Best Practices
Creating Intercultural Learning Space Online:
Discourse between Home and International Students
Jane Jackson
Department of English
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong SAR, China
jjackson@cuhk.edu.hk
With the internationalization of university campuses, it is often assumed that local and international
students will interact with each other and experience significant gains in intercultural awareness and
understanding. Increasingly, however, education abroad researchers are finding that, for a variety of
reasons, international students spend much of their time with people from their home country and have
little interaction with host nationals (Groeppel-Klein et al. 2010; Halualani et al., 2004; Jackson, 2012;
Montgomery, 2010; Williams & Johnson, 2011). For many sojourners, this is a great disappointment as
they had hoped to form intercultural friendships that would enrich their stay and help them develop a
sense of belonging in the host country. The findings also cast doubt on the success of internationalization
policies which assume that increasing the number of international students on campus will benefit the
intercultural learning of local students. Hence, many international educators now advocate both formal
and informal curricula to encourage and reward intercultural engagement (Leask, 2009).
This presentation focuses on the online elements of a credit-bearing, blended intercultural transitions
course that brings together students with recent or current international experience. As well as weekly
face-to-face meetings, the 25 participants in the third offering (10 local returnees and 15 exchange
students from different countries) interacted online (e.g., Moodle Forum chats) and shared their evolving
perceptions of their international/intercultural experience. As they engaged in guided, critical reflection
(online and in class), they cultivated a more ‘intercultural mindset’ and developed a better understanding
of diverse perspectives (Hammer, 2012; Rollin & Harrap, 2005). An analysis of their online discourse
revealed a reduction in ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ discourse and more efforts to understand unfamiliar values and
ways of being. This session underscores the potential for ICT (Information communication technologies)
to enrich and support interactions between home and international students. This session will summarize
the lessons learned from the third offering of the course and outline plans for further revisions.
References
Groeppel-Klein, A., Germelmann, C.C., & Glaum, M. (2010) Intercultural interaction needs more than
mere exposure: Searching for drivers of student interaction at border universities, International
Journal of Intercultural Relations, 34, 253-267.
Halualani, R.T., Chitgopekar, A.S., Morrison, J., & Dodge, P. (2004) Diverse in name only? Intercultural
interaction at a multicultural university, Journal of Communication, 54920: 270-286.
Hammer, M.R. (2012) ‘The Intercultural Development Inventory: A new frontier in assessment and
development of intercultural competence’, in M. Vande Berg, R.M. Paige, & K.H. Lou (Eds),
Student learning abroad, what our students are learning, what they’re not, and what we can do
about it (pp. 115-136). Sterling, VA: Stylus.
Jackson, J. (2012). Education abroad, in J. Jackson (Ed.). The handbook of language and intercultural
communication (pp. 449-63). London: Routledge.
Jackson, J. (2013). The transformation of ‘a frog in the well’: A path to a more intercultural, global
mindset. In C. Kinginger (Ed.). The Social Turn in Study Abroad Research (pp. 179-204),
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Leask, B. (2009) Using formal and informal curricula to improve interactions between home and
international students, Journal of Studies in International Education, 13 (2): 205-221.
Montgomery, C. (2010). Understanding the international student experience, Palgrave Macmillan.
Rollin, H. & Harrap, A. (2005). Can E-Learning foster intercultural competence? Brookes eJournal of
Learning and Teaching, 1(3).
Williams, C.T. & Johnson, L.R. (2011) Why can’t we be friends? Multicultural attitudes and friendships
with international students, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 35, 41-48.
Acknowledgements
This curriculum/ICT project was supported by Teaching Development Grants (#4170338, #4170356) from the
Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and a competitive General Research Fund award (#444709) from the
University Research Grants Council of Hong Kong. The latter facilitated an investigation of the developmental
trajectories of outgoing yearlong and semester-long international exchange students from Hong Kong and Mainland
China. The author greatly appreciates the willingness of the local and international students in the Intercultural
Transitions course to share their stories and views about the course.