Intercultural Communication Institute

This workshop will explore the ways in which culture learning and intercultural development can be facilitated in international education programs using both text-based and web-based resources. Using two complementary and state-of-the-art approaches, the Maximizing Study Abroad text and the What’s Up With Culture Internet resource, the authors will suggest innovative approaches for using them before, during, and following sojourns.

Designed for
International and intercultural education professionals, intercultural trainers, and anyone interested in utilizing a broad range of resources in preparing individuals to successfully and appropriately cross cultural boundaries.

Review recent impact studies examining best practices in international education
Compare and contrast text- and web-based resources for supporting culture learning
Analyze how multiple approaches can be integrated into intercultural training programs
Examine useful assessments for facilitating cultural self-awareness and development
Identify relevant resources for educators and trainers in topic areas such as global nomads, cultural competency, values, intercultural conflict, etc.
Develop strategies for training design incorporating text- and web-based resources applied to their context

Learning Activities
These will include:

Interactive lecture-discussions
Small group/team program design activities
Development of case studies for online and in-class analysis
Hands-on practice with a variety of inventories (Learning Styles Inventory, Language Learning Inventory, Strategies Inventory for Learning Culture, Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory) that can be used in virtual and face-to-face programs
Demonstration of training modules with selected text- and web-based resources

Faculty: Bruce La Brack and R. Michael Paige

Dr. Bruce La Brack, a cultural anthropologist and South Asian specialist, has traveled to over eighty countries and worked abroad in India, England, Uganda, and Japan. For the past three decades he has taught at the University of the Pacific, Stockton, California, where he designed and conducted the integrated orientation and reentry programs for study abroad. He is the director of Pacific’s Institute for Cross-Cultural Training and chair of their Master of Arts in Intercultural Relations program, offered with ICI. He co-edits the Training Section of the International Journal of Intercultural Relations. Bruce has published extensively on cultural adjustment issues, especially the reentry process, including the chapter “The Missing Linkage: Orientation and Reentry Programs” in Education for the Intercultural Experience. He is the primary author and editor of the “What’s Up With Culture?” website (www.pacific.edu/culture), a free Internet resource for preparing U.S. American study-abroad students going to and returning from an international experience.

Dr. R. Michael Paige is a professor of international and intercultural education in the Department of Educational Policy and Administration at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. A returned U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer (Turkey, 1965-1967), Michael has also lived and worked in Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Kenya, and Hong Kong. In 2003-2004, he was a visiting professor at Nagoya University and at the University of South Australia. He has authored numerous books and articles, including Maximizing Study Abroad: A Student’s Guide to Strategies for Language and Culture Learning and Use, Culture as the Core: Perspectives on Culture in Second Language Learning, and Education for the Intercultural Experience. Michael co-edits the training section of the International Journal of Intercultural Relations (IJIR), was guest editor and contributor to the special 2004 IJIR issue on intercultural development, and authored the chapter “Instrumentation in Intercultural Training” in the 3rd edition of the Handbook of Intercultural Training. He is the co-director, with Gerald Fry, of the nationwide SAGE (Study Abroad for Global Engagement) research program funded by the U.S. Department of Education.