In this activity, participants watch a video about an imaginary "world village" that embraces cultural differences and compare it to their own experiences.

In this activity, participants are asked to assume the role of a character described in a text and attempt to empathize with them by acting out their thoughts, behaviors, and personality traits. 

In this activity, participants will connect what they already know about a presented topic to determine what they want to learn. Then, they will reflect on what they have learned about themselves and others as a result of this activity. 

In this activity, participants will be presented with an incident, and they will act out the scenario in order to empathize with different roles. 

In this activity, students will investigate an issue (like family roles, holidays, pets, etc.) related to a particular culture and then compare it to their own culture.

This reflection framework will enable participants to more deeply question intercultural issues and synthesize ideas. 

In this activity, participants examine a variety of texts on the same topic and discuss each of the text's interpretations in relation to their own experiences. 

In this activity, participants practice listening to other's experiences and perspectives by observing each other during conversation. 

In this activity, students will consider how their grandparents might answer questions like, "How do you greet friends?" or "What do you find funny?" The goal is for them to begin understanding how culture changes over time. 

This media resource depicts the key skills needed for successful intercultural communication. 

Wehner, A. K., Gump, A. W., & Downey, S. (2011). The effects of Second Life on the motivation of undergraduate students learning a foreign language. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 24(3), 277-289.

This research looks at how the use of the virtual world Second Life affects the motivation of students in an undergraduate Spanish course. Comparisons were made on responses to an attitude/motivation test battery completed by students enrolled in two sections of a beginning level undergraduate Spanish course. 

Ibanez, M. B., García, J. J., Galán, S., Maroto, D., Morillo, D., & Kloos, C. D. (2010, July). Multi-user 3D virtual environment for Spanish learning: A Wonderland experience. In 2010 10th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (pp. 455-457). IEEE.

The authors have used the Wonderland development toolkit to deploy a 3D virtual learning environment, which is flexible enough to allow learners to improve their language skills with minimum teacher's help, setting up an instructional sequence in which fostered, motivating, and pre-designed collaboration is the key for self-learning.

Shively, R. L. (2010). From the virtual world to the real world: A model of pragmatics instruction for study abroad. Foreign Language Annals, 43(1), 105-137.

The goal of the present study is to propose a model for pragmatic instruction in study abroad that fosters both intercultural competence and language skills, is informed by research and practice, and takes advantage of the affordances that an immersion environment and new technologies offer. 

I highly recommend the modules offered by CoreCollaborative International in collaboration with Crossing Borders Education. They use an innovative method and evidence-based best practices and have been demonstrated with research at Glasgow University to be highly effective in engaging students (increasing retention of elective course participants from 40-95%). 

Some excerpts from student comments in the Glasgow study:

• The group that I was allocated to were from different backgrounds. We shared our fears, goals and we even opened up and talked about our daily issues. I felt as if I knew the other students before.

• The workshop yesterday was particularly emotional, as every participant in my group was able to open up its heart, to share its deepest feelings, fears and hopes without fear of being judged. Furthermore, the topics addressed offered an opportunity to reflect and practice immediately, offering a new perspective on things: for example, much has been said about women feeling unsafe around men at times, which made me reflect on how my behaviour could have, at times, been misinterpreted as “threatening” or “source of anxiety”. 

As is obvious from these student comments, through these modules, learners share in meaningful peer learning across difference. The modules use an innovative patent-pending methodology that encourages participants to engage interactively with peers in transformative learning activities and discussions. The "Virtual Fishbowl Process" is based on a four-step Modeling-Reflection-Dialogue-Debriefing paradigm. 

Embedding this module within existing courses supports campus comprehensive internationalization and campus climate improvement initiatives, as it connects students of different backgrounds both locally and abroad. The intercultural learning material is relevant across many disciplines, with content that is applicable to courses on many different topics. Group sizes are flexible, and instructors can facilitate the content themselves or outsource that mentoring to highly skilled facilitators.

The duration of the stereotypes module is 10 hours (3 weeks of micro-lessons and facilitated small group meetings). The cost, which can be covered by an institution or passed on to students as a "textbook" or "lab" fee, is $75 per student. 

The link above takes you to a contact form for more information. See also:

https:/crossingborders.education

http://corecollaborative.com 

Here are the slides from my recent Forum on Education Abroad presentation with Jen Wiley (James Madison University) and Carine Ullom (Ottawa University). 

This link sends you to a Google Doc compiled by Dr. Carine Ullom, Associate Dean of Instructional Innovation at Ottawa University that contains a very comprehensive and well-organized list of resources for COIL/VE/GCTL. She kindly shared this with the public at a recent presentation I did with her at the virtual Forum on Education Abroad conference. 

This podcast episode features Sofia Fenner, an assistant professor of political science at Bryn Mawr College. She uses comparative politics to explain why some countries are handling the COVID-19 better than others. 

This article describes the differences in reactions between more stable countries—like the United States and the United Kingdom—and politically unstable, war-torn countries, like Afghanistan and Syria. Individuals living in less stable areas more often accept that their conditions are out of their control and therefore tend to live in the moment and listen to guidelines about sheltering in place because they are already used to everyday uncertainty. In contrast, people who live in more privileged areas are more likely to believe that they have control over their lives and therefore have a more difficult time to adjusting and following orders. 

Pirius, L. K. (2007). Massively multiplayer online game virtual environments: A potential locale for intercultural training. Unpublished dissertation;  University of Minnesota. 

The purpose of this study is to address the educational problem of current intercultural training methods being location based, expensive, and relatively inaccessible. To address the problem, this study aims to explore the possibility of utilizing massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) to deliver intercultural training. This study ends with a recommended model for intercultural training in a virtual environment. The model includes the process for engaging in intercultural training, as well as, necessary training components. The components include being grounded in intercultural training theory, interaction, reflection, group work, respect and trust, role-playing, a safe learning environment, a focus on developing skill, and external documents for continued learning outside of formal training.

This article takes a nuanced look at multicultural teams and what causes them to either succeed or fail. It provides an exigence for intercultural training and demonstrates how diversity alone cannot improve professional team and company performance.

This is a collection of research that demonstrates how racial diversity is financially beneficial to companies/businesses. 

This study demonstrates how high status/authority within a workplace can mitigate the negative effects of gender dissimilarity on individual job performance. 

This article presents research that shows how companies with multicultural leadership were also highly successful financially. 

This is a dissertation that explores how both nationality and authority/status affect individual job performance as well as someone's ability to work successfully in teams. 

"A New World Through My Window" is a personal essay written by Olga Tokarczuk who is from Wroclaw, Poland. Tokarczuk writes about what she sees as she looks out her window during quarantine as well as her thoughts and fears about what is to become of the world after the pandemic.