This activity focuses on teaching participants how to develop self-care guides that are inclusive of individuals from a variety of backgrounds. 

This discussion starter challenges participants to reflect upon how we (often unknowingly) put new people into categories. These categories can determine how we form relationships. 

This activity teaches the common intercultural concept of the iceberg and visible/invisible culture. 

This informative lecture, with accompanying PowerPoint, explains the intercultural metaphors of culture as an onion, an iceberg, a fish in water, lenses, and several others.

This in-depth activity teaches participants the value of different perspectives and practices their communication skills as they work with different perspectives.  Our staff had originally used Meteorite as part of a teamwork certificate series with STEM students; however, the lack of scientific accuracy in the details of the exercise caused the students to spend more time decrying its inaccuracies than learning from its larger meaning. With these difficulties in mind, CILMAR's intercultural learning specialist, Dr. Dan Jones, re-wrote Meteorite and named the new exercise Ice Sculpture. 

This simulation has participants practice their verbal and nonverbal communication, decision-making, and suspending their judgment to work with others to figure out a solution with limited information. 

Participants in this activity will consider an "elephant experience" and how to promote diversity in the workplace.

Participants using this media resource will learn how narratives and stories, such as "single stories," are reflective of our stereotypes.

This reflective activity will ask participants to imagine another point of view and reflect on empathy. 

Participants in this activity will describe the cultural and emotional meaning of a song with a person of another culture. 

The Parable is a well-known activity that teaches participants about their cultural values. In the Downloads section of the tool, CILMAR has added two new versions of the parable—“A Modern Parable” and “A Lab Parable."

Using Purdue University President Mitch Daniel's 2018 commencement speech and NPR's "Should We Have Empathy for Those We Hate," this activity explains tribalism and empathy.

This simulation, created by Aletha Stahl, is an adaptation of Journey to Sharahad. Participants role play intercultural communication barriers.

Man on Fire tells the story of a white minister, Charles Moore, who set himself on fire in 2014 to protest the racism in his small town of Grand Saline, TX. The film uses his act as a vehicle 1)  to explore what small town racism looks like in contemporary America and 2) to question the efficacy of his death in changing the situation.

This activity teaches participants to: 1. Understand different perspectives, build empathy, and become aware of privilege and how it affects power dynamics. 2. Learn why privilege matters and how it impacts their lives. 3. Develop skills in communication, self-management, self-awareness, and building relationships with others. 

This activity teaches participants to: 1. Examine their personal and social networks. 2. Reflect on the relationships in their lives, gaps in these relationships, and their diversity. 3. Brainstorm ways to fill in their relationship gaps and improve their diversity. 4. Analyze their own self-awareness of relationships and diversity.

This activity uses the Atlantic article, "These are the Americans Who Live in a Bubble" to teach participants to: 1. Identify the communities that expose them to sameness and to difference. 2. Define "deep relationships." 3. Assess their opportunities and readiness for deeper relationships across difference.

The ability to adapt in new or unfamiliar situations is a crucial life skill. However, in cross-cultural interactions, it can be difficult to decide when we should adapt to a different culture’s expectations, or when it might be more appropriate to refrain from enacting unfamiliar customs and norms. Therefore, the goal of this activity is to guide participants through this decision-making process (using Stella Ting-Toomey's model of Transcultural Communication Competence) and allow them to understand and reflect on their ability to adapt.

For this activity, participants use picture cards to learn how to identify familiar and unfamiliar cultural experiences, exhibit curiosity in unfamiliar cultural practices, articulate deep cultural knowledge for outsiders, and practice emotional resilience and tolerance of ambiguity.

Rejection sensitivity, a term that originates in the field of psychology, is when a person expects and reacts intensely to rejection because of past traumatic experiences. This activity aims to examine rejection sensitivity that stems from past experiences related to identity (for example, discrimination based on gender, race, sexuality, etc.). Participants will be asked to think about their own identities and how they might experience or contribute to sensitivity to rejection, for themselves and/or others.

This activity is based on the Intercultural Development Continuum™ (IDC), which was created by IDI, LLC. Participants will identify statements indicative of various orientations on the Intercultural Development Continuum and reflect on connections between the orientations and their own life experiences. 

This activity is based on the equilintegration (EI) theory, which explains the process through which humans construct a belief and values system by interacting with the world around them to get their needs met. This activity asks participants to consider how variables—like geography, race/ethnicity, gender, economic/social class, or physical ability—interact with environmental or contextual factors, such as family, media, or education, interact to form one’s EI self.

This activity is designed for students who are preparing to study abroad. Students may receive an overwhelming amount of advice before they go abroad, so this activity is meant to help them prioritize and determine what is most important to them. This activity may also help them rethink their priorities or their perceptions of what it means to study abroad, as they may encounter information that had not occurred to them before.

We all have experienced moments where we just can’t seem to understand each other. Moments of miscommunication commonly occur in our everyday interactions, and cultural differences can sometimes further complicate these situations. Therefore, this activity is designed to get participants thinking about not only how miscommunication happens but also how understanding culture can help us to mitigate scenarios where misunderstandings occur. 

Human behavior is complex. While it may be tempting to attribute someone’s actions to “human nature” or some sort of individual quirk, it’s usually not so simple. Therefore, this activity aims to get participants thinking critically about three dimensions (universal, cultural, or personal) of human behavior and the nuances between them.

This activity is based on Jamil Zaki’s concept of the empathy gym, which he discusses on the podcasts Hidden Brain and Clear + Vivid. In those episodes, Zaki describes how he developed empathic skills as a child of divorced parents with two very different sets of values and priorities. He also discusses the positive and negative aspects of empathy in addition to providing some techniques that anyone could use to increase their level of empathy. This activity adapts one of those techniques, which he calls “Disagree Better,” and provides participants with tools for better understanding and empathizing with individuals who they may disagree with.

This is a self-scoring 18-question assessment instrument. Given its self-scoring nature, this assessment will help individuals or teams develop greater awareness of the components of active and empathic listening.  Used in tandem with a debrief or as a discussion starter, it may also create awareness of others' listening skills or help trigger empathy.

This rubric allows instructors to assess communication (clarity and depth), openness (breadth & fairness), and self-awareness (ability to describe one's own academic engagement & personal growth). It also allows learners or instructors to recognize the elements of good critical reflection.

This assessment measures writers' reflections in journals or blogs using five categories of data: culture shock, communication challenge, cultural appreciation, cross-cultural comparison, and adaptive behavior.

Faculty or staff who complete the Intercultural Pedagogy curriculum will develop the capacity to be a more effective cultural mentor to students while leading study abroad. 

This free resource is meant to be used as a worksheet for individual reflection that applies the metaphor of a pendulum to the Intercultural Development Continuum for a more robust and realistic sense of one's intercultural competence, the outside forces/events/environmental factors that pull one towards a focus on similarity and difference (magnets), and the strategies and behaviors one can employ to stay balanced (anchors). 

This one-credit online course is open to select Engineering and College of Science students, who will return to Purdue for a minimum of one additional semester. While abroad, students will complete supplemental readings and guided assignments which will document their study abroad learning and create a portfolio of individual skill acquisition; thereby increasing cultural self-awareness and an ability to work effectively with people from other cultures. 

As a result of this activity, participants will be able to explain that curiosity is a skill that has to be honed and developed like any other skill; understand that general curiosity translates easily into cultural curiosity; comprehend that it is important to dig beneath the surface, developing curiosity not just about the ‘what’ of culture but also the ‘how’ and ‘why'; and reflect on the process of forming deeper questions about cultural difference.

As a result of this activity, participants will be able to discuss the process of naturalization; discover how individualism, collectivism, assimilation, and xenophobia factor into naturalization; and explain the idea of "belonging" to a place and outline their own sense of "belonging."

This activity enables participants to define the concept of "critical mass" and analyze photos for critical mass, inclusion/exclusion, and stereotypes.

During this activity, participants, define empathy, consider how perspectives toward empathy changed, examine the difference between empathy and tribalism, and learn what the "dark side of empathy" means. 

This activity aims to help participants respond to being treated as a "stereotypical" representative of their home countries, as well as help them learn how to fit in more in their new host culture. Along the way, they will also gain practice in forming testable hypotheses, an analytic skill applicable to many careers.

The purpose of this reflective exercise is to allow the sojourner to begin to "take leave" of the study abroad destination, and make meaning of the experience. If done in small groups or with one's host family, it can also increase empathy for other viewpoints and emotional experiences.

This assessment measures respect, openness, empathy, and tolerance of ambiguity. It can be used as a formative assessment to set the tone for appropriate and effective behavior in any group of culture-crossers. It can also be used by an observer or instructor to grade behavior(s) of an individual or a group. Triangulation of observed behavior with expressed self-assessment can, in the hands of a good debriefer or coach, lead to strong "a-ha" moments.

This syllabus for a 1-credit course offered through Purdue's School of Languages and Cultures was designed for both students who enrolled for credit and for language instructors who joined out of professional interest. Weekly meetings alternated between a focus on theoretical texts and on pedagogical tools and facilitation strategies.

This activity is often introduced with a focus on privilege, e.g., "nationality privilege, race privilege, gender privilege," etc. This version is designed to lead participants to an understanding of privilege as unearned advantage without initial use of the term. Delaying the use of the term may allow participants whose instinct is to shut down, to experience immediate deep feelings of guilt, and/or to focus on their family's use of "privilege" as something earned to engage more fully with the experience of collecting Legos. 

This activity allows participants to introduce themselves to other classmates/group members, as well as consider cultural factors that led to their study abroad experience. It is designed for students who are studying abroad.

This activity enables participants to contemplate and explain their culture-learning goals for their time during their semester abroad, develop logical and consistent plans to attain goals, and identify multiple approaches for attaining goals. It is designed for students who are studying abroad.

This activity requires participants to ask deeper questions and interact with members from a different culture; find culturally significant objects and places; and seek out and articulate answers to questions about culturally specific objects and places in a way that reflects multiple cultural perspectives. It is designed for students who are studying abroad.

This activity requires participants to observe people from another culture and practice complimenting others, reflect on connections between verbal and nonverbal responses and cultural factors that dictate social norms in the host culture, and recognize and participate in cultural differences in verbal and nonverbal communication. It is designed for students who are studying abroad.

This activity incorporates readings and two activities aimed at getting participants to think about the cultural values that define who we are by examining their own identity and values. It is designed for students who are studying abroad.

This activity enables participants to identify the five qualities that they view as most important in your career field, discuss and compare their qualities with another person's, recognize the role cultural values play in informing and defining professional norms and practices, and practice perspective-taking in considering worldviews other than their own regarding professional cultural values and acting in a supportive manner that recognizes the feelings of another cultural group. It is designed for students who are studying abroad.

This activity asks participants to use the SWOT analysis method to critically analyze and revise intercultural and linguistic goals set at the beginning of the semester abroad experience. It also allows them to practice deeper reflection on weaknesses and challenges in order to make informed revisions to those goals, critically consider the influence of their context and assumptions on goal setting, and prioritize evidence and perspectives to draw logical conclusions in the revision of past goals.

During this activity, participants will reflect on their impressions of their career field and compare them with the views of their host country, develop a better understanding of the complexity of elements important to members of another culture in regard to worldview, and ask deeper questions about other cultures and seek out answers to these questions. It is designed for students who are studying abroad.

This activity requires participants to interview a professional from their host country, explain how their chosen career and educational path function in a different country, and synthesize or draw conclusions by combining examples, facts, or theories from more than one field of study or perspective. It is designed for students who are studying abroad.

This activity asks participants to reflect on their experiences working in teams and examine communication and intercultural issues that can arise when working in teams. It also requires them to practice identifying sources of behaviors using Hofstede's Power Distance Index, practice reflection and application of teamwork strengths to improve teamwork in a hypothetical situation, and draw connections between the practice of these skills in the hypothetical to real-world applications specific to the culture in which they are studying abroad. The activity is designed for students who are studying abroad.

This activity requires participants to identify two to three skills that a company/job requires on a career posting and discuss ways that the skill-level increased during, and because of experiences from, the semester abroad. They will also formulate an interview response in which one of the skills identified can be linked to an intercultural skill and develop a brief story following the STAR method, and create at least two intercultural questions to ask an interviewer. The activity is designed for students who are studying abroad.

This assessment measures the extent to which participants believe that cultural influences on one's beliefs, attitudes, and behavior are controllable or uncontrollable. It can be used formatively (assessment for learning) to inform curriculum design, summatively, in a pre/posttest format (assessment of learning) to measure growth as the result of a learning intervention, or as part of the learning process (assessment as learning) in which results are debriefed and discussed with learners as a group.

This assessment measures participants' general sense of belongingness and loneliness. The iLEAD version of these two tools was created to assess visiting scholars' sense of loneliness and belongingness. The wording in this survey is specific to the university hosting this program. Edits will be necessary to adapt it to other contexts.

This activity uses board games to help participants recognize different aspects of indirect communication styles, develop mental empathy and teamwork skills, and navigate cultural context.

This icebreaker activity helps participants to develop awareness of others as both individuals and cultural beings and build empathy and a sense of team identity by listening and sharing. It is best done with pairs who will be working together afterwards, for example: lab partners or project teammates.

This activity was created as part of a Purdue University Spring Break study abroad program, Amsterdam: Creative Thinking & Innovation in Collaborative Leadership. It allows participants to develop a better understanding of their stressors and how to deal with stress during a study abroad program.

This creativity-training activity was designed for a Spring Break study abroad program at Purdue University titled Amsterdam: Creative Thinking & Innovation in Collaborative Leadership. Specifically, it was designed to help travelling students their airport "down time" productively. It enables participants to enact connections between science, creativity, teamwork, and intercultural competence; take risks; embrace contradictions; as well as connect, synthesize, and transform.

This activity enables participants to define empathy, recognize how we develop empathy for fictional characters, discuss the relationship between empathy and culture, and articulate how empathy for fictional characters might translate to empathy for real people or situations.

This activity requires participants to articulate a nuanced understanding of one domain of intercultural knowledge and competence from the AAC&U Intercultural Knowledge and Competence VALUE Rubric, list activities that will help them personally develop in that domain, and identify evidence that signals they have personally developed in that domain. 

After completing this activity, participants will be able to understand the complexity of elements important to members of another culture in relation to its history, values, politics, communication styles, economy, or beliefs and practices; better formulate and articulate their own worldview, and recognize how these elements affect the formation of a person's worldview.

During this activity, participants will critically analyze and interpret the music and lyrics of a culturally significant song, reflect on the significant role of cultural and societal critique, engage with a song via their worldview and the worldview of others, and understand the complexity of worldview elements important to members of their own and other cultures.

Intercultural learning experts agree that developing empathy for those who are different from us is a key component of intercultural competence. However, are there ever cases where extending empathy would be inappropriate or detrimental? This activity asks participants to consider two sides of one coin: 1. Times when they have extended empathy and connected with people who were different from them; and 2. Moments when they have chosen to not extend empathy. 

In this activity, using a YouTube video titled, What I Learned from President Obama, participants will be able to identify elements of civil discourse, reflect on the meaning and importance of civil discourse, reflect critically on their own ability to conduct civil discourse, and imagine future scenarios engaging in civil discourse.

This activity asks participants to analyze bias and assumptions during an interview by taking the perspective of both interviewer and interviewee. They will consider how each person felt during the interaction and how it could have went differently. 

This activity asks participants to examine emojis through a cultural lens. They will first discuss the relationship between emojis and culture. Then, they will consider what emojis teach us about different cultures and why representation matters.

This activity enables participants to articulate definitions of empathy and intercultural empathy and apply the concept of intercultural empathy to improve a problematic situation.

This reflective activity enables participants to develop awareness of the complexity of culture while celebrating similarities and differences. It also helps them to ask complex questions about other cultures and articulate answers that reflect multiple cultural perspectives.

This activity uses board games to help participants develop an understanding of their own worldview values, discover their peers' values through interactive interviews and games, engage with peer groups of other cultures, ad practice teamwork skills. 

In this activity, participants watch and analyze the play Hamilton to develop awareness of their own cultural rules and biases and conduct research and critically analyze media that will help shape their response to cultural biases.

This activity uses the movie Jojo Rabbit to help participants build skills in order to work well with people from other parts of the world as well as to emotionally connect and engage with people from other cultures. It also enables them to develop an ability to understand other perspectives and feelings.

In this activity, participants compare and contrast features of houses around the world; articulate how and why cultures organize spaces, such as homes, differently; and consider when and how to adapt to different spaces.

In this activity, participants listen to an episode of the podcast Gravy in order to help them define intersectionality and recognize why it's an important concept to understand. They also discuss how intersecting or overlapping identities can lead to internal and/or familial conflict as well as discrimination and disadvantage.  

This activity enables participants to interrogate the tone and common tropes used in the United States media and reflect on how that media may cause them to view other cultures in a particular way. They will also identify examples in mainstream media that negatively portray groups and people and apply what they learned when they consume media in the future. 

This activity enables participants to articulate relationships between components of metaphor theory, such as targets and sources; analyze common underlying cultural metaphors for abstract concepts (e.g., love, friendship, time); and Compare and contrast metaphorical understandings of the same concepts from different cultural perspectives.

This activity brings together Sisneros et al.’s (2008) Web of Oppression, the concept of intersectionality, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The lesson presents two options for discussing the relationship between intersectionality, the Web of Oppression, and issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic:

• In Option 1, participants are provided with a short reading about intersectionality and several articles on how COVID-19 has impacted different marginalized groups. Then, using the Web of Oppression, they will discuss how people with interconnected, marginalized identities face greater health and economic consequences as a result of the pandemic. The approach is primarily cognitive. 
• In Option 2, participants will do their own research on how different communities represented on the Web of Oppression have been affected by COVID-19. Then, after watching two videos, they will discuss the term intersectionality and how it connects to the Web of Oppression and issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The approach is more constructivist. 

This activity asks participants to write an essay defining, applying, and critiquing the term intersectionality. To prepare for writing this essay, participants will read several documents. In the first part of their essay, participants will juxtapose these readings and do a bit of research to discuss the history of the term “intersectionality” and to demonstrate how the concept is applied in a current social justice movement. They will then read critiques so that, in the second part, they can discuss their own position on the possibilities and limits of the intersectionality for advancing the goals of a social movement they care about.

The discussion guide in this activity provides questions that highlight the relationship between tradition, values and identity portrayed in the movie Whale Rider. After viewing the movie, participants will discuss these questions and reflect on how they see some of the themes play out in their own lives.

There is often a tendency to equate culture with nationality. However, cultural behaviors, values, and identities often transcend national borders, or many different cultures can coexist within the same country. Therefore, this activity asks participants to consider how culture is both bigger and smaller than nationality by first mapping out subgroups within a particular country and then identifying cultural identities that eclipse the national border and appear throughout the continent/region surrounding that country. 

Counter-storytelling, a method often used in critical race theory, highlights the stories of individuals who are marginalized within society. It aims to push back against dominant narratives that often privilege certain voices over others.

This activity introduces the concept of counter-storytelling through the points of view of Asian/Asian American individuals who have experienced racialized microaggressions. Participants will first read excerpts from Yeo et al. (2019) and watch three videos that depict Asian/Asian American perspectives on the microaggressions they endure because of their race. Then, they will discuss these videos as examples of counter-stories and identify what they can learn from these perspectives. 

In 1902, sociologist Charles Horton Cooley coined the concept the “Looking Glass Self,” which he describes as an interactive process where our perceptions of ourselves are determined by how we believe others see us. We first imagine how we appear to others. Then, others react to us and we interpret those reactions and adjust our self-image accordingly.

This activity uses the Looking Glass Self to enable participants to reflect on how they view themselves in relation to how they believe others perceive them. They will first draw two self-portraits—one that represents how they see themselves and the other that represents how they believe others see them—and write labels surrounding those portraits to further capture their perceptions. Then, they will debrief and reflect in small groups and as an entire group.

In this workshop, participants define intercultural learning, compare analogies for culture, and identify domains from the AAC&U Intercultural Knowledge & Competence VALUE Rubric and apply them as learning outcomes for experiential activities. 

In this activity, participants will discuss the concept of emotional labor and reflect on the emotional labor that they and others perform in various situations. They will first think of a situation where they felt intense feelings and then discuss what it would be like to have to either suppress those feelings or pretend that they shared those feelings with someone else. This will then lead into a discussion about coping with situations where emotional labor is required.

In this activity, participants will first analyze an “Emotion Labor in Careers” case study in small groups. Then, they will design their own case for the future occupation of one or more participants in their groups using the existing cases as a model.

Real-time word cloud builders can be used to generate discussion surrounding intercultural learning concepts. This activity provides general guidance for how facilitators can use word clouds to get participants talking about intercultural learning concepts in both face-to-face and virtual environments. These word clouds will demonstrate themes/patterns in the participants thinking about the concept, as well as the concept’s complexity.

In this activity, participants will engage with an intercultural concept, continuum, or scale to articulate the complexity surrounding cultural norms. Participants will go on a media scavenger hunt where they will look for examples that demonstrate a “typical” value or norm associated with their culture. Then, they will search for counter-examples that defy that norm.

One aspect of cultural difference is the use of land/space, which is often dictated by both formal laws and informal practices. This activity uses regional variation in what are called fence laws (“fence in” or “fence out”) to get participants talking about how their own and other cultures think about and use land/space. The facilitator will first introduce the concept of fence in/fence out and provide examples from both ends of the spectrum. Then, participants will identify where their own culture falls on the spectrum and reflect on how historical and cultural norms/values determine the use of land/space.

A recent trend in corporate marketing is to attract consumers through social responsibility. This strategy typically involves demonstrating how the company makes a difference in the community or raising awareness of a social justice issue related to the product or service that the company sells. This activity focuses on commercials created by two different companies—Gilette and Egard—and how those commercials use social responsibility to promote cultural values and beliefs surrounding masculinity.

This activity helps participants prepare to look for themes in their data and build an argument around those themes.

This activity is based on the chapter by Toni Schmader, William Hall, and Alyssa Croft, “Stereotype threat in intergroup relations” (see citation below). This activity will help participants recognize the mechanisms that cause negative impacts of stereotyping. This activity explores the ways to combat negative performance by identifying and removing stereotype threats. This activity and handout is especially beneficial to instructors and program leaders in addressing issues of academic performance among marginalized and minority students.

In this activity, participants will play Among Us, an online multiplayer (4-10) social deduction game where individuals are categorized as either crewmate or imposter. Each round everyone either completes tasks or, as an imposter, they must kill the other crewmates without being discovered. When a body is discovered, or someone calls an emergency meeting, everyone has to explain what they were doing, and the imposter must lie and protect their identity. Players of the game are quickly aware of the other players’ various communication styles and often have to adapt a different style to successfully play the game. For example, will they be quieter when everyone converses to hide their deeds? Do they tend to talk over individuals to demonstrate their innocence? Are the pauses between their sentences something to be suspicious of?

Sometimes the best way to cope with the negative physical, mental, emotional, and social impacts of adaptation processes, sometimes called culture shock, is to gain more self-awareness of your reactions. This mindfulness allows for reflection on potential causes and solutions. A medical model of culture shock is employed in this activity to help learners think through the implications of employing short vs long-term strategies for “treating” the symptoms of transitioning into an unfamiliar cultural environment.

This lesson will challenge participants to consider how culture affects their professional correspondence. In this activity, they will mine their “Sent” folder in their email and identify language patterns within their responses. They will then reflect on how the context and their cultural norms or values might have affected how they responded in particular instances.

This lesson prepares participants for scenarios where they might have to work closely with someone who holds different or opposing values to them by asking them to create a "third culture space" with someone culturally different from them. 

This lesson challenges participants to consider the complexity of power dynamics and how they affect their professional, academic, and/or personal interactions. 

In this activity, participants are divided into groups and tasked with crafting a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statement that reflects their team’s beliefs, values, and priorities. 

This lesson challenges participants to consider how a mismatch between intent and impact can cause conflict and develop strategies for mitigating problems. They will first learn the differences between intent and impact and then find real-world examples where intent and impact did not match. 

This lesson will challenges participants to think more deeply about scenarios that cause unintentional harm. They will first identify several situations where they have either experienced or caused unintentional harm. Then, they will place those scenarios on a Jamboard shared with several group members and reflect on how they felt and how they might have handled the situation differently. 

This lesson challenges participants to think more deeply about how culture contributes to everyday norms/behaviors and habits. With a partner, they will choose several cards from two sets: cultural contexts and behaviors/norms. Then, they will talk through their life experiences and attempt to “connect the dots” between how their cultural contexts have affected their behaviors/norms in particular scenarios. Finally, they will complete a debriefing reflection on what they learned about themselves and their partner.