Collaborative online international learning for the development of intercultural competences among Swiss and Chinese university students

Abstract

There has been an increased interest in higher education institutions to develop students’ intercultural skills. One such approach is the development and integration of collaborative international learning (COIL) courses into curriculum offers. COIL covers a range of teaching and learning approaches that focus on online intercultural interaction, communication and collaboration. Studies found that COIL has a positive impact on students’ acquisition of content knowledge. In addition, COIL increases students’ intercultural competence, consisting of three elements: sensitivity, awareness, and adroitness. Still, best practices to address all different dimensions of intercultural competence are limited.

This paper presents a COIL course design that ensures the development of intercultural competence. The course connects students from Switzerland and China, introducing concepts and practical approaches to cross-cultural aspects of business. A three-stage approach fosters, intercultural sensitivity (emotional dimension), intercultural awareness (cognitive dimension), and intercultural adroitness (behavioural dimension) with aim to increase students’ intercultural competence. Thus, our approach acknowledges that the acquisition of intercultural competence is not a one-off activity.

The first stage focuses on the development of intercultural sensitivity, the openness to engage with different cultures, through self-assessment and a case study. The second stage promotes intercultural awareness, the understanding of cultural similarities and differences, through group assignments requiring cross-country collaboration to analyse marketing communication. The final stage fosters intercultural adroitness, the effective behaviour in intercultural interactions, through a cross-cultural negotiation exercise. Our experience shows that this course design can increase students’ intercultural competence.