Overcoming disorienting dilemmas in global intercultural encounters: An online role-play simulator CMS

Paper presented to the 6th Annual Symposium on Graduate Research and Scholarly Projects (GRASP) held at the Hughes Metropolitan Complex, Wichita State University, April 23, 2010.Breakdowns in communication between members of multi-cultural, multi-national, globally-distributed project teams represent a significant challenge for ventures such as designing and building new passenger aircraft, air traffic control systems, or space craft; or overcoming the effects of climate change, pandemics, and terrorism. An important element of the preparation of global graduates is learning how to systematically overcome disorientation that arises from the unexpected during global teamwork. An online role-play simulator—Cultural Misconceptions Simulator (CMS)—has been enhanced to allow users and authors from multiple language and cultural backgrounds to play scenarios and to write new scenarios. To date, CMS has been available in English only, with scenarios written from a Western perspective. The goal of this project is to make CMS available initially in Chinese, Russian, Kanji, Hindi, Arabic and English and later in many more languages. CMS comprises an SQL database for storing multiple interface elements and scenarios. Global collaborators and their students continue to test CMS. They are located at Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, and Russia. As well as being a learning tool, CMS is also a research tool. CMS captures patterns of learning that help us to understand Intercultural Communication Competence development