A popular method for generating beginning intercultural conversations is to assign fictional cultural characteristics and then to ask participants to interact according to the rules of their assigned culture.  Several variations of this type of exercise have been published under different names.

A search of the internet reveals many ways to use the I Am poem template.

Activities that would be good for a pre-departure course on cross-cultural awareness and interaction

In Dr. Tara Harvey's blog for January 29, 2019, she notes, "...intercultural competence is all about values—our own and others’. Intercultural conflicts are really, at the core, conflicts in values." So how do we teach students to think deeply about what their values are and how they interact with people who have similar and different sets of values?  This collection contains intercultural learning tools designed to cause students to think about their values and those of others.
 

Much is being talked and written about as to how we can develop "grit" in our students. Recently in a eulogy for Tyler Trent, the Boilermaker perhaps most often in the news during the Fall of 2018, Purdue's President Mitch Daniels (2019) defined grit as "diligence, persistence and the resilience to face life's inevitable adversity with fortitude." Daniels said that Tyler Trent was "grit personified.  Dealt a hand worse than anyone here is facing, or God willing ever will, never stopped working, or fighting, or moving ahead." This is what we mean by grit.

For more on grit, Hoerr's 2012 article for Educational Leadership, entitled "Got Grit?" is a good place to start. He begins, "Every child needs to encounter frustration and failure to learn to step back, reassess and try again" and then goes on to explain why.  

In intercultural learning, we often talk about emotional resilience, which seems to be a combination of grit and comfort with ambiguity.  Abarbanel (2009) advises that students who travel abroad need to have "an 'emotional passport'" to help them to "regulate intense emotional challenges experienced in cultural transitions."  Waters (2013) provides a list of the "10 Traits of Emotionally Resilient People" which is useful whether or not one is in an education abroad context.

What follows is a collection of tools found in the Intercultural Learning Hub (HubICL) for the teaching of emotional resilience, which might be used to increase the grit and comfort with ambiguity of our students.

A collection of materials which strengthens the argument for the necessity of mentored reflection as a vital part of intercultural growth during the study abroad experience

This is a collection of diversity and inclusion materials that allow for intercultural learning around the facets of the AAC&U VALUE Rubric for Intercultural Learning and Knowledge.

According to the AAC&U VALUE rubric for Intercultural Knowledge and Competence, the skill of empathy can be learned.  This collection includes presentations created to help learners develop this skill.