Interdependent intercultural task as a tool for developing intercultural awareness through Collaborative Online International Learning in Global Leadership
{"title":"Interdependent intercultural task as a tool for developing intercultural awareness through Collaborative Online International Learning in Global Leadership","authors":"Lori M. Curtindale, S. Krylova, S. A. Minyurova","doi":"10.21827/jve.3.35803","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This paper discusses a teaching approach that can be used in Collaborative Online International Learning – Interdependent Intercultural Tasks (IIT). IIT are characterized by the following features: (1) they include culture-specific information that creates cognitive dissonance and motivates students to analyze information about another culture; (2) they provide instructions aimed at learning subjective information about individuals from another culture; and (3) they can only be performed through interaction between students from different countries. We expect two learning outcomes of implementing IIT in a Global Leadership course; an increase in (1) intercultural interaction when working on a collaborative project; and (2) awareness of general cultural differences and those related to a specific global problem. Preliminary findings suggest that employing IIT (i.e. having students discuss native and non-native country media articles describing culture-specific perspectives on a global problem) increases the frequency of student interactions outside the classroom and improves coordination between teammates.","PeriodicalId":107205,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Virtual Exchange","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2020-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Virtual Exchange","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.21827/jve.3.35803","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
This paper discusses a teaching approach that can be used in Collaborative Online International Learning – Interdependent Intercultural Tasks (IIT). IIT are characterized by the following features: (1) they include culture-specific information that creates cognitive dissonance and motivates students to analyze information about another culture; (2) they provide instructions aimed at learning subjective information about individuals from another culture; and (3) they can only be performed through interaction between students from different countries. We expect two learning outcomes of implementing IIT in a Global Leadership course; an increase in (1) intercultural interaction when working on a collaborative project; and (2) awareness of general cultural differences and those related to a specific global problem. Preliminary findings suggest that employing IIT (i.e. having students discuss native and non-native country media articles describing culture-specific perspectives on a global problem) increases the frequency of student interactions outside the classroom and improves coordination between teammates.