201345 minutes: Analysis prompt<\/strong>
    \nGroups prepare their findings:<\/p>\n

    45\u201355 minutes: Lightning presentations<\/strong>
    \nEach group presents its map in one minute.<\/p>\n

    55\u201360 minutes: Synthesis and exit ticket<\/strong>
    \nStudents submit one insight the map made visible, and one policy intervention that could alter value capture or risk distribution.<\/p>\n

    Examples:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Chocolate \/ cocoa chain<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Insight:
      \nThe map made visible how close cocoa-producing countries such as Ghana and C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire are to the raw material base, but how far they are from the higher-value nodes of chocolate branding, retail, and finance in Europe.<\/p>\n

      Policy intervention:
      \nSupport domestic grinding, processing, and branded chocolate production through industrial policy, concessional finance, and regional procurement rules, while managing the risk that benefits are captured by a small group of domestic firms.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Smartphone chain<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Insight:
        \nThe map showed that the physical product moves through many countries, but the highest-value functions \u2013 design, intellectual property, operating systems, branding, and platform control \u2013 are concentrated in a few corporate headquarters.<\/p>\n

        Policy intervention:
        \nUse technology-transfer requirements, public R&D investment, and supplier upgrading programmes to help firms in assembly countries move into component design or higher-value manufacturing.<\/p>\n

         <\/p>\n

        How do you give feedback? <\/strong><\/h2>\n

        At the moment I have used this as a formative exercise so feedback follows the exercise as a process during the class exercise and at the end, depending on time 2 or more groups present their maps as an interactive way to visualise and explore global value chains by zooming in and out and highlighting specific nodes depending on the commodity and theoretical approach. Depending on time, level and other factors, this can be a nice moment to make a broader point about how theory can function as a kind of map and vice versa, making aspects of reality visible or invisible.<\/p>\n

        The feedback element is deliberately scaffolded so that students move beyond shallow comments on the appearance of the map and instead assess its analytical strength. By asking students to respond to specific prompts about evidence, value capture, risk distribution, governance, and policy intervention, peer feedback becomes part of the learning process rather than an informal reaction. This helps students identify whether a map merely traces the movement of goods or whether it actually explains how power, value, and vulnerability are distributed across the chain.<\/p>\n

        What benefits did you see? <\/strong><\/h2>\n

        The map becomes a live diagnostic tool<\/u> for showing student\u2019s understanding of key concepts: it shows whether students can connect empirical evidence to concepts such as governance, upgrading, value capture, dependency, labour exploitation, and environmental externalities and theories of global capitalism. The exercise therefore assesses not only whether students understand the theory, but whether they can apply it to real-world chains, interpret evidence, and make analytical claims.<\/p>\n

        The method supports several skills,<\/u> some of which are disciplinary and others are more transferable:<\/p>\n