Poster Session: "Small Private Liberal Arts
Colleges: Supporting International Students"
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
9:00-10:30 Main Exhibit Hall
NAFSA National Conference: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Topic: Intercultural Learning Assessment
Willamette University, Salem, Oregon (www.willamette.edu)
Kris Lou, Director, Office of International Education
Chris Andresen, Assoc. Director, OIE
Casie L. Myers, OIE Graduate Intern (SIT)
Since 2004, we’ve been using the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI)1 to measure the orientations
toward cultural difference of both our outbound study abroad students as well as our inbound international
students (both short-term exchange and long-term degree seeking students). Our research with
international students involves pre-assessment when students first arrive (during orientation) and then
post-assessment just before they return home (end of exchange or graduation).
Data subsets consist of one-semester, one-year, and two-year assessments. Although the number of
assessed participants in most categories is too low to produce statistically significant conclusions, our
preliminary results suggest:
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With little or no intervention, international students studying a semester or year in the US tend not to
demonstrate much intercultural development.
Pre-assessment indicates that inbound international students, like their outbound study abroad
counterparts, tend to fall in the early stages of “minimization” at the start of their experience.
Students who enter in fall and complete at least a full year develop a little (a few points) over the
course of their experience but remain in early minimization.
Students who enter in spring and only complete one semester actually have a slight “regression” in
their intercultural sensitivity.
We see the greatest intercultural development (nearly a full standard deviation of development)
among our graduate students who have completed two years of study in the US.
Interpretation of Results:
The results of larger studies of US students abroad parallel our general (and intuitive) finding, namely,
that if the goal is to develop the intercultural skills of our international students through cultural
immersion, an intentional intervention in their experience is necessary.
Absent any guided intervention, the duration of the immersion experience can play a role if it is two years
or more in length. While we might agree that the shorter the timeframe the smaller the likelihood for
intercultural development, we must also recognize that even a full year exchange student, for example, is
likely to return home without having significantly developed his/her intercultural skills. We speculate
that the growth exhibited by two year students is due in part to the emphasis on teams and group projects
(especially in our business program which uses a year-long business simulation where mixed
U.S./international teams of approximately 15 people have to work together to create a business). In
general, these students enter at a beginning minimization stage and by the end of their studies (without
any intentional intervention) they have worked through most of the issues related to minimization and are
beginning to address acceptance and adaptation issues.
A common phenomenon among short term international exchange students is the formation of the
“international clique.” Although this process tends to improve the individual’s total experience by virtue
of the “common experience bonding” that typically takes place, we speculate that the intercultural
learning suffers from a lack of guided analysis. In the same fashion as with our study abroad students,
cultural experiences will tend to be judged, rather than analyzed. The negative or positive emotion
associated with cultural experience becomes the basis for the “common experience bond” at the expense
of a deeper understanding of the values that underlie the experience and the complex implications
associated with it. Without guided intervention to learn from these experiences and thereby develop
intercultural competence, the student moves across the surface from one experience to the next.
What to Do?
Should you establish intercultural learning as a goal for your exchange and degree-seeking international
students? Most orientation and semester- and year-long programming for international students focuses
on connecting domestic students with internationals. The assumption is that if we provide and facilitate
the opportunities, friendships will develop and by extension intercultural learning will take place. Our
research suggests the latter is not happening so we plan to turn the equation around. We want to
implement some intentional stage-based programming in the hopes of moving even short-term students
along toward the later stages of minimization or early acceptance. This programming will consist of the
following dimensions:
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Orientation activities/conversations will focus on what it means to “minimize” cultural difference
More culturally-based programs with the peer advisors during initial 6 weeks that involve specific
intercultural activities followed by simple analytical exercises
Inclusion of some international students in “Intercultural Study within Cultural Immersion” course
while at WU. Thus far this course has included only study abroad students located around the world.
Ongoing exercises/activities over the semester and year – orientation “refresher” in January for yearlong exchange students
The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) was created by Drs. Mitchell Hammer and Milton Bennett. It is a
50-item instrument based on Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS). The DMIS is a
framework for explaining the reactions of people to cultural differences. The underlying assumption of the model
is that as one’s experience of cultural differences becomes more complex, one’s potential competence in
intercultural interactions increases. Dr. Bennett has identified a set of fundamental cognitive structures (or
‘worldviews’) that act as orientations to cultural difference. The worldviews vary from more ethnocentric to more
ethnorelative. According to the DMIS theory, more enthnorelative worldviews have more potential to generate the
attitudes, knowledge, and behavior that constitute intercultural competence (Interpreting Your Intercultural
Development Inventory (IDI) Profile, IDI Training materials, page 1). Information on the IDI can be accessed at
www.intercultural.org/idi/idi