October 9, 2018

In this week’s bulletin we are looking at Intercultural Awareness to promote learning success for students from a diverse range of backgrounds.

Flower Darby is an Author, Lecturer and Senior Instructional Designer from Northern Arizona University. The focus in her webinar is on inclusive teaching practices and strategies that promote learning for international students, recent immigrants and domestic students from a wide range of ethnic, racial, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds.

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Implementing the CSU Value INCLUSIVE in your teaching.

In behaving inclusively we work collaboratively to develop and deliver solutions – we value new perspectives. An inclusive approach influences the way we all relate to each other and helps us all achieve our full potential collectively.

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By Flower Darby

Source: https://www.magnapubs.com/magna-commons/?video=14996

This 50-minute seminar has three clear sections

0-12 min - Introduction to the topic of intercultural competence, its definitions and its importance.

12-36 min - Examining worldviews, cultural dimensions and their effect on interactions with others; Developing empathy and respect.

36-50 min - Teaching strategies to include and support culturally diverse learners.

(from the 12 min mark)

Three primary worldviews are examined:

1. Honour/shame – where communication and interaction are relationship oriented. The concepts of “saving face" and helping others to do the same and avoiding shame or "losing face" can lead, for example, to a different interpretation of academic integrity.

2. Guilt/innocence – where there is always a right and wrong, communication is usually direct and "doing the right thing is the most important”.

3. Power/fear – avoid causing offence and suffering the potential consequences.

For further information, check out The Three Colors of Worldview link.

How do our worldviews shape our interactions?

- Inform our values

- Shape deeply held beliefs

- Lead to cultural biases. Links to Harvard implicit bias test via direct website or Diversity Australia.

- Cause evaluative judgments of others

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions

This section of the webinar goes into detail about the how the different expressions of these cultural dimensions influence the interactions between students, peers, teachers and learning activities.

• Power Distance – the extent to which less powerful members of a society accept and expect unequal distribution of power
  
• Uncertainty Avoidance – a society’s tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity
  
• Individualism – the extent to which people are integrated into groups
  
• Masculinity – the extent to which a society prefers achievement, assertiveness, strength
  
• Long-term orientation – the extent to which a society values planning for the future
  
• Indulgence – the extent to which a society permits gratification of desires
  

The important message about using these dimensions is

Don’t generalise or stereotype about a specific culture.

For more information, check out

Interview with Geert Hofstede: on YouTube (32 min) in which he draws out his theories of culture and research into cultural dimensions.

Clearlycultural.com

Geerthofstede.com

(from the 36 min mark)

How do our cultural values shape our interactions?

- Inform our values

- Shape deeply held beliefs

- Lead to cultural biases

- Cause evaluative judgements of others

Inclusive intercultural teaching

Darby drew these strategies from the TESOL publication

Fostering international student success in higher education (Shapiro, Farrelly & Tomas, 2014).

These strategies can benefit all learners and encourage cultural competency and global citizenship for the academic community as a whole.

• conduct ice-breakers in the first few weeks of class
  
• learn student names (ask a few times if necessary, get students to record audio of their name online or on your phone so you can practice pronunciation)
  
• talk with students before and after class
  
• clearly communicate expectations – especially related to academic integrity and plagiarism and cheating – don’t assume that students with different cultural values understand our policies
  
• engage learners with targeted participation strategies – may be uncomfortable with some active learning strategies, but ultimately helpful
  
• consider the cultural references you are using – are they relevant (or comprehensible) to all students
  
• provide graphic organisers or partial outlines – also can have neurocognitive benefits for all students
  
• mentor international students on academic culture in our local higher education setting
  

Inclusive intercultural assessments

How might you adjust your assessments to better support international students?

- Offer assessments that are:

• Low-stakes
  
• Early and often
  
• Multiple formats
  
• Constructively aligned and leading to achievement of subject learning outcomes
  

- Provide explicit instructions and grading criteria – rubrics, exemplars

- Provide timely and targeted feedback
- Discuss “unconventional source use”
- Design to minimise test anxiety

• Provide review activities, teach study skills, use of bilingual dictionary (if school allows);
  
• Be careful of wording on tests – can it be expressed more simply?
  
• (test should not be about learner’s understanding of the English language, but about the concepts of the discipline)

Learning from international students

Help these students share global perspectives

• Think-pair-share
  
• Jigsaw survey
  
• Small group discussion
  
• Role-play
  

Don’t spotlight international students

• Avoid: Where are you from? What do people in your country think about this?
  
• Instead: Ask ALL students – Where did you grow up? How has your background influenced your response to class material? What perspectives might be missing from our discussion so far?
  

Now what?

Knowing all this, how might we improve our teaching to make it more culturally relevant?

Cultural Intelligence Centre – MOOC on Cultural Intelligence started on October 1 in partnership with Purdue University

Reference:

Shapiro, S., Farrelly, R., & Tomas, Z. (2014). Fostering international student success in higher education. Alexandria, VA: TESOL International Association.

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Charles Sturt University is committed to ensure that our graduates are citizens of the world. They need to have the skills, knowledge and confidence to participate in and contribute to global events, activities and issues in respectful and meaningful ways.

The GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP hub serves as a resource that can guide you through why and how Global Citizenship can be incorporated into our course/subject content. If you are embedding the Global Citizenship Graduate Learning Outcome in a course or subject, you may wish to view the GLO Global Citizenship Introduction.

This is an evolving resource. Suggestions are most welcome. Contact Sheeja Samuel (ssamuel@csu.edu.au).

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Free online seminar -

Development of National Guidelines in Australia for Improving Student Outcomes in Online Education
10 October 2018, 11am

During 2016 an Australian research project was conducted under the sponsorship of the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE) at Curtin University, with the aim of improving student retention and academic success in online education.

The findings have informed a set of National Guidelines for Australian institutions for improving student outcomes in online learning.

Speaker: Dr Cathy Stone
The University of Newcastle and the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education

Connect Online via Zoom.

Further information: https://tinyurl.com/y7ksfw7u

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Link to: Folder with all previous issues of Teaching Tuesdays

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Contents
1....Teaching support resources at CSU
2....CSU Professional Learning Calendar
3....Bonus CSU resource - Lynda.com
4....Magna Commons Subscription
5....Links to previous bulletins
6....Subscribe

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You have access to a range of quality CSU resources to help you incorporate educational resources and techniques into your teaching. Check out the following:

• Teaching at CSU - the Division of Learning and Teaching website with links to resources for Teaching Staff, Online Learning, Assessment, Curriculum, Indigenous Curriculum, Workplace Learning, Technologies, Feedback and Analytics, and Learning Spaces.
  
• Resources for Learning and Teaching Academic and Professional Staff - searchable CSU database
  
• Learning Technologies - the starting point for a range of learning design options
• CSU Learning Exchange: Technologies in Context - a searchable database to promote online learning and teaching strategies
• The CSU wiki - a faculty-based source of learning and teaching information and strategies

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Regular seminars on teaching-related topics are listed on the

CSU Professional Learning Calendar - accessed directly here

or from Division of Learning and Teaching front page - accessed here

CSU Professional Learning Calendar:

Interaction with the Professions (OLM Element Workshop). Adobe Connect session. 11 October 2018 at 10 am.

Introduction to FlipGrid. Adobe Connect session. 11 October at 2:00 pm, and 4 October at 1:30 pm, all welcome to this EEL516 workshop

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All CSU students and staff members have access to Lynda.com, an online subscription library that teaches the latest business, creative and software skills through high-quality instructional videos.

A search for "Cultural Intelligence" yielded several options related to this week's topic, including:

Developing Cross-Cultural Intelligence (1 h 14m)

Communicating about Culturally Sensitive Issues (55m)

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All staff with a CSU email address have free access to our annual

CSU subscription to the Magna Commons series of online seminars

Presentation handouts, full transcripts and supplementary resources are available for download if you don't have time to listen to the seminar.

How to subscribe

Staff with a CSU email address can obtain the Magna Commons CSU subscription code from Ellen McIntyre elmcintyre@csu.edu.au

Magna Commons suggests seminars to watch this month related to QUALITY: Evaluation, assessment, development, measuring quality through feedback and testing.

Seminars you might want to review as you focus on quality:

• How to Observe and Evaluate Online Teaching
  
• Grading Strategies to Promote Academic Integrity and Rigor - this seminar will be delivered live on October 25, then uploaded to Magna Commons

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Suggest topics that you would like for Teaching Tuesdays; or
Share your own teaching tips article.

Click on the Green Contact Ellen McIntyre button (below, or at the top of the bulletin) to offer your suggestions.

Learning Environments taster ...

We will be looking at environments for learning in upcoming issues of Teaching Tuesdays@CSU.

The first Learning Environments newsletter provides glimpses of exciting learning environments at CSU.

It is particularly focussed on teaching staff and highlights new or amended physical and digital learning environments (learning systems and learning technologies)

Folder with all previous issues.

Issue 1 Group Work; Issue 2 Engagement; Issue 3 Engagement;

Issue 4 Academic Integrity; Issue 5 Feedback; Issue 6 Feedback;

Issue 7 Active Engagement; Issue 8 Building on Prior Learning;

Issue 9 Student Diversity; Issue 10 Learning Outcomes;

Issue 11 Deep Learning; Issue 12 The Teaching-Research Nexus;

Issue 13 Improving Student Learning; Issue 14 Planning for Effective Student Learning;
Issue 15 Feedback for Teaching; Issue 16 Gamification;
Issue 17 Activities for Effective Learning; Issue 18 Dialogic Feedback;

Issue 19 Student Evaluation; Issue 20 Enhancing Learning;
Issue 21 Rationale for Assessment; Issue 22 Motivating Learning; Issue 23 Peer Learning;
Issue 24 Improving Online Learning and Teaching; Issue 25 Teacher Presence;

Issue 26 Teaching Current Content; Issue 27 Online Learning Model;

Issue 28 Maximising Subject Experience Survey Response Rates; Issue 29 LEGO for Learning

FoBJBS Newsletter: BJBS-News

FoA&E Newsletter: NeXus

Email: elmcintyre@csu.edu.au
Website: https://www.csu.edu.au/division/learning-and-teaching/about-us/learning-academy
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