Intercultural communication and effective instructional strategies

This is a proposal that I submitted for AECT 2010.
Title: Intercultural communication and effective instructional strategies: Perceptions of international graduate students

Short Description:
This presentation shares the learner analysis results from the specific population. Major investigation points are international graduate students’ perceptions about intercultural communication and effective instructional strategies. Findings from the quantitative research can be useful for instructional designers and instructors who are working closely with international students to understand better about the unique characteristics. The focus will be the variances from the diverse international graduate students in cultural origins, native languages, previous experiences, and academic disciplines.

Abstract:
International graduate students are a growing and valuable part of higher education in the U.S. Although these students have many benefits from international educational such as cross-cultural learning, professional research opportunities, and fulfillment of their personal educational aspiration (Ku, Lahman, Yeh, & Cheng, 2008), there are many challenges to overcome. These students must face cultural differences, adjust to the new environment, develop language proficiency, and build new social relationships. The challenges impact their learning efficiency (Huang, 1998), self-esteem (Al-Sharideh & Goe, 1998), anxiety level (Zimmerman, 1995), and academic performance (Brooks & Adams, 2002; Poyrazli & Kavanaugh, 2006).

Among many difficulties, the core problem is the lack of sufficient communication skills in English because it is associated with other complex factors already described. While communication skills are important for all graduate students’ academic success (Enright & Gitomer, 1989), international graduate students tend to struggle with socially and culturally appropriate communication. They reveal a lack of understanding cultural context (Bennett, 1993), fear group discussion (Jones, Issroff, & Scanlon, 2006), and express uncertainty in communicating with native English speakers (Chiang & Mi, 2008).

Intercultural communication (IC) is one of importantly required quality for those who enter a second language and culture (Byram, 1997) like international graduate students. Intercultural communicative competency (ICC) indicates “the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately in intercultural situations based on one’s intercultural knowledge, skills, and attitudes” (Deardorff, 2007, pp. 87-88). Deardorff (2007) notes that ICC begins with attitude such as respect, openness, curiosity and discovery; it tends to move from individual level to interaction level such as internal adaptability and flexibility, and external communication ability in intercultural situations; and the degree of ICC depends on the degree of attitudes, knowledge, and skills. Models explaining the concepts of ICC present its iterative, ecological and gradually developed attributes (Deardorff, 2007; Fantini, 2006; Kim, 1988; Spitzberg, 1994).

Unfortunately, existing instructional design (ID) models do not specifically indicate ICC as an important consideration that instructional designers should analyze and consider in the instructional design process. However, any of ID models regard learner analysis as important process. As an example, the Dick, Carey and Carey model (2005), a widely cited systematic ID model, indicates that instructional designers should systematically analyze the specific target learners or audiences for whom the instruction is designed. Like other characteristics such as gender, age, learning style, and previous experience, ICC can be an important factor to analyze learners. In this regard, Branch (1997) already stated that some of ID models such as ADDIE model, Dick, Carey & Carey model, Gagne’s nine events offer the opportunity to consider “culture” or “cultural pluralism” during the process of instructional design.

In reviewing ID models that emphasize systematic analysis of learners, it has been well documented that instructional designers should understand diverse learners’ abilities and cultural characteristics and apply them into their instructional design strategies. In taking a systematic approach to analyze target audiences and connect the analysis with design strategies, this study addresses a need to investigate international graduate students’ intercultural communicative competency and effective instructional design strategies and technologies which guide them to be more socially engaged in learning and researching in U.S. universities.

In regard to the language and communication difficulties of international graduate student, effective learning and teaching methods for this population is an important consideration. For this, this study reviewed useful instructional strategies based on the exiting social theories of learning such as social learning theory (Bandura, 1977), sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978) and situated learning theory (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Lave & Wenger, 1991). The derived strategies from the learning theories include gradual engagement and active participation, rich cultural context, self-regulation, and integration of communication technology. This study investigated how NNS graduate students perceive the derived instructional strategies from those learning theories as effective approaches as well as their intercultural communicative competencies aforementioned.

As a descriptive and quantitative approach, this study surveyed the perception of graduate international graduate students who currently enrolled in a graduate school of a land grant university about those students’ intercultural communication and effective instructional strategies. This study utilized an online survey tool as the data collection method. The online questionnaire including 15 items about background information, 21 items about intercultural communication, and 18 items about effective instructional strategies were distributed to 1636 international graduate students through the listserv of graduate school with the informed consent form. This study has been approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and ensured the confidentiality and anonymity for respondents.

Currently, this study is on the stage of data collection and analysis. This concurrent presentation will report the result of data analysis and discuss the implication from the respondents’ perception with different demographics including a variety of cultural origins, different native language, different previous experiences, and diverse academic disciplines. Findings from this research are mainly for current instructional designers and instructors in higher education to understand better about international graduate student. Also, the current international graduate students can benefit by recognizing the importance of intercultural communication and application of effective learning methods for themselves. This presentation will close by discussing how the implications from the survey can support teaching and learning of international graduate students, and enrich the existing instructional design models through the consideration of linguistic and cultural differences.