Intercultural Communication Institute

18 | Training at the Edge: Experiential Tools for Intercultural Learning

At its best, learning is a beneficial search for surprise and a process that leaves us changed, yet we often create education programs that teach us to avoid surprise at all costs. This workshop will approach training from the learner’s perspective, will embrace surprise, and will explore ways to achieve intercultural learning through experiential processes.

Designed for
Trainers, facilitators, team/workgroup leaders, educators, and others interested in learning how to “explode” traditional content about diversity and intercultural issues in order to create experiential processes that deepen learning.

Explore what learning is and our impulse toward safety in learning situations
Understand the difference between transactional and transformational learning
Utilize unique experiential training tools
Explore finite and infinite games
Create training curricula that are experience driven
Move from intellectual learning to embodied learning
Learn to teach core intercultural concepts through experiential processes
Learn how to avoid splitting their intentions when designing training programs
Be surprised and get messy

Learning Activities
This course will be 85% experiential in nature, and will include:

Storytelling and organizational narrative
Ritual, masks, patterns, theatre, art, and music
Metaphor, symbol, and improvisation
Movement, mapping, and spatial awareness
The knowledge and insights co-created in the session itself
Unexpected opportunities and found materials
Wicked problems and tame solutions

Faculty: Patricia Digh
Associate Faculty: David Robinson

Patricia Digh is an intercultural consultant whose clients have included DaimlerChrysler, JP Morgan Chase, Discovery Communications, PBS, American Red Cross, and American Cancer Society. She was formerly the vice president of International and Diversity Programs for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). She serves on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Asheville and is co-founder of The Circle Project, a collaborative focused on organizations as storytelling systems, engaging people in experiential learning around diversity issues and methods for personal learning and organizational change. Patti has published over seventy-five articles on intercultural and diversity issues, and she is a co-author of Global Literacies: Lessons on Business Leadership and National Cultures and, most recently, The Global Diversity Desk Reference.

David Robinson’s twenty years of professional directing experience help him design programs utilizing theatre techniques and creative processes. David has been artistic director of The Dimensions Theatre Project, general manager of The Seattle Shakespeare Company, and artist-in-residence for the Lincoln Unified School District. He has served as curriculum consultant for Macmillan-McGraw Hill, The Teachers' Curriculum Institute, and Lincoln and Hayward Unified Schools, and is adjunct faculty at Antioch University.

Patti and David are co-founders of The Circle Project, a collaborative focused on exploring organizations as storytelling systems, engaging people in experiential learning around diversity issues and methods for personal learning and organizational change.