Incorporating Intercultural Learning

  

When you're thinking about how to incorporate intercultural learning into your Virtual Exchange course, it might be intimidating even if you've had some facilitation experience in the past. You might know some group icebreakers or activities that would be great for building a sense of community among your students, but what if they aren't well-suited to an online environment?

Keep in mind that for the most part, the intercultural learning opportunities that you present your students with will primarily be focused on getting them to a place where they can effectively interact and collaborate with their international peers. Unlike an on-site study abroad program, your goal here isn't to attempt cultural immersion or do a deep dive on elements of your partners' cultures. Students in your course will need to find a common ground which will allow for productive collaboration and to create a space where cultural missteps and ignorance are allowed, though gently corrected. In essence, participants need to reach a point where they can say, "What you just said/did is offensive/unusual/etc to my culture, but I understand that you didn't know that. Let's talk more about that later. For now, let's keep working". Getting students to this place, however, is the big challenge.

 

Here are some great start tips on how to facilitate intercultural learning online:

 

 

Remember that one of the hallmarks of the COIL model is the combination of synchronous and asynchronous activities. It's entirely feasible to put together an online module of content around intercultural awareness which your students can interact with, and then either bring them together for a synchronous discussion/activity OR have them engage asynchronously through discussion forums or another format. Of course, even the synchronous activities don't have to be full-group; you can create small groups of students who can hold smaller discussion sessions and then report back.

 

  

Of course, beyond just being open and receptive to cultural learning, students will also need to be prepared for how cultural differences affect things like timeliness, personal communication, work ethic/style, and more. As you deepen your relationship with your faculty partner, consider working together to create a "cheat sheet" which covers these topics. Students will be able to refer to this and when friction comes up, they'll be better able to identify the source and approach it as a learning experience rather than as an annoyance.

 

Watch this video and consider how even small cultural difference can have big impacts on collaboration:

 

 

This may seem like a Herculean task when added to the already challenging nature of adapting a course with a COIL module, but remember that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are thousands of expert facilitators and intercultural educators who have been working in this area for many years, and so you don't need to be the expert. Working alongside the Global Classrooms team, you'll be able to determine the intercultural learning goals for your group with your partner faculty and then identify how those goals are to be achieved in your course. Much of the actual learning will happen among the groups of students, but by providing the structure and the prompts to help them, you will find that it may not be as challenging as it seems today.

 

Now that you have a general understanding of how intercultural learning interacts with your course material, let's wrap up this introductory course with details about how you can apply to join the annual Global Classrooms faculty cohort. Click "Next" to continue.