I conducted the “Six Differences” activity with 10 undergraduate students for a pilot study as part of the IPG curriculum. I used the exercise to engage the students by having them get out of their seats and talk to one another. Students were provided with the list of conditions, and they were to find someone who differed from them in at least six ways. I provided the students with notecards so that they could write down their own responses to the conditions, and to keep track of the differences when they spoke to others. I gave them 10 minutes to do this part of the activity, and once they found someone with at least six differences they were to sit down. Of the 10 students, eight paired up. The two students who remained had five of the conditions in common. I debriefed the activity for 15 minutes using the Thiagi Debriefing Method. Overall, the students were engaged during the activity. During the debrief, they talked about being ‘happy’ when finding a difference but also ‘vulnerable’ in sharing information that is typically considered controversial in the United States such as religion and ethnicity. Students also expressed that they felt ‘left out’ when they were unable to find a partner. Students discussed how they had different perspectives on a particular condition which led them to think about how/why people are different. The other common take-away was that this activity demonstrated how little you actually knew about someone. You could not guess a person’s responses by their physical appearance.

The stated objective of the activity is to assess difference based on more than physical appearance. The students in this pilot, at the end of the debrief, stated that as their biggest takeaway. The activity was designed to enhance the ICL competencies of cultural self-awareness, openness, curiosity, and empathy. After the activity, students completed a post and retro-pre ASKS2 assessment. The students saw an increase in each of the areas but there was a statistically significant increase in self-awareness, curiosity, and empathy.

I plan to use this activity again. The students were engaged in both the activity and the debrief. I do recommend using the notecards to help students stay organized and focused. I made a couple of changes to the conditions provided including combining ‘public or private schooling during high school’ and ‘boarding school experience’. In the future, I will also add ‘home school’ to this list. I also made the decision to have the students sit down once they found someone with at least six differences. This was important with this group of students because there was one particular student who had many differences with the rest of the students. I did not want one student to be ‘paired’ with the other nine. This ended up being powerful as students who, from appearance, were very similar found out that they did, in fact, have many differences.