Intercultural Competence – Stakeholders and Learning Activities at the University

ABSTRACTThis project is currently being carried out at Chalmers University of technology and is scheduled to be finished by early 2016. The study aims at exploring views on intercultural initiatives at the Master’s level the university. It also aims at providing strategies for active learning by designing learning objectives, activities and assessment practices for intercultural competence among students and teachers.Project in ProgressMany Master’s students across the world study in a multicultural environment and will work in a global environment. This is an environment that involves meeting, communicating with, negotiating with, and cooperating with a range of cultures both currently at the university level and later on in different companies and different countries. Many universities work actively to attract students from other countries and have internationalization as a stated goalof the university.The question this work-in-progress presentation seeks to address is how far universities prepare students for such environments. This project has carried out interviews and questionnaires with engineering students and faculty at Master’s programs at Chalmers University of Technology in order to investigate the level of integration between Swedish and non-Swedish students and if steps are being taken in order to facilitate this integration.Furthermore, the project also investigates and proposes actions to be taken in order to introduce active learning within the realm of intercultural competence. One of the initial findings is that there is some work being done in this field, but this seems primarily focused on the visiting students, thereby neglecting learning activities for the national students. This presentation will therefore report on the preliminary results of this study and, in particular, present steps that universities can take in order to increase intercultural communication competence amongst its students.REFERENCESDel Vitto, C. (2008). Cross-Cultural" soft skills" and the global engineer: Corporate best practices andtrainer methodologies. Online Journal for Global Engineering Education, 3(1), 1.Downey, G. L., Lucena, J. C., Moskal, B. M., Parkhurst, R., Bigley, T., Hays, C., Jesiek,B,, Kelly,L.,Miller,J., Ruff,S., Lehr, J. & Nichols-\uad‐Belo, A. (2006). The globally competent engineer: Workingeffectively with people who define problems differently. Journal of Engineering Education, 95(2), 107-122.Jameson, D. A. (2007). Reconceptualizing cultural identity and its role in intercultural businesscommunication. Journal of Business Communication, 44(3), 199-235.Jansen, D. E. (2004). Developing the intercultural competence of engineering students: a proposal forthe method and contents of a seminar. World Transactions on Engineering and Teaching Education,3(1).Korhonen, K. (2002). Intercultural competence as part of professional qualifications: a trainingexperiment with bachelor of engineering students. University of Jyv\ue4skyl\ue4.Levy, M. (2007). Culture, culture learning and new technologies: Towards a pedagogical framework.Language Learning & Technology, 11(2), 104-127.Lohmann, J. R., Rollins, H. A., & Joseph Hoey, J. (2006). Defining, developing and assessing globalcompetence in engineers. European journal of engineering education, 31(01), 119-131