Intercultural Competence Learning Lab (ICLL)

'Developing intercultural competence is a core capability in the 21^st century and involves cultural self-awareness, understanding the experiences of people from diverse communities, and the capability to adapt one’s mindset and behavior to bridge across differences.'

- Mitch Hammer, 2011.

As the field of Intercultural Competence is still young and in development, this Intercultural Competence Learning Laboratory (ICLL, awarded the NVAO Best Practice in Internationalization in 2012) combines a theoretical approach to understand the existing body of knowledge with learning-from-experience. The ICLL is an environment where we can learn from each other how intercultural competence develops, under the guidance of an intercultural trainer/facilitator. Participants will share their critical intercultural incidents, their best practices, will collaborate in exploring the complex matter of intercultural competence, and search for the added values of intercultural competence development in their professional field. Each session follows a fixed conceptual framework:

• Each session opens with Your Month, where a joint analysis takes place of critical incidents experienced over the past month – is this a cultural situation, what cultural values are relevant here, what type of cultural competence would be required to address this, what would be alternative responses possible in this culturally significant situation;
• Intercultural Competence Theory and Models aims at expanding the participant’s knowledge base of Intercultural Competence, this includes Culture Specific knowledge for a select number of cultures of the participant’s choosing;
• Intercultural Competence Development (such as cultural empathy or perspective taking) is stimulated by doing exercises, games and simulations with the attendant debriefing during each ICLL session;
• Your Personal Intercultural Competence Development is addressed using the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI, pre- and postcourse) which generates an individual profile, and an individual feedback and coaching session, and the possibility to work on a personal development plan (optional);
• Other fixed components of each ICLL session are the Student Perspective (for checking if our learning is sufficiently targeted);
• Management Advice (aiming at leveraging the school’s intercultural learning context).

Schedule

Rates

Min & Max numbers

Minimum number of participants per group is 8; maximum number of participants per group is 16. Once a group is full you will be placed on the waitlist for a new group. Placement in a group is on a first come, first serve basis, under the condition that you meet the audience specification.

Alternatives
Also available in the form of a series of individual coaching sessions.

Language of Instruction               

The language of instruction during the courses will be English.

Course Material

Will be provided in class.

Brightspace

You will also be using online course material in Brightspace, the learning environment of the University of Groningen.

Using a Cultural Detective account in the course

Cultural Detective is a tool that develops intercultural competence while exploring culture-specific differences. The ‘process’ nature of the tool allows for ongoing use, continuous competence improvement, and, most critically, helps prevent stereotyping and encourages meaningful dialogue.

An account allows you access to the Cultural Detective material for one month (€ 35).

On Demand/Tailor-made Training

Standard courses for Students, Teachers, Staff and Professionals. with Open Registration courses are those that are planned (generally once a semester) and for which you can register directly online.

We can also fully develop a new course to your specifications, or we can adapt an existing course to your situation. On Demand or Tailor-made courses in Intercultural Competence can be given as one-to-one courses, for small groups or for entire organizations. They can be given in the form of presentations, short workshops, longer trainings or competence development trajectories. More information on On Demand and tailor-made courses