Save the dates July 14-30, 2010 for the 34th
Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication
In This Issue:
- ICI Partners with Cultural Detective®
- D.I.E. Call for Submissions
- Master of Arts in Intercultural Relations (MAIR)
- MAIR Graduate — Halla Angawi
- Stay Connected
- Upcoming Events
- Intercultural Context of Training Course — January 2010
- Families in Global Transitions Conference — March 4-6, 2010
- New Intercultural Communcation Seminar with John Condon — March 11-15, 2010
- Global Competencies Inventory Qualifying Seminars
- March 12-13, 2010
- July 16-17, 2010
- November 12-13, 2010
- March 12-13, 2010
- Cultural Detective Facilitators Workshop — March 14-15, 2010
- Tenth Annual SIETAR-USA Conference — April 14-17, 2010
The Intercultural Communication Institute |
Description, Interpretation, Evaluation (D.I.E.)
Call for submissions
The D.I.E. method is widely used to teach cognitive flexibility, frame of reference shifting, and curiosity. Many creative professionals have devised new and innovative variations based on the original D.I.E. exercise. We know of many of these and would like to learn about others. We are constantly building our online and library resources and would like to make these exercises more widely accessible. Please submit your variation of the D.I.E. exercise along with this form to:
The Intercultural Communication Institute
8835 SW Canyon Lane, Suite 238
Portland OR 97225
Phone: (503) 297-4622
Fax: (503) 297-4695
Email: mary@intercultural.org
We look forward to your response!
Master of Arts in Intercultural Relations (MAIR)
This graduate degree program is proudly offered by The Intercultural Communication Institute (ICI) and University of the Pacific (UoP).
If you have a fascination with working across cultures, whether domestically or globally, we are pleased to offer you a distinctive Master of Arts degree in Intercultural Relations. Designed to prepare you for a stimulating career or to increase your skills in an existing job, our program offers a unique curriculum in a creative limited residency format for busy interculturalists.
Winter 2010 Residency: January 8-23, 2010
Classes are held at The Mark Spencer Hotel in Portland, Oregon
Summer 2010 Residency: July 2-17, 2010
Classes are held at the Reed College campus in Portland, Oregon
| Summer 2010 Residency important dates: | |||
Priority Admission deadline: |
March 1, 2010 | ||
Final Admission deadline: |
May 17, 2010 | ||
For more information about the MAIR program, contact:
Kent Warren, Ph.D.
|
Karen Coleman
|
MAIR Graduate
Halla Angawi
MAIR graduate Halla Angawi, born to a Saudi father and a Swedish mother now working in Saudi Arabia, describes the Portland residencies as one of the most memorable aspects of the MAIR program. Halla entered the MAIR program with Cohort 15 in 2002 and graduated in 2004. She says the intense quality of the residencies, where students are brought together as a group—immersed in intercultural theories, activities, and experiences—and surrounded by amazing and supportive faculty are unforgettable.
Halla’s interest in Intercultural Relations was borne primarily out of her own bicultural experiences. In the introduction to her thesis, Halla writes:
Connection between bicultural identity, ethnic group membership, parental native languages, and the salience of these elements is complex and fascinating . . . Upon explaining that I am Arab/Scandinavian, the first question the strangers ask me is: “But you don’t look like an Arab. Do you speak Arabic?” Even fellow Arabs in my home country of Saudi Arabia often came up to me in the all-Saudi public university I attended and asked me, “What are you?”
Halla explored these complexities through qualitative research methods in detail in her thesis, available for review in the ICI Intercultural Library. She continues to devote her time and energy to understanding the intricate connections among biculturalism, cultural identity, and language as she raises her children and watches their developing bicultural identities and language preferences.
Halla also applies her intercultural knowledge and expertise in her full-time role as Assistant Executive Manager, International Projects with the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation, chaired by Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud in Saudi Arabia. The Foundation’s International Projects Department focuses on poverty alleviation, including projects that support innovative social entrepreneurship projects, health initiatives, educational and leadership initiatives, and women and children initiatives, as well as rapid aid in cases of natural disasters. Interwoven throughout all of these projects are the Foundation’s three main concerns: interfaith dialogue, empowering Saudi women, and combating poverty.
Halla says that the intercultural insights and knowledge gained from the MAIR program guide her on a daily basis whether deciphering grant applications, submitting analytical reports, or deciding which schools to send her children to.
Halla plans to further her education by attaining a Ph.D. in Economics in International Development. MAIR faculty and staff are excited to see her continuing growth and are proud of her accomplishments.
Left: President Jimmy Carter Middle: Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsound Right: Halla Angawi
Stay Connected
As an interculturalist, you are faced with difficult situations and questions every day. The chances are that other interculturalists share or have shared many of these same problems. In this column, experts in the field of intercultural relations address your questions.
This Month's Question: Have you ever led an intercultural workshop via video-conference? What were the main challenges you faced during this workshop?
Answer from Dianne Hofner Saphiere, www.culturaldetective.com
I have had the privilege and the challenge to conduct meetings and workshops for people in geographically dispersed locations since the late 1980s. I very much prefer an interactive working space to that of a videoconference.
Videoconferences and presentation format webinars can be excellent for imparting information, awareness building, and motivational purposes. A workshop, on the other hand, involves developing abilities. It is quite different from a presentation or a conversation. An intercultural workshop requires active participation by the learners and involves head, heart, and hands, or thinking, feeling, and doing. Virtual meeting rooms, fortunately, lend themselves to this.
The key is to use technology to replicate as closely as possible a face-to-face workshop—to use technology to enhance learning rather than as an excuse to limit interactivity or skill building.
Advantages to virtual workshops are well touted and include:
-
People can participate from wherever they are in the world. There are no travel expenses and minimal downtime.
-
Many participants work virtually on a daily basis, with colleagues they may never meet. A virtual workshop replicates a familiar day-to-day reality for which they usually want to develop skills.
-
For facilitators like me, who have traveled 25 days out of every month for decades, conducting a workshop from home sounds pretty attractive.
-
A virtual workshop can easily be recorded for those who are not able to participate. Viewing a recording is never as powerful as participating, but it is something.
Challenges to virtual workshops can seem daunting, and include:
-
It is extremely difficult to get a feel for what participants are thinking, feeling, or intending when working virtually in a group.
-
The virtual space can feel threatening—we can feel unsure how to use the technology, unsure of what is expected, unsure about how our contributions are perceived.
-
The virtual space can be (overly) liberating—participants may type or say things by phone they would never say in person! Facilitators need to be prepared.
-
“Live” virtual workshops demand that everyone be present at the same time. Thus, for some participants the workshop will be at 3am, while for others it will be 3pm. Creating time zone equity and keeping the sleep-deprived engaged are also challenges.
-
Facilitators need to be prepared for glitches. A participant’s sound may not work. Participants may not be able to view the video, or one participant’s video may load much more slowly than others. Internet connection may be interrupted. . . there are many Murphy’s Law possibilities with a webinar.
-
A virtual workshop requires a higher ratio of preparation time in proportion to facilitation time than a face-to-face workshop.
-
I personally am much more exhausted after an Internet workshop than I am after a face-to-face workshop. For me, the difference is the multi-tasking required when one facilitates online, the multitude of differing thoughts in one’s head, and the difficulty of determining if the participants are engaged and learning. Plus, of course, virtual smiles, hugs, kisses, bows, and handshakes are never quite as wonderful as real ones!
As for tips and strategies, it’s nearly a requirement to have a co-facilitator. While one person leads an activity another can answer questions or resolve problems. If one facilitator’s technology or connection fails, the co-facilitator can pick up. At Cultural Detective we also have a third person online as a participant. We have learned the hard way that even if we’ve done something 20 times, we will inevitably play an audio or use a chat pod that appears different to participants than it has appeared in the past. A staff person in the role of participant can give us a heads-up to user surprises.
The most important advice I have, though, is to thoroughly plan how to leverage technology to support the learning experience. As with any learning design, you want to engage learners via multiple modalities, helping them digest and practice what they learn and apply it to their daily lives.
-
“Chat pods” allow participants to make comments or fill in work sheets, alone or in groups.
-
Video, sound clips, or slide shows involve sight, hearing, and emotion, though the senses of touch, smell, and taste have yet to be replicated, to my knowledge, in a virtual format!
-
In-meeting polling functions enable quick surveying of participant opinions.
-
Most virtual meeting spaces allow participants to raise their hands, post questions, send standard messages such as “speak more slowly,” as well as send emoticons such as applause, smiles, or confused looks. Facilitators need to encourage such contributions.
-
The meeting spaces we use allow us to create breakout rooms so that participants can work in small groups, thus allowing for social learning, summary, and application.
-
While facilitator-led virtual workshops require participants to be present in the same virtual space at the same time, facilitators are wise to create virtual learning spaces in which participants can learn at their own time and pace as well (discussion boards, resource repositories).
-
Virtual meeting rooms also allow the facilitator to easily share resources by pointing the learners to online sources or allowing them to download materials to their desktops.
There are additional virtual platforms that show promise for learning and developing cross-cultural effectiveness, including spaces such as SecondLife, in which learners create avatars and navigate virtual worlds. If you are a member of SIETAR you may have played one of the Diversophy games that are available there.
 |
Dianne has facilitated intercultural effectiveness efforts since 1979, working with people from over 100 countries and living and working in Mexico, Spain, and Japan. She created Cultural Detective, a dynamic series of intercultural effectiveness tools, as well as Ecotonos: A Simulation on Multicultural Collaboration, Redundancía: A Foreign Language Simulation, and Shinrai: Building Trusting Relationships with Japanese Colleagues. Dianne has facilitated an on-line resource-sharing group of 1100+ interculturalists worldwide, called Intercultural Insights, since 1999, and manages a global team of 120 professionals. In 1994 SIETAR International recognized Dianne with its Interculturalist Award of Achievement. She has been on the SIIC faculty since 1990. Dianne’s clients include ABB, Cable and Wireless, Hyundai-Kia, Intel, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Royal Dutch Shell, and Texas Instruments. |
Please send suggestions of topics you would like to see addressed in future editions of ICI Connections to mary@intercultural.org.
Join The Intercultural Communication Institute on Facebook to learn Dianne Hofner Saphiere’s Favorite Online Resources for Interculturalists.
Starting Monday, January 11, 2010 Dianne Hofner Saphiere will facilitate a discussion around online resources for interculturalists. To get this Facebook discussion started, Dianne will post her favorite online resources and ask others to join in and share their own.
Please join in the discussion, collect Dianne’s list of online resources and more importantly – to share your lists. Where do you go online for intercultural ideas, tools, and stories? What resources are most valuable to you, and why?
Join our Facebook group now at the link below and be ready to join the discussion starting Monday, January 11th, 2010
ICI Facebook Group link
The Intercultural Communication Institute’s network of professionals is one of the most generous and fascinating groups you could ever belong to. Let’s use this opportunity to learn together and build a remarkable intercultural online resources library.
The Intercultural Context of Training
This winter the Intercultural Communication Institute will be offering a 4-day course (see dates below) on the Intercultural Context of Training. Whether you train about culture or across cultures, this course will offer theoretical background and practical tools for successful work in both domestic diversity and global competence. For those who teach about culture, the course will offer frameworks for understanding resistance to intercultural learning, designing training to address learner readiness, and balancing challenge and support. For those who teach or train diverse groups, the course will examine processes for cultural responsiveness through cognitive styles, communication styles, and learning styles adaptations across cultures. All participants will leave the class with an intercultural toolkit of training methods and activities for a variety of intercultural contexts.
Taught by Janet Bennett in cooperation with Chris Cartwright, the schedule and locations for the course are:
| Date | Location |
| Saturday, January 9, 2010 |
Intercultural Communication Institute, Southwest Portland |
| Saturday and Sunday, January 23-24, 2010 | Mark Spencer Hotel, downtown Portland (lunch is included for these two days only) |
| Saturday, February 13, 2010 | Intercultural Communication Institute, Southwest Portland |
All classes will be held from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.
Credit is available through Portland State University.
See the ICI website for further background on the instructors and details for registration.
Families In Global Transition
(FIGT) Conference
March 4-6, 2010
Houston, Texas
Speakers will include representatives from organizations such as the U.S. State Department; World Bank; University of Iceland School of Business; and author of Third Culture Kids, Ruth Van Reken. FIGT is a nonprofit educational organization that for the past ten years has united all sectors (education, foreign service, military, corporate, and missionary) to discuss what it means to go global. Here is a sampling of some of the sessions:
- The Impact of Expatriation on Children
- Just Another Expat? Insights and Strategies of Female Minority Expatriates
- Top 5 Uncommon International Job Search Strategies for Spouses/Partners
- Challenge to Fulfillment: Midlife Transition for Accompanying Spouses and Partners
- Keeping Our Children Bilingual.
Visit us online at www.figt.org.
Kimberly Van Cleave Michaels, FIGT’s executive director, is also a MAIR graduate.
Perception is What You Intend to Do About Something
March 11-15, 2010
Santa Fe, New Mexico
John (Jack) Condon invites ICI/SIIC friends to Santa Fe, New Mexico, for an innovative experiential intercultural communication seminar, March 11-15, 2010. It’s called “Perception is What You Intend to Do About Something”, a favorite maxim of the late E.T. Hall, whose insights and ways of teaching and training, Jack says, remain even more radical and insightful than people who think they “know Hall” realize. The seminar will be highly experiential, venturing outside comfortable hotel seminar rooms into many other spaces and places in northern New Mexico. It will be about perceptual self-awareness, with implications and applications in teaching and training. Joining Jack to lead the seminar are colleagues who have shared Hall’s insights and teaching and training methods for three decades. Dr. Gladys Levis-Pilz worked with Hall in his legendary Northwestern University course, “Culture as Communication.” Gladys went on to influence a generation of students and future teachers at the University of New Mexico before forming, with Dr. Arie Pilz, the consulting and training firm, FieldWorks. Arie, now the president of FieldWorks, was also a friend and much influenced by Hall. Among his accomplishments over the years, Arie is credited with developing and securing millions of dollars for ongoing programs serving rural and indigenous groups throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Jack says, “I’m excited to introduce to the ICI community these friends who are such gifted teachers and trainers. Our days together in an elegant setting in Santa Fe may have a lifetime influence on how we perceive and how we do our professional work.” The seminar is limited to 22 participants. There are ‘Earlybird specials’ and discounts if you invite a friend! For details, contact Jack at: jemezsapien@gmail.com
The Intercultural Communication Institute is pleased to offer the following March 2010 workshops in Portland, Oregon.
The Global Competencies Inventory (GCI) measures individual traits associated with working effectively across cultures or with other diverse work groups. The Intercultural Effectiveness Scale (IES), a self-scoring instrument derived from the GCI will also be introduced in this seminar.
Workshop Dates: March 12-13, 2010 (9:00-17:00)
Faculty: Gary Oddou and Joyce Osland For more information or to register, contact:
This seminar is offered by
Cultural Detective® Cultural Detective® is a core method for developing intercultural understanding, productivity, and effectiveness. It serves as a powerful design model for courseware, coaching, and teambuilding, or as a stand-alone tool for conflict resolution, intercultural learning, and dialogue. A few advantages of the facilitator certification workshop include increased ability to:
Click here to learn more about the Cultural Detective® Facilitator Certification Workshop. Workshop Dates: March 14-15, 2010 (9:00-17:00)
Tuition: US $750 Credit is available through Portland State University. For more information or to register, contact:
This workshop is offered by |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
SIETAR-USA Tenth Annual Conference
Spokane, Washington
April 14-17, 2010
SIETAR-USA: Society for Intercultural Education, Training, and Research
Take advantage of the early-bird rate and register now — you’ll save $45!
This year’s keynote speaker line-up is not to be missed! Dr. Janet Bennett, Executive Director of the Intercultural Communication Institute, will open the conference by challenging us to consider intercultural balancing, disequilibrium, and transformation in our globalized world. Dr. Reza Aslan, internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions and headline author for the Get Lit! Festival, will address conference attendees along with the greater Spokane community. Chris Jordan, a photographer whose images render environmental statistics meaningful, will close the conference and is sure to inspire us to take action for the stewardship of our planet.
Other reasons to attend the SIETAR-USA Tenth Annual Conference include plenary speakers, such as Dr. Mitchell Hammer; pre-conference master workshops; and making new connections during the dine-around, just to name a few. Visit the 2010 SIETAR-USA conference website to learn more.
See you in Spokane!