I first participated in and was exposed to a DIVE (Describe- Interpret-Verify-Evaluate) Model activity while completing a “Facilitating Intercultural Learning” workshop. Based on my positive experience with the activity, I then chose to implement a DIVE Model activity with a group of students while studying abroad in Europe during Maymester. I incorporated this activity towards the end of the study abroad trip and my unit on Intercultural Learning. My thought process was that throughout the unit we had discussed topics and participated in activities to better understand their cultural and self-awareness, raise their curiosity and empathy, and now I wanted them to have some intercultural learning strategies to be able to respond effectively and appropriately within an intercultural interaction.

Overall, the students responded very well to the activity- their engagement was high throughout and their responses and reactions through the activity produced a meaningful discussion. It was interesting to literally see the students initially respond to a selected picture (because our group was smaller with only ten students, I selected the two pictures beforehand that would be in shown/analyzed) with various facial expressions and body language, and then to see their level of understanding and perception change as we worked through the DIVE model activity. After writing down all student responses to the first image and then labeling them together as a group as either a Description or Interpretation, I found I kept prompting the students with “how do you know” to help them determine if a comment was a description (a concrete observable fact), or an interpretation (subjective thoughts about an observation). If a student said- “that person is sleeping”, well how do you know? Is it just that their eyes are closed? Are there other observable clues? When students were shown the second image and provided the DIVE Model worksheet, their responses were much more ambiguous. Students seemed to be more capable of suspending their initial judgements and pausing before making their “evaluations”.

One suggestion I have is when selecting images, the more “obscure” the better. This leads to multiple interpretations and seems to strengthen the activity overall.