Enhancing Intercultural Communication with scenario-based online resources.

About this initiative

This T&L initiative aims to enhance the teaching of Intercultural Communication (ICC) at undergraduate and graduate levels, by implementing a student-centred approach using innovative online resources. Our team programme clearly identified ICC as an area that needs enhancements in terms of content, method of delivery & assessment in order to be offered, not only at school level, but across the university (DELTA Framework, Pillar 2, 3 and 4). Our aim is to foster what we consider to be essential and professionally sought-after skills among a diverse range of students, regardless of their abilities, skills and learning styles. Our aim is to implement a multifold, blended and inclusive teaching approach combining complex theory, group discussions and online and interactive scenario-based activities (built around critical incidents) to overcome physical class and time limitations and reproduce near-real intercultural situations. This approach is essential to help students develop the specific soft skills (self-awareness, ethnorelativism, etc.) required to tackle complex intercultural situations, on a professional and personal level. Specifically, we plan to develop two interactive videos and eight reusable online learning objects. We will deploy Challenge Choice Consequence (3Cs) to our learning objects and branch the scenarios. This will enable students to discover ICC concepts, test their knowledge and attitudes/behaviours, as well as experience a motivating and interactive design for online study, while allowing educators to focus on skills acquisition and critical theoretical analysis during class time. All modules will be integrated in UCD Virtual Learning Environment, thus ensuring accessibility at university level (Universal Design Principles).