Faculty Workshops on Intercultural Teaching & Course Design

Overview:

This series of workshops provided the participants with the techniques for incorporating intercultural perspectives in their curriculum, and the facilitation skills that are useful for in an intercultural classroom. Participants also gained a better understanding on the pedagogical good practices for engaging students in their intercultural classroom.

Workshop 1: Course Design for the Intercultural Classroom (23 May, 09:30 – 12:30)

Instructors at HKUST are frequently called upon to include international perspectives in the curriculum, design learning activities that promote global engagement among students, and to teach students from multiple cultural and disciplinary backgrounds. The goal of this session is to introduce participants to a set of learning activities and strategies that they will be able to use when interculturalizing the curriculum or teaching across cultures. During the three-hour workshop, participants will (1) reflect on how culture influences teaching and learning norms in the classroom; (2) design and facilitate learning activities to promote local and global engagement across cultures among their students; and (3) debrief case studies that illustrate different communication styles in the classroom.

We will also introduce the Intercultural Teaching Competence (ITC) Framework, a tool for instructor reflection, the ITC framework introduces 20 foundational, facilitation and curriculum design competencies that instructors can incorporate into their practice as they engage students in intercultural learning across the disciplines.

PowerPoint Presentation Handout Video

Workshop 2: Facilitating Group Work in Diverse Classrooms (24 May, 09:30 – 12:30)

Active learning in today’s classrooms engages students in teamwork and collaboration across cultures and disciplines. Research on multicultural teams has shown that these teams may feel less comfortable, but perform better than homogenous teams. During the session we will explore a set of learning activities and tools that faculty can use when facilitating group work in their disciplines. Participants will (1) learn concrete strategies to scaffold group assignments and help students navigate the interpersonal challenges of cross-cultural collaboration (2) design activities to promote interaction among their students and (3) help students articulate what they learn from intercultural team experiences.

PowerPoint Presentation Handout Video

Workshop 3: Supervision and Mentorship Across Cultures (25 May, 12:30 – 14:00)

Faculty members and their graduate students at HKUST collaborate across cultures on international research teams and in their supervisory meetings every day. Students and faculty may hold vastly different assumptions about the nature of the supervisor/mentee role, have differing expectations about the level of initiative or independence; and use different approaches to resolving conflict and giving feedback. Using case studies and recent research on cross-cultural supervision, participants will (1) engage in discussion of effective strategies that supervisors can use to navigate cultural differences in communication styles, (2) identify the key factors that contribute to effective communication in productive, cohesive research teams, and (3) discuss strategies for mentoring students across cultures along their graduate journey.

PowerPoint Presentation Handout Video

About the Speakers:

Dr. Nanda Dimitrov is the Acting Director of the Teaching Support Centre and adjunct research scholar in the Centre for Research on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education at Western University. Her work as an educational developer focuses on graduate education, mentorship across cultures, and intercultural education. Her recent publications have explored disciplinary communication competence, the impact of International TA training programs, and intercultural teaching competence.

Aisha Haque is the Language and Communication Instructor at Western University’s Teaching Support Centre and an associated researcher at the Centre for Research on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (Faculty of Education). Drawing on her background in equity pedagogies, she supports the development of intercultural teaching competence among graduate students. Her recent research has explored the benefits of discipline-specific approaches to TA training and the application of intercultural teaching competence across the disciplines.

All Faculty Members and Teaching Staff are welcome