The Intercultural Dimension in How interculturally competent are you

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The Intercultural Dimension inHow
interculturally competent are you?

• Dr. Alison Gourvès-Hayward Ecole Supérieure des
  Télécommunications de Bretagne, France
• Dr. Fionnuala Kennedy Waterford Institute of
  Technology, Ireland.
• Ms. Aleksandra Sudhershan Dublin City
  University, Ireland
• SIETAR Conference April 2007

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Outline of Presentation

• ELP and eELP (LOLIPOP)
• The intercultural dimension
• Pilot Feedback on intercultural dimension of
  LOLIPOP
• Creating a virtual intercultural space
• How intercultural are you?

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• EU-Funded Lingua 2 Project (2004-2007)
• On-line, interactive version of the ELP with an
  enhanced intercultural dimension
• Uses Moodle as VLE
• Project development
• LOLIPOP learning platform
• 8 countries (Austria, France, Germany, Ireland,
  Latvia, Norway, Poland, Spain)
• 12 partners
• 7 target languages

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ELP - Three Components

• Passport Biography
• Dossier

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Paper versus ePortfolios (Barrett, 2005)

• Collecting
• Selecting
• Reflecting
• Projecting
• Celebrating

• Archiving
• Linking / thinking
• Storytelling
• Collaborating
• Publishing

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e-features of Lolipop

• Online (via VLE Moodle)
• Interactive
• Multimedia
• Allows customisation
• Share function
• Online teachers manual

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Issues with existing ELPs

• Focus on linguistic competence
• Intercultural cultural
• Write reflectively (no guidance on this)
• Describe experience of another culture
• Describe cultural attitudes and behaviour
• No self-assessment grids for intercultural
• Testing testing of cultural knowledge

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Conceptual model Byrams Savoirs?

• Savoirs - Knowledge
• Savoir être - Attitudes
• Savoir comprendre - Skills of interpreting and
  relating
• Savoir apprendre/faire - Skills of discovery and
  interaction
• Savoir sengager - Skills of cultural critical
  awareness

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Conceptual model Bennetts Scale

• Ethnocentric Ethnorelative
• (Bennett 1993)

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Focus of assessment

• Assessment of learning - summative
• Assessment for learning - formative

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Issues which arose during the development of the
IC dimension

• opaque nature of ICC
• difficulty of designing a progressive scale from
  A1 to C2
• Possible ethical implications of statements
• lack of familiarity with IC terminology (learners
  and teachers)
• Possibility of being A1 on one dimension and C2
  on another
• Possibility of having a high level of linguistic
  competence and poor intercultural skills, or vice
  versa
• ICC not necessarily related to one language
• where to include ICC in ELP?

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DCU Pilot Feb-April 06

• Multicultural group (ESOL)
• LOLIPOP in lab every 2nd week
• Feedback
• Class discussions
• Wikis
• Questionnaire
• Oral exam
• Focus groups

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Intercultural self-assessment
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Questionnaire Positive results of intercultural
dimension

• Students comments
• When I read those, they made me reflect about my
  intercultural skills and the examples were good.
  
• Well organized
• It's also important to improve my intercultural
  skills.
• It was interesting to assess the intercultural
  skills. I could realize some intercultural aspect
  that had changed since I came here.
• I had never evaluated my intercultural skills
  before so it was really useful. It is easy to
  evaluate your oral and written skills. However I
  think the intercultural is more difficult to
  answer.
• I felt it was a bit easier to assess my
  intercultural skills than language skills.

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Issues raised

• The students said
• It was hard because this kind of skills really
  depends on the situation, whom you talk with, or
  when.
• It was difficult for me to understand a little
  bit.
• It is hard to assess/reflect on your skills every
  week. Maybe you won't see any improvement etc. in
  this short term.

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How can the share function enhance the IC
dimension?

• Moodle community online
• Chat
• Forums
• Blogs (in Moodle?)
• Wikis
• Digital storytelling

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Conclusion

• We will
• Generate bank of student accounts of critical
  incidents as resources
• Populate the resources section with linguistic
  and intercultural www links
• And we will
• Seek accreditation for LOLIPOP from the CoE
• Offer LOLIPOP as freeware to the HE sector across
  Europe and beyond

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How intercultural are YOU?

• Opportunity to try out LOLIPOP IC can-do
  statements
• We would welcome your feedback
• Thank-you

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Bibliography

• Bennett, M.J. (1993) Towards ethnorelativism a
  developmental model of intercultural
  sensitivity. in R.M. Paige (ed)., Education for
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• Byram, M., Gribkova, B. and Starkey, H. (2002)
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Websites

• Barrett, H. Website
• http//www.electronicportfolios.com/portfolios.htm
  lpubs
• Council of Europe ELP site
• http//www.coe.int/t/dg4/portfolio/Default.asp?LE
  M/main_pages/welcome.html
• Culture Active
• www.cultureactive.com
• INCA
• www.incaproject.org
• The International Profiler http//www.worldwork.bi
  z/legacy/www/docs2/tip.phtml
• Intercultural Development Inventory
  http//www.intercultural.org/idi/idi.html
• ECML
• http//www.ecml.at/mtp2/LEA/presentation/pluricult
  uralism.pps
• Digital Storytelling association
• http//www.dsaweb.org/index.html