Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education:Quality and Innovation

Abstract

This volume contributes to the construction and definition of comprehensive and sustainable internationalization and emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary, transversal and hybrid learning. The majority of contributions have emerged from the Spanish higher education context, but the topics addressed are believed to resonate worldwide with higher education institutions, professional practice and 21st century society. In the first part of the book, the chapter contributions shed light on systemic, conceptual or programme features related to internationalization and global and intercultural competence in higher education. In the second part the authors present concrete teaching experiences of internationalization and intercultural competence and highlight different questions related to interdisciplinary work, digitalization, collaborative online international learning (COIL) and project learning. By embedding COIL within and across course programmes, participants who would otherwise be unable to take part in international exchanges are included. This respect for diversity, as well as active and reflective engagement in international communication with an emphasis on students’ own experiences are fundamental elements of this pedagogical approach. The book concludes by advocating sustainable internationalization through an interdisciplinary approach to intercultural competence training which is integrated into the curriculum.

Full text

Internationalization
and
Intercultural
Competence
in Higher Education:
Quality
and Innovation
Lucrecia Keim (coord.)
Sarah Khan, Àngels Pinyana,
Àngel Raluy (eds.)
Horizontes Universidad
Horizontes Universidad
Internationalization and Intercultural
Competence in Higher Education:
Quality and Innovation
Although the majority of contributions have emerged from the
Spanish Higher Education context, we believe that the topics
addressed will resonate worldwide with higher education
institutions, professional practice and 21st century society serving
as a potential catalyst for social transformation. We believe that
this volume is innovative as it contributes to the construction and
definition of comprehensive and sustainable internationalization
and emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary, transversal and
hybrid learning.
e volume is divided into two sections: In the first one
we have compiled contributions which shed light on systemic,
conceptual or programme features around internationalization
and global and intercultural competence in higher education. In
the second one the authors present concrete teaching experiences
of internationalization and intercultural competence learning
and highlight different questions: interdisciplinary work,
digitalization, collaborative online learning and project learning.
We conclude the book by advocating an interdisciplinary
approach to intercultur al competence train ing which is integrated
into the curriculum, as well as embedding collaborative online
international learning (COIL) within and across course
programmes to cater for diversity and include participants
who would otherwise be unable to take part in international
experiences . Respect for diversity, active and refle xive engagement
in international communication through project-based learning
with emphasis on students own experiences are fundamental
elements of this pedagogical approach.
INTERNATIONALIZATION AND INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE IN
HIGHER EDUCATION: QUALITY AND INNOVATION
Lucrecia Keim (coord.), Sarah Khan, Àngels Pinyana, Àngel Raluy (eds.)
H
U

Internationalization and Intercultural
Competence in Higher Education
Quality and Innovation

Lucrecia Keim (coord.), Sarah Khan,
Àngels Pinyana, Àngel Raluy (eds.)
Internationalization and
Intercultural Competence
in Higher Education
Quality and Innovation

First published: June 2022
© Lucrecia Keim (coord.), Sarah Khan, Àngels Pinyana, Àngel Raluy (eds.)
© Ediciones OCTAEDRO, S. L.
C/ Bailén, 5–08010 Barcelona
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of any part may take place without the written permission of the copyright folder.
ISBN: 978-84-19312-08-2
Design and production: Octaedro Editorial
Open Access
Collection Horizontes Universidad
Title: Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education:
Quality and Innovation
The volume is funded by a European Union grant from participation of the
University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia in the European project
Connect. Intercultural Learning Network 4 Europe (Erasmus + Programme
of the European Union, project No 2015-2-DE04-KA205-012981).

7
Summary
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
PART I: QUALITY AND INNOVATION
ININTERNATIONALIZATION
Chapter 1. Re-visiting English-medium instruction in the
light of comprehensive internationalization – A case
for sociocultural competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Patrick Studer
Chapter 2. Internationalization as strategic leverage for
innovation in Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Alessandra Romano, Carlo Orefice
Chapter 3. Diversity, management and identity politics –
A critical view from a fuzzy-culture perspective . . . . . . 47
Francisco Javier Montiel Alafont
Chapter 4. Intercultural competence in the international
classroom – The lecturers’ perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Àngels Pinyana, Lucrecia Keim, Montserrat Vancells
Chapter 5. Fostering global and intercultural competence
at a medium-sized university . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Lucrecia Keim, Sarah Khan, Joan Masnou,
Àngels Pinyana, Àngel Raluy

8Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
PART II: INTERNATIONALIZATION
ANDINTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE:
BESTTEACHING PRACTICES
Chapter 6. Discursive, pragmatic and interactional aspects
of intercultural competence – Contributions from
interactional linguistics for meaningful learning . . . . . 91
Marta Fernández-Villanueva
Chapter 7. Making intercultural competence meaningful
in the classroom and in international mobility
programmes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Marta Panadés
Chapter 8. Intercultural virtual collaboration in
perspective – Overall conclusions and developments
from two international inter-university collaborations 123
Luana Ferreira-Lopes, María José Bezanilla,
Iciar Elexpuru-Albizuri
Chapter 9. Internationalization at home – Joint study
project between Spanish and Finnish engineering
students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Qian Zhang
Chapter 10. Joint approach to interdisciplinary teaching . 149
Juan Antonio De Los Cobos-Molina
Montse Romero-Mas, Anna Schmaus-Klughammer,
Thomas Spittler
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

9
Foreword
The exponential growth of international mobility (Eurostat,
2020) and Internationalization at Home has triggered concerns
about how higher education students can be trained to make the
most of their intercultural experience both abroad and at home,
on how they can best achieve global and intercultural compe-
tence (Messelink, Van Maele, and Spencer-Oatey, 2015; Savicki,
2020). Collaboration between International Office staff and aca-
demics (Garcés and O’Dowd, 2020), professional competencies
(Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars, 2020; Hofstede et al., 2005),
English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) (Studer, 2018 and in
this volume) as well as instruction in other additional languages
(de Wit and Altbach 2020), students’ agency (Reid and Garson
2017), collaborative online learning (Dooly and O’Dowd 2018)
and interdisciplinary course programs (Cai and Sankaran, 2015;
Deardorff and Arasaratnam-Smith, 2017) have come to the fore
in recent years as opportunities for enhancing intercultural com-
petence and internationalization. In addition, as individuals, we
are increasingly called upon to adapt or question local norms
and look beyond our immediate fields of specialization or
knowledge in order to consider an expanding and diverse global
influence. The present publication aims to present specific initia-
tives on how internationalization and intercultural training has
been handled in higher education by focussing on the multiple
processes and agents involved. We do so by bringing together a
series of researchers and practitioners who presented their work
Foreword

10 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
in this field at the Symposium Internationalisation and Intercultural
Competence in Higher Education: Quality and Innovation held at the
University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia (UVic-UCC) in
March 2021. Although the majority of contributions have
emerged from the Spanish Higher Education context, we believe
that the topics addressed will resonate worldwide with higher
education institutions, professional practice and 21st century so-
ciety serving as a potential catalyst for social transformation. We
believe that this volume is innovative as it contributes to the
construction and definition of comprehensive and sustainable
internationalization and emphasizes the need for interdiscipli-
nary, transversal and hybrid learning.
The volume is divided into two sections: In the first one we
have compiled contributions which shed light on systemic, con-
ceptual or programme features around internationalization and
global and intercultural competence in higher education. In the
second one the authors present concrete teaching experiences of
internationalization and intercultural competence learning and
highlight different questions: interdisciplinary work, digitaliza-
tion, collaborative online learning and project learning.
In Chapter 1 Studer shows how English Medium Instruction
(EMI) can contribute to the development of students’ compe-
tences in the global market if there is a conceptual expansion of
the EMI didactic model to include sociocultural competence.
This expansion implies the understanding of the English lan-
guage in its full dimensions beyond its instrumental value as a
lingua franca and adds a new research field in “Internationaliza-
tion of the Curriculum” (IoC) contexts.
In Chapter 2 Romano and Orefice focus on the strategic con-
tribution of international mobility to the development of “cultur-
al humility attitudes” in lecturers and students: “In a multicultur-
al world where power imbalances exist, cultural humility is a pro-
cess of openness, self-awareness, and incorporating self-reflection
and critique after willingly interacting with diverse individuals”.
Three outgoing mobility experiences, one with students, another
with healthcare practitioners and the third one with faculty mem-
bers in the healthcare field (FORwARD Project) and grounded on
this conceptual framework, are presented. The authors conclude
with a reflection on how to design a transdisciplinary and trans-
national curriculum in higher education institutions.

11Foreword
Internationalization also means the coexistence of diverse
stakeholders in the institutional frame of higher education. In
chapter 3 Montiel Alafont’s text looks at diversity management
in universities and stresses the mismatches that produce the di-
rect transposition of diversity management models originally de-
signed for social or business organisations into the university
context. In the author’s words:” While discrimination in multi-
cultural societies is mainly driven by the essentialisation of so-
cial identities, internationalisation in higher education leads to
fuzziness of identities.” Therefore, Montiel presents some pro-
posals on how to mitigate this mismatch and handle diversity
management more effectively in higher education.
Giving voice to implicated agents of internationalisation is in
our view essential to designing institutional policies. In the
Chapter 4 Pinyana, Keim and Vancells examine the results of a
survey among lecturers at UVic-UCC about their perceptions of
the role of intercultural competence in international classes
(mainly EMI) at that university. The main conclusions are that
the participants of the survey are aware of the importance of in-
tercultural competence but most of them do not have enough
knowledge of intercultural pedagogy skills.
The fifth chapter by Keim et al., shows how the international-
ization strategy of the aforementioned university has evolved
in the last 20 years and the factors that have led to this develop-
ment are analysed. In the chapter the authors stress the impor-
tance of giving voice to all agents implicated in the interna-
tionalization of higher education institutions and how results
of such surveys or focus groups influence the design of a com-
prehensive internationalisation strategy. Out of all actions ini-
tiated by the university community, the authors present three
in more detail: intercultural training, collaborative online projects
(COIL) and the institutional recognition for students and staff
with active involvement in internationalization via badges or
certificates.
In Chapter 6, the first one from the second book section on
teaching experiences, Fernández-Villanueva focusses on con-
tributions from interactional linguistics for meaningful learn-
ing of intercultural competence. As Fernández-Villanueva and
Studer put it, it is essential to look at language as communica-
tion in international classrooms. Fernández-Villanueva presents

12 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
first her theoretical approach to interactional intercultural com-
municative competence and then she explains the learning
challenges and opportunities of analysing intercultural en-
counters with a sociopragmatic approach. She finally illustrates
her proposals with some examples from academic German class-
rooms.
In Chapter 7 Panadès presents a specific teaching experience
grounded on transversal intercultural training. The project pivots
around the participation of students, buddies and staff from the
International Office. Panadès’ experience with Business German
students may easily be adapted to other teaching contexts and
shows how peer learning is especially significant in acquiring
global and intercultural competence.
In the last three chapters COIL project experiences are pre-
sented. In Chapter 8 Ferreira-Lopes, Bezanilla and Elexpuru-
Albizuri present a model of project-based learning for the devel-
opment of intercultural competence in Higher Education
through international virtual mobility. The model has been de-
veloped in the context of business studies, but the authors claim
its feasibility for other higher education contexts. The guidelines
outlined in the model offer novice teachers who wish to work in
this way in their classes a valuable pathway.
In Chapter 9 Qian Zhang presents a COIL project between
groups of engineering students in Spain (UVic-UCC) and Fin-
land (Häme University of Applied Sciences -HAMK). In her pa-
per she focusses on practical implementation: the task, the team
working skills and the assessment tools during the project.
Finally, in Chapter 10, readers have the opportunity to find
out more about a COIL project in Health Sciences. De los Cobos
and Romero (Spain) and Schmaus and Spittler (Germany) pres-
ent the results of their joint learning-teaching COIL project in
the field of E-Health. The authors focus on the potential of their
project to incentivise the collaborative work of future health and
ICT (information and communication technology) profession-
als at the same level.
The book concludes by advocating sustainable internationali-
zation through an interdisciplinary approach to intercultural
competence training which is integrated into the curriculum. By
embedding COIL within and across course programmes, partici-
pants who would otherwise be unable to take part in interna-

13Foreword
tional exchanges are included. This respect for diversity, as well
as active and reflective engagement in international communica-
tion with an emphasis on students’ own experiences are funda-
mental elements of this pedagogical approach.
References
Cai, W. and Sankaran, G. (2015). Promoting critical thinking through
an interdisciplinary study abroad program. Journal of International
Students, 5(1), 38-49.
De Wit, H. and Altbach, P.G. (2020). Internationalization in Higher
Education: Global Trends and Recommendations for its Future. Poli-
cy Reviews in Higher Education, 5(1), 28-46.
Deardorff, D.K. and Arasaratnam-Smith, L.A. (eds.). (2017). Intercultur-
al competence in higher education: International approaches, assessment
and application. Routledge.
Dooly Owenby, M. and O’Dowd, R. (eds.). (2018). In This Together.
Peter Lang CH. https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/67965
Eurostat (2020). Learning mobility statistics. Eurostat.Statistics explained.
[Online publication]. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php?title=Learning_mobility_statistics
Garcés P, O’Dowd R. Upscaling Virtual Exchange in University Educa-
tion: Moving From Innovative Classroom Practice to Regional Gov-
ernmental Policy. Journal of Studies in International Education.
2021;25(3):283-300. doi:10.1177/1028315320932323.
Hampden-Turner, C. and Trompenaars, F. (2020). Riding the waves of
culture: Understanding diversity in global business. Hachette UK.
Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G.J. and Minkov, M. (2005). Cultures and or-
ganizations: Software of the mind (Vol. 2). Mcgraw-Hill.
Messelink, H.E., Van Maele, J. and Spencer-Oatey, H. (2015). Intercul-
tural Competencies: What Students in Study and Placement Mobili-
ty Should Be Learning. Intercultural Education, 26(1), 62-72. Doi:
10.1080/14675986.2015.993555.
Reid, R. and Garson, K. (2017). Rethinking Multicultural Group Work
as Intercultural Learning. Journal of Studies in International Education,
21(3), 195-212. Doi: 10.1177/1028315316662981.
Savicki, V. (ed.). (2020). Developing intercultural competence and transfor-
mation: Theory, research, and application in international education. Sty-
lus Publishing, LLC.

14 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
Studer, P. (ed.) (2018). Internationalizing curricula in higher educa-
tion: quality and language of instruction. Swiss Journal of Applied
Linguistics / Bulletin suisse de linguistique appliquée, 107 (special edi-
tion).

PART I: QUALITY AND INNOVATION
ININTERNATIONALIZATION

17
Chapter 1
Re-visiting English-medium instruction
in the light of comprehensive
internationalization – A case for
sociocultural competence
Patrick Studer
1. Introduction
The shift in the internationalization focus from mobility to the
curriculum and learning outcomes (De Wit et al. 2015: 29) pre-
sents higher education institutions (HEIs) with considerable chal-
lenges. They are called upon to develop learning environments
that offer opportunities to “engage students with internationally
informed research and cultural and linguistic diversity” so that
students can “purposefully develop the international and inter-
cultural perspectives as global professionals and citizens” (Leask
2009: 209). In this article, I review the particular role of English as
a medium of instruction (EMI) as a site for developing sociocul-
tural competences in all students (e.g. Beelen and Leask 2011: 2).
I particularly focus on EMI in the context of a “more inclusive
and less elitist” (De Wit et al. 2015: 29) and more sustainable
(e.g. Lopez et al. 2016; Båge, Gaunt & Valcke 2021) vision of inter-
nationalization. The article seeks to present a case for re-assessing
the place of EMI within the internationalization of higher educa-
tion. Highlighting current trends in policy and research, I will, in
the first part, introduce relevant conceptual anchor points which
describe where internationalization and EMI currently converge
and diverge. In the second part, I offer an updated EMI teacher
competence framework that acknowledges and integrates socio-
cultural competence as a facet of teacher training and a potential
graduate attribute EMI teachers should actively develop.
Chapter 1. Re-visiting English-medium instruc-
tion in the light of comprehensive...

18 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
2. EMI and Internationalization:
A dysfunctional marriage
In a recent position paper, Studer & Smit (2021) argued that
English was systematically sidelined in internationalization poli-
cy and research. For example, De Wit (2013: 29) draws attention
to the negative effects of teaching through English, criticizing the
limited vision of internationalization it represents, fearing a de-
cline in quality due to insufficient language competences of the
teachers and a decreasing focus on linguistic diversity. While I
will not analyse in detail the language topoi behind De Wit’s po-
sition, such criticism of EMI is typically made against the back-
drop of urgent calls for internationalization not only to become
more inclusive, but also more sustainable, equal and, ultimately,
more ethical (De Wit and Leask 2019; De Wit and Altbach 2020:
29). Internationalization of the future, authors argue, requires
in-depth and intelligent engagement by HEIs (e.g. De Wit 2013;
Rumbley 2020), which involves critical reflection on how inter-
nationalization can “enhance the quality of education and re-
search for all students and staff, and (...) make a meaningful con-
tribution to society“ (De Wit et al. 2015: 29, italics mine). This
departure from traditional, market-driven, rationales of interna-
tionalization has, more recently, been termed “conscientious in-
ternationalization” (Ledger and Kawalilak 2020). Internationali-
zation, therefore, it can be argued (Studer and Smit 2021: 132),
is in the process of emancipating itself from its own roots and
practices, seeking to re-define its potential and broadening its re-
mit. This emancipation process is an important step towards in-
novation in that it involves a critical review of traditional ap-
proaches to internationalization and a re-definition of its place
in education. Unfortunately, EMI is typically not seen as an in-
strument which contributes to this process.
In fact, it takes little research to find out that, while practiced
widely, EMI has come under constant fire. At the core of EMI lies
the concept of language change from whatever the local lan-
guage(s) may be to English, and herein also lies the problem. As
the foremost international lingua franca and language of wider
communication (Berns 2012), English is seen as a tool for effi-
cient communication and exchange across cultural and linguistic

19Chapter 1. Re-visiting English-medium instruction in the light of comprehensive...
boundaries. This ‘melting-pot’ interpretation of communication
in international contexts, however, is increasingly perceived as a
threat to the idea of linguistic and cultural diversity. In the litera-
ture, concepts such as Englishization (Gabriëls and Wilkinson
2021) or linguistic imperialism (Phillipson 1992), have emerged
to express the tension the spread of English across all domains of
society has created. In a recent study (Studer 2021), I demon-
strated that the discussion surrounding English in international-
ization policy was not only sidelined but actively appropriated
to divert its focus away from English. English, in EU policy, was
relegated to a basic element of literacy and, as a result, a
“post-English scenario” was outlined which centred on the idea
that languages other than English should be the object of further
and personal development (Studer 2021: 20-21).
Treating a language as a basic skill rather than a complex me-
dium of communication has wide-ranging consequences: It ig-
nores the sociocultural dimension of language use, that is, “when
and how identities are interactively invoked by sociocultural ac-
tors” (Kroskrity 1993: 222) and how interactants craft their “se-
miotic resources into identity claims for presentation to others”
(Bauman 2000: 1). This post-English sentiment, therefore, fails
to recognize that speakers of English as a language of wider com-
munication do make claims about themselves as members of
specific (Anglophone) cultures, of global society or inter- and
transnational communities, and that harnessing this reality may
be more productive than resisting it. Moreover, this post-English
vision trivializes mastery of English while romanticizing mastery
of other, less widely used languages, which are seen as appropri-
ate objects of study for cultural and personal gain. Proclaiming a
post-English scenario, therefore, both polarizes and iconizes the
use of foreign languages and reinforces a traditional perspec-
tive of one community–one language, while brushing aside the
idea of cultural and linguistic hybridity within and between lan-
guages (cf. for example, Kroskrity 1993: 2009).
This view of English, and EMI, is surprising, considering an
impressive body of research in applied linguistics which centres
on English language use in multilingual classroom settings and
which has highlighted the complexity, challenges and opportu-
nities involved in the use of a foreign medium for effective con-
tent and foreign language learning. Unlike internationalization

20 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
policy and research, and unlike the perception of many educa-
tion stakeholders, this body of research recognizes that teaching
through a medium also means teaching the medium itself, there-
fore establishing a connection of language to broader communi-
cation and discourse skills, language-sensitive teaching and (lan-
guage) didactics. But even if applied linguistics recognizes the
impact the change of language has on education (cf., for exam-
ple, the comprehensive concept of English-Medium Education
in Dafouz and Smit 2020), there still is little recognition that
changing the medium also impacts the classroom culture and
identity of speakers.
In response to this, I would like to underline that a new lan-
guage comes with a new semiotic system, which impacts think-
ing, speaking and acting, and which provides a unique opportu-
nity for speakers to make new identity claims to others in their
disciplinary context. By thematizing the perceptions of everyone
participating in the EMI experience about the effect of the lan-
guage change, students can engage in a discussion about cultural
membership. A precondition for this experience, of course, is
critical engagement with English by re-conceptualizing it as a
language in a sociocultural sense, that is, as a medium associated
with cultural values, status and worldviews. Only then are we
able to position ourselves vis-à-vis the views and values English
represents, and critical reflection on our use of the language as
well as intercultural learning through English can take place. Un-
fortunately, current internationalization policy and research
stands in the way of a more holistic view of English language use
in academia, one that would contribute to the objectives of mak-
ing students and staff interculturally capable global citizens (Al-
brow 1997).
One approach to internationalization of higher education
that seems susceptible to a more holistic vision of integrating
language into teaching is the Internationalization of the Curricu-
lum (IoC, cf. Leask 2015). IoC, much like EMI, is conceptualized
as a framework which focuses on teachers as the “primary archi-
tects of the curriculum” (Leask & Bridge 2013: 80). IoC also rests
on a vision that encompasses all teaching and learning; a goal it
shares with other approaches such as Comprehensive Interna-
tionalization (Hudzik 2011) or Internationalization at Home
(Beelen and Jones 2015):

21Chapter 1. Re-visiting English-medium instruction in the light of comprehensive...
Internationalisation of the curriculum is the process of incorporat-
ing international, intercultural and global dimensions into the con-
tent of the curriculum as well as the learning outcomes, assessment
tasks, teaching methods and support services of a program of study
(De Wit & Leask 2015: xii).
IoC, in this sense, is “(...) best thought of as a construct, or
way of thinking about curricula and teaching/learning, rather
than a set of prescribed practices” (Green & Whitsed 2015: 4). In
other words, IoC stimulates systematic reflection on teaching
and learning against the backdrop of particular themes that re-
late to the “international and intercultural requirements of pro-
fessional practice and citizenship and the systematic development
and assessment of intercultural and international knowledge,
skills, and attitudes across the program” (Leask 2015: 28-29).
English as an international language of wider communication
undoubtedly constitutes one of the themes to which Leask (2015)
is referring. And as the reflection stimulated by IoC involves
looking at these themes “through the lens of dominant para-
digms” (Leask 2015: 29), we are invited to think about the values
and worldviews the English language represents for students as
members of an international community. I will, in the following
section, think about how this can be done in EMI by discussing the
possibility of integrating sociocultural competence into an EMI
teacher competence framework.
3. Extending EMI teacher competence: Building
international and intercultural competence
In an earlier study (Studer 2018), I presented an EMI teacher
competence framework that challenged the narrow focus on
general language ability according to the Common European
Framework of Reference (originally, Council of Europe 2001, cf.
also Bachman 1990). This EMI competence framework, in addi-
tion to language abilities, included broader communicative-
didactic competence areas for teacher development. It was in-
tended as a reference construct underlying EMI teaching compe-
tence assessments and EMI support intervention programs, i.e.,

22 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
support for teachers struggling to implement EMI in their courses.
The original EMI competence framework describes different
degrees of attention to, and integration of, language in content
teaching, ranging from treating language as a basic tool for in-
struction, in the sense of English as a basic skill, to the full and
systematic integration of English into the course structure, lesson
planning, delivery and assessment in Leask’s (2015) comprehen-
sive sense.
The EMI teacher competence framework can be seen as a ref-
erence for teachers involved in the delivery of EMI, as well as for
teacher trainers, education planners and developers planning to
introduce EMI. Essentially, the framework stimulates a joint re-
flective process along the following questions:
1. Which impact does the change to EMI have on the individual
teacher / the program as a whole?
2. Which impact does the change to EMI have on students?
3. Which competences can students develop with respect to the
change of language within a course / program that are rele-
vant to academic and professional practice?
4. How can the individual teacher aid the development of these
competences?
The underlying aims of this framework, as well as the ques-
tions guiding reflection about EMI, can be understood in two
ways: Firstly, it encourages systematic thinking about the level of
integration of language as an element of regular course / program
content that impacts planning, delivery and assessment. Second-
ly, it focuses on competences of teachers required for the suc-
cessful integration of language into a course / program. The re-
sulting competence framework consists of six competence di-
mensions (Studer 2018: 33), which essentially represent four
steps of complexity of English language integration into content
teaching:
1. Language Competence: No attention to language other than
for the purpose of mutual comprehensibility;
2. Monologic Competence: Attention to the appropriate use of
English for the purpose of engaging in discipline-specific
monologic speech genres (e.g. lectures, presentations);

23Chapter 1. Re-visiting English-medium instruction in the light of comprehensive...
3. Dialogic Competence: Attention to the appropriate use of
English for the purpose of engaging students in dialogic
speech settings (e.g. discussion, moderation, Q&A);
4. Communicative-Didactic Competence: Attention to the crea-
tion of a language-sensitive communicative environment and
the appropriate use of techniques to facilitate English compe-
tence development in students (e.g. lexical consolidation ex-
ercises, graded student presentations in English).
The four steps can also be seen as progression on a continu-
um from content teaching without attention to language to the
Integration of Content and Language (ICL, cf. Wilkinson and Ze-
gers 2008; Wilkinson 2013) and Content and Language Integrat-
ed Learning (CLIL, cf. Dalton-Puffer 2007). In previous publica-
tions, I represented these steps graphically as steps on a staircase,
where each step up means greater complexity in terms of integra-
tion of language into the communicative and didactic settings of
higher education. We can also represent these steps as a diagram
with language competence in its core and the outer dimensions
adding to the competence profile of the teacher:
Figure 1. EMI Competence Dimensions

24 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
While these competence dimensions are broad and prompt
critical reflection about language in teaching that may lead to
adaptations in teaching practice (cf. Donald Schön’s 1983, 1987
reflective practitioner), they focus strongly on the interface be-
tween foreign language use and effective, learner-centred, con-
tent teaching. They do not, however, capture the competence
needed to engage in further reflection on the role of language in
society in the process of developing the students’ intercultural
and international competences. This, I would like to argue, is a
missed opportunity to combine EMI with international and in-
tercultural awareness and skills training. Using a language that is
not one’s first language triggers our knowledge and builds aware-
ness about the impact of language on how we perceive the world
around us and how we use it to effectively express what we want
to say. In other words, it triggers our awareness of linguistic rela-
tivity (Whorf 2012), that is, the semiotic resources we have at
our disposal in a language and which we intuitively activate for
effective language use. This semiotic inventory, of course, differs
from language to language. By using a language that is not our
first language, we can, for example, engage in reflection about
questions of idiomaticity in our own language, in the language
of the discipline, and in English, the international language of
wider communication. If we exploit this potential systematical-
ly, we contribute to building intercultural competence.
Intercultural competence is crucially communicative in nature
and involves language use in its core. Deardorff (2006: 247, ital-
ics mine) appropriately defines intercultural competence as “the
ability to communicate effectively and appropriately in intercultural
situations based on one’s intercultural knowledge, skills and atti-
tudes.” Similarly, Freeman et al. (2009: 13, italics mine) define
intercultural competence as “(a) dynamic, ongoing, interactive
self-reflective learning process that transforms attitudes, skills and
knowledge for effective communication and interaction across cul-
tures and contexts.” The two quotes from Deardorff (2006) and
Freeman et al. (2009) also show that effective communication in
intercultural situations is interconnected with attitudes, skills and
knowledge a person possesses in relation to how communication
takes place in different cultures and contexts. EMI, therefore,
touches on both culture and communicative contexts. EMI, how-
ever, can only contribute to building intercultural competence if

25Chapter 1. Re-visiting English-medium instruction in the light of comprehensive...
it draws attention to its own ideological fabric by tapping the atti-
tudes towards cultural differences of the actors involved in this
experience (Bennett 1993). EMI teachers and students, therefore,
need to reflect on their ethnocentricity, particularly their Euro-
centric worldview (Hobson 2012), so they can address questions
relating to the ideological impact of EMI on intercultural com-
munication in their classroom, discipline and professional prac-
tice. EMI can thereby be seen as a facet of intercultural commu-
nicative competence rather than a threat to it. Seeing EMI through
this lens raises new questions that may be given systematic atten-
tion in the classroom. Such questions may include:
• Which role does the use of language play in sociocultural
identity construction of students, teachers and future profes-
sionals?
• In which communicative situations and activities is it appro-
priate to use English as an international language in academia
and professional life? When could it be considered inappro-
priate or even offensive?
• Which forms of English exist and how do these forms link to
appropriate language use in international settings?
• How do we use English in culturally diverse and sensitive aca-
demic and professional situations?
In addressing questions like the above, teachers and students
can engage in joint reflections about language as an element of
identity and an instrument of social power in ideologically con-
tended communicative spaces. They can also, more practically,
develop communicative strategies in situations where they do or
do not speak the language(s) of the cultural others they engage
with. And, finally, students can develop an awareness of when,
in their domain of study and professional life, they can use cul-
turally less specific language (e.g. in a presentation, a written re-
port) and when a communicative situation requires greater atten-
tion to the cultural connotations and nuances of language. This
last point, as argued earlier, would require the re-enculturation
and reinstatement of English as a proper language, much in the
sense of Shohamy’s (2006) “organism”.
Whereas, in the past, English as a foreign language in higher
education was traditionally taught through literary and cultural

26 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
achievements of Anglophone societies, English language prepa-
ration in the past decades has more radically moved from culture
to domain- and purpose-specific teaching (e.g. Hutchinson & Wa-
ters 2010). Moreover, there has been a growing consensus in re-
search of the “fundamental roles” of English for Academic Pur-
poses and English for Specific Purposes in EMI (McKinley and
Rose 2022). Postulating, as I do in this article, that we might
need to take a step back and re-connect English to its different
cultures may sound like regression to some. I would like to
counter this impression by emphasizing that deculturating a
foreign language for instrumental use does a disservice to inter-
cultural learning as students are not sensitized to how intercul-
tural communication in academia and professional life through
English works. I am not proposing that students engage in classi-
cal English studies, but I believe that EMI would offer a unique
opportunity for students to reflect on their position within Kachru’s
circles (1985). This might entail attention to English as a lingua
franca of the international community as well as to English as a
native language.
Engaging in critical reflection as outlined above would un-
doubtedly contribute to building an ethnorelative worldview
(Bennett 1998: 7ff, also in relation to Whorf 2012), a critical as-
sessment of the ideological foundations of internationalization
and an awareness as well as competence with respect to English
language use in internationalized study and work contexts. Un-
derlining the cultural implications of EMI, therefore, would fa-
cilitate reflections in two directions: By understanding language
use as culture-specific, students not only appreciate how culture
is encoded in language but also how English as the language of
the international community serves as the glue to building a
global mindset, a culture that understands everyone as part of
a “single world society, a global society” (Albrow 1990: 9). Be-
longing to a specific culture and to a global culture at one and
the same time is not mutually exclusive; they are two sides of the
same coin. In other words, using English in EMI in a critical and
self-reflective way can lay the foundation for the development of
global citizenship with its many facets (Dower 2003; Oxley and
Morris 2013).
In conclusion of this section, I would like to propose a con-
ceptual expansion of EMI by adding an additional layer to the

27Chapter 1. Re-visiting English-medium instruction in the light of comprehensive...
competence framework outlined above (Studer 2018). I will term
this new layer sociocultural competence to reflect the assumption
that the introduction of EMI is consistent with the aim of devel-
oping global citizenship and international skills that are based on
intercultural competence. Sociocultural competence, in Figure 2
below, appropriately comes at the outside of the circles as it adds
another layer of complexity to the integration of language into
content teaching. While building intercultural competence
through EMI may involve developing skills and techniques, it
also builds knowledge around the impact of language in culture
and society. If we accept this as an attractive proposal, research
attention should be paid to providing insight into how students
build their disciplinary and professional identities around for-
eign language use and particularly around international lan-
guages of wider communication such as English. Research may
also be conducted into questions relating to domain- and culture-
specific habitus in using English in higher education and in pro-
fessional life. Case-study research would need to report on the
success of local initiatives to integrate the intercultural dimension
of EMI into formal and informal study curricula.
Figure 2. Conceptual expansion of EMI Competence

28 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
4. Conclusion
In this article, I revisited an EMI competence framework I devel-
oped earlier (Studer 2018) and reviewed its validity against
emerging trends in the internationalization of higher education
in research and policy. The article revealed that in order for EMI
to address the growing demand for intercultural competence in
the context of building global citizenship, it will need to re-
conceptualize the function of language in EMI and integrate the
sociocultural impact of the change of medium. The narrow per-
ception of English in higher education as a basic skill and empha-
sis on English for specific purposes, however, prevents a concep-
tual expansion that would allow EMI to become a site and plat-
form for intercultural learning. A conceptual expansion of EMI
would raise a number of questions, both theoretical and practical
in nature, as to the learning objectives that can realistically be pur-
sued in EMI, how to integrate intercultural learning into EMI pro-
grams and who should carry out the training. The present article
did not set out to offer practical solutions but to invite readers to
think about how EMI can contribute to an interculturally rich and
language-sensitive internationalized classroom experience.
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33
Chapter 2
Internationalization as strategic
leverage for innovation in
Higher Education
Alessandra Romano
Carlo Orefice
1. Internationalization and Intercultural
Competences in Higher Education1
This chapter explores systems of activities and organizational de-
vices to support internationalization in Higher Education and
professional contexts. Our thesis is that internationalization, and
specifically international mobility, is strategic leverage for inno-
vation in Higher Education and for supporting the development
of attitudes of cultural humility in teachers and students. Accord-
ingly, we present three experiences of outgoing mobility carried
out in the framework of the three-year project FORwARD (Train-
ing, Research and Development of “community-based” strategies to sup-
port practices of living together in multi-ethnic contexts) (MUR 85901)
managed by the Department of Education at the University of Sie-
na (Italy). They are promising examples of processes able to sus-
tain the development of intercultural competences in students,
1. This contribution is fruit of collaboration between the two authors. For reasons
of scientific responsibility, we would like to state that Alessandra Romano is the author of
sections 1, 2 (2.1, 2.1.1, 2.1.3), 3, while Carlo Orefice is the author of sections 2.1.2
and 4.
The ex periences herein reported are financially suppor ted by the FORwARD Project
(MUR ID 85901). The Scientific Head of the FORwARD Project is Prof. Loretta Fabbri,
University of Siena. The two authors belong to the Scientific Board of the FORwARD
Project and are Coordinators of the training courses described in this chapter.
Chapter 2. Internationalization as strategic leve-
rage for innovation in Higher Education

34 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
faculty, teachers, and professionals belonging to healthcare or-
ganizations. The final paragraph reflects on how to design a trans-
disciplinary and transnational curriculum in higher education.
The demand for global education defines one of the challenges
that European universities are facing (Pucciarelli and Kaplan,
2018). The presence of students from all parts of the world is a
trait that has long characterized the university system. Recent
decades have been marked by an effort to improving the interna-
tional relevance of university degrees through mobility, aimed at
promoting contacts and relationships with other countries, hab-
its and cultures. European funded programmes specifically sup-
port international mobility, both outgoing and incoming, to
train future professionals capable of living and working in a glo-
balized world.
However, internationalization mobility –study abroad pro-
gramme– does not necessarily lead to the development of multi-
culturalism and intercultural competences in both students and
faculty. Research shows that international experiences can even
lead to an increase in ethnocentric attitudes and less willingness
to interact with cultural ‘others’ (Jackson and Oguro, 2017; Tor-
lone, Capaccioli and Benalla, 2020) if not adequately designed
and supported.
International mobility might be a strategic means for innova-
tion only if the university pays particular attention to it, recog-
nizing its galvanizing effect on the multicultural processes that
characterize social and community development from the local
to the national and international level.
2. The Forward Project
2.1. Description
The present contribution draws on the framework offered by
the three-year research project called FORwARD (Training, Re-
search and Development of “community-based” strategies to sup-
port practices of living together in multi-ethnic contexts) (MUR
ID 85901) organized by the Department of Education at the Uni-
versity of Siena (Italy). The FORwARD project is funded by the
Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR,

35Chapter 2. Internationalization as strategic leverage for innovation in Higher Education
Italian Ministry of University and Research)2. It is promoted by
the University of Siena (Italy) in partnership with the Al-Quar-
aouiyine University (Fès), the Al Akhawayn University (Ifrane),
and University for Foreigners of Siena - International University
(Italy). The FORwARD project aims to identify the theoretical
perspectives and frameworks that help to gain a better under-
standing of the phenomena of cultural and ideological radicaliza-
tion, and to establish what kind of interventions are most effec-
tive in building practices of inclusion in multiethnic communi-
ties (Fabbri and Romano, 2021; Melacarne, 2021). The FORwARD
activities seek to address the following research questions:
1. How can we recognize, unpack and challenge culturally as-
similated representations regarding radicalization and multi-
ethnicity?
2. What practices and methods of interventions are effective in
preventing radicalization processes in multiculturally dense
communities?
3. How can we design and validate training methodologies and
instruments to manage cultural pluralism in social and or-
ganizational contexts?
4. How can we promote an international community of research
composed of researchers and experts interested in sharing
practices of multicultural diversity management in multieth-
nic contexts (Romano and Kramlich, 2020)?
Aligned with those questions, the FORwARD project traverses
three routes that belong to the same transformative path:
a) the collaborative construction of a network composed of ex-
perts, researchers and professionals, coming from interna-
tional contexts, in order to facilitate the circulation of multi-
methodological perspectives on the different experiences
ofpluralism, theoretical frameworks, repertoires of well-
established and promising innovative practices;
b) the co-design and implementation of training courses ad-
dressed to professionals to provide them with work in multi-
ethnic contexts;
2. More information at: https://www.forwardproject.unisi.it/

36 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
c) the development of an institutional curriculum for the three-
year degree in Education Sciences at the University of Siena
with professional teaching modules including Pedagogy of
De-radicalization, Psychology of Radicalism, Sociology of Mi-
gration, Psychology of Multicultural Processes, European Im-
migration Law, among others.
The training course, directed at healthcare practitioners and
professionals, teachers, faculty, security professionals, provided
the construction of participatory and collaborative settings
through the adoption of active development methodologies and
methods for learning from the experience (Marsick and Neaman,
2018; Romano, 2020; Orefice, 2021). This set of methodologies
were useful for helping practitioners and professionals to vali-
date their practices, starting from those situations that they per-
ceive as critical challenges in a highly multicultural context.
The aims were to combine the “transforming intercultural ed-
ucation” practice in terms of innovative training and research
programmes promoted by different international institutions.
This combination would facilitate and give support to the con-
struction of repertories of practices that are helpful to manage
cultural pluralism in social contexts and institutions, such as
healthcare organizations, schools and higher education systems,
which are increasingly affected by multiethnic populations.
2.2. The FORwARD Project’s internationalization activities
Against this backdrop of the FORwARD project, we would like to
offer a brief overview of the internationalization activities car-
ried out within the Project. We make suggestions from studies
carried out with those non-ordinary experiences of multicultural
exchanges.
We refer to three experiences of intensive higher education
mobility programmes at the University of Siena, respectively
with:
1. eighteen students of the Bachelor’s Degree in Education
Sciences;
2. six practitioners of healthcare systems and hospitals, such as
doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and social workers;

37Chapter 2. Internationalization as strategic leverage for innovation in Higher Education
3. three faculty members with a background in Adult Education
and Teaching and Learning Methods.
The sub-sections describe the three experiences of mobility in
higher education in more detail.
2.2.1. The Bachelor’s Degree in Education Sciences
The first mobility programme involved 18 students at the bache-
lor level (Education Sciences, University of Siena). Eighteen stu-
dents aged between 23 and 45 from the University of Siena
(F=16; M=2) took part in short-term mobility at Al Akhawayn
University (AUI) for two weeks. They attended different learning
activities for a total of 36 credits. They were in the second and
third year of the Education Sciences Degree (Torlone, Capaccioli,
and Benalla, 2020).
The short-term study programme was on preventing and
countering violent extremism (P/CVE) and radicalization in the
Maghreb and Sahel regions, which face multilevel transnational
security challenges, being among the African regions that are af-
fected by the threats of violent extremism and terrorism. These
challenges require a stabilization and development strategy,
which includes preventing and countering violent extremism
and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR)
planning.
The challenge of this step was to support students in their on-
going sense-making process and transformation of their mean-
ing perspectives through their intensive mobility experience. The
mobility had the following aims for the learners:
• to encounter future potential employers;
• to enlarge personal and professional networks;
• to learn more on professional topics that are relevant for their
future professions.
Students benefited from the whole mobility value proposi-
tion designed as a set of actions that contribute to the develop-
ment of awareness, skills, knowledge, attitudes, behaviours in
students and faculty so that they become “more internationally
knowledgeable and interculturally skilled” (Zha, 2003, p. 250).

38 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
2.2.2. The healthcare system and hospital practitioners
The second mobility experience concerns some activities related
to a professional training course (six credits) entitled “Soft skills
for multicultural health contexts. Methods and techniques” held be-
tween October 2019 and February 2020. The training course
provided an experience of outgoing mobility carried out at Uni-
versitat de Vic - Universitat Central de Catalunya (Spain) on the
issues of cross-cultural competence for health care. On that occa-
sion, six students (nurses, physiotherapists, professional educa-
tors), accompanied by the authors of this contribution, made
an intensive week of visits to the Hospital Universitari de Vic
(Consorci Hospitalari de Vic), the Hospital General de Vic and
the Vic Sud Primary Health Care Center, carrying out participant
observations in a series of departments (mental health, gynecolo-
gy, obstetrics, pediatrics, general medicine) and meeting Spanish
colleagues to exchange knowledge and professional practices
and discuss together dilemmas and critical incidents. The aim
was to understand the type of multicultural skills that healthcare
contexts increasingly need.
The mobility of professionals and practitioners was character-
ized as an extended and distributed setting for reflecting on their
consolidated practices, dysfunctional routines and taken- for-
granted theories-in-use (Romano, 2020; Orefice, 2021). The ex-
change and the confrontation with unfamiliar practices, proto-
cols and systems of actions supported professionals to decentral-
ize from their perspectives and to reconfigure their theories and
practices. This result underlined how much the same training
and professional development should be considered not as de-
contextualized processes that introduce new knowledge and
skills within individual repertoires but rethought as processes of
negotiating new knowledge and skills within communities that
evolve through “shared learning stories” (Wenger, 1998).
In the face of a growing multi-ethnic and multi-cultural diver-
sification of healthcare contexts, there is a demand for profes-
sionals with a fundamental and urgent relational capacity that
arises, as we have seen, as a transversal competence with respect
to the specific technical skills possessed, but also a need to reframe
the traditional health operator (subject) - patient (object) rela-
tionship even more. For the professionals, ultimately, to test the
different know-how in clinical and educational practice, it could

39Chapter 2. Internationalization as strategic leverage for innovation in Higher Education
coincide with the production of a new meta-cultural approach
where the negotiation (even of the implicit and explicit models
that these professionals have) is brought into the open and con-
stitutes one of the cornerstones of the type of care provided (Bru-
zzone, and Musi, 2007; Orefice, 2020; Zannini, 2015).
2.2.3. The faculty members
The third mobility experience concerns the outgoing mobility of
three faculty members in the field of Adult Education and Teach-
ing and Learning Methods at Tbilisi State University (Georgia).
During the short-term mobility, the faculty members carried out
systematic peer observations with Georgian University col-
leagues and interviewed apical figures of governance. The mobil-
ity programme was organized as an intensive set of research,
training and professional development. The three faculty mem-
bers had the opportunity to meet Delegates of the Georgian Min-
istry of Education, who explained to them how and to what ex-
tent the Georgian government was increasing the number of in-
coming visiting teachers, especially from Italy and Europe, to
sustain processes of innovation in their schools. International
mobility was leverage, in that case, to favour the circulation of
know-how and effective practices among people from different
countries, with a specific goal of sustaining developmental so-
cial, cultural, and economic processes.
During the short-term visit, the three faculty members also
had some teaching activities on active learning, syllabus con-
struction, and the professionalization of PhD programmes with
a local community of 30 professors and teachers interested in
participating in settings of international exchange to engage
in excellence in innovation and teaching. “Outsider” experts and
“insider” native professors established themselves as transdisci-
plinary and problem-based “learning communities”. They
shared knowledge on topics and problems of multiculturalism,
and agreed that it required to be addressed according to multiple
methodological angles and theoretical-conceptual perspectives,
and with respect to “situated” negotiations (Akins and Akerson,
2002).

40 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
3. Transformative learning perspectives
to multicultural education. Cultural
humility and cultural safety
The conceptual framework that constitutes the backdrop of our
argumentations is nurtured by the growing breadth of eclectic
contributions on multiculturalism within the field of adult educa-
tion, including radicalization studies in today’s young generation
(Amiraux and Fabbri, 2020 Kosrokhavar, 2017) and transforma-
tive learning theory (Mezirow and Taylor, 2011). Transformative
learning theory supports intercultural learning theory by provid-
ing details of the conditions needed for a cross-cultural experi-
ence to shift learners’ thoughts, feelings, and actions (Dirkx,
2012). Transformative learning is a deep, structural shift in basic
premises of thought, feelings, and actions (Mezirow, 2011): it is
a shift in consciousness so intense that it permanently alters
one’s way of life. The shift includes understanding one’s self,
one’s self-location, one’s relationships with others, and one’s re-
lationship with the physical world (Mezirow, 2011). Three of
Mezirow’s (2011) phases - a disorienting dilemma, critical re-
flection, and rational discourse - may explain the dilemmas and
the transformations that participants in our experiences of mo-
bility go through when entering a different culture that implies a
greater understanding of cultural awareness.
Cross-national mobility can change learners’ beliefs by pro-
viding a disorienting dilemma, a perplexing experience – through
which and on which a reflection is needed through rational dis-
course (Mezirow and Taylor, 2011). Critical reflection is essen-
tial to establish a new habit of thought when living in different
cultures (Mezirow and Taylor, 2011). Self-reflection can result in
a dramatic re-orientation of oneself and may cause dramatic
changes in orientation to the event, which frees the learner – but
also the teachers and the faculty members - from previous frames
of reference and paradigms (Kramlich and Romano, 2020). Prac-
titioners and faculty members themselves need to be trans-
formed to perform as agent of transformation and contact in
multiethnic organizations.
In this regard, our focus is specifically on teaching and learn-
ing in higher education with cultural awareness and sensitivity.

41Chapter 2. Internationalization as strategic leverage for innovation in Higher Education
Teaching and learning with cultural awareness involves the need
for teachers and professors to self-examine their hidden biases
and assumptions, which are not easily revealed or known
(Brookfield, 2017). The pathway to this necessary self-reflection
can start by assuming the posture of cultural humility (Kramlich,
and Romano, 2020). This happens as the teacher/faculty acknow-
ledges the impossibility of knowing or understanding another
culture and lays aside the power of cultural competency by asking
questions and showing both the desire and importance of
learning directly from the marginalized. Part of this practice in-
cludes a teacher/faculty member willing to acknowledge both
hidden racism or prejudice as it is revealed either inwardly or by
students.
Cross-cultural training, cultural intelligence, and cultural
mapping can be used as one-off training to make educators,
faculty members and teachers feel that they have met the stand-
ards to engage appropriately with culture. But cultural compe-
tence cannot be achieved. Training, workshops, and certificates
are not sufficient; rather, a different approach – deeper and criti-
cal – must be taken (Kramlich and Romano, 2020). This ap-
proach is an ongoing attitudinal shift of posture, not a method
or a competency as these imply achievement and often comple-
tion: it is based on cultural humility (Kramlich and Romano,
2020). In a multicultural world where power imbalances exist,
cultural humility is a process of openness, self-awareness, and
incorporating self-reflection and critique after willingly interact-
ing with diverse individuals. The concept of cultural humility
considers the fluidity of culture and challenges individuals,
schools and university institutions to address inequalities (Kram-
lich and Romano, 2020). Cultural humility is an approach for
redressing power imbalances in teacher-student and student-
student relationships by incorporating critical self-evaluation
and recognizing that cultural differences lie not (only) within
foreign students but within classroom interactions and relation-
ships. Cultural humility is advocated, indeed, as an approach for
the professional development of teachers in an effort to counter
professional Eurocentrism, ethnocentrism, and intellectual colo-
nialism. The goal of achieving cultural competence implies a
sense of expertise or a skill that can be mastered, while the no-
tion of cultural humility suggests a more flexible and humble

42 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
endpoint (Yeager and Bauer-Wu, 2013). In addition, cultural hu-
mility enables and makes practical cultural safety (Williams,
1999): cultural safety is the practical condition to set an environ-
ment that is spiritually, socially and emotionally safe/creative for
people; where people feel accepted and recognized, but also
stimulated to learn with critical and creative thinking.
4. Concluding note: towards a
transdisciplinary curriculum
The experiences related to mobility of university students and
teachers highlight the growing need to design new training strat-
egies within current university contexts, which are increasingly
heterogeneous and multicultural. Offering young students inter-
national learning experiences, creating connections between dif-
ferent fields and disciplines, going beyond the mere transmis-
sion of content, therefore appears essential to give them not so
much the possibility of tracing/establishing links between differ-
ent topics, themes or problems while remaining within a single
disciplinary field of subjects, but to develop a true transdiscipli-
nary approach to complex problems to which multiculturalism
refers (Nicolescu, 2012).
In fact, in order to respond adequately to the new educational
challenges and to the urgencies posed by the contemporary
world, as well as to meet the needs of a university that wants to
think in a truly innovative and inclusive manner, it is necessary
to favour the construction of a transdisciplinary curriculum
where the division between the different scientific disciplines is
surpassed and on which the idea of the university is rooted, un-
derstood as the “discovery of something new”; that is, a place to
search for possible connections and integrations between differ-
ent knowledge (Broersma, 2014). In this direction, the interna-
tional training experiences promoted allowed a double acquisi-
tion. On the one hand, the teachers were able to contribute to a
revision of their way of conceiving their educational interven-
tion (with reference both to the structuring of teaching and to
the levels and subject areas involved), responding more effec-
tively to the educational problems posed to universities by our

43Chapter 2. Internationalization as strategic leverage for innovation in Higher Education
multicultural societies. And on the other hand, the students ac-
quired methodologies, tools and strategies to be supported in
the construction of their professionalism.
In conclusion, the conceptual background in which this re-
flection is placed allows us to highlight a series of important ele-
ments that seem to us to represent the point of convergence of
some current lines of research / intervention around which the
FORwARD Project is working. In particular:
• the relevance, according to a socio-constructivist concep-
tion of learning, of the processes of active knowledge pro-
cessing by teachers and students as a function not only of the
knowledge objectives, but also of the context and the dialogic
relationship between the different actors (Mezirow and Tay-
lor, 2011);
• the need to deal with the current condition of complexity of
knowledge, characterized by a growing interconnection of dis-
ciplinary areas and the simultaneous risk of a progressive frag-
mentation and obsolescence of knowledge (Orefice, 2016);
• the awareness, starting from the current crisis of the linear
positivist explanatory model (Orefice, 2020), of the effective-
ness of multiple and differentiated reflection strategies, not
only within the different subjects but also across them;
• the growing importance of the role of cooperation and intra-
and inter-group dialogue in the development of educational
processes that distinguish the learning experience of universi-
ty “communities of practice” (Wenger, 1998);
• the evolution of the role of the university teacher from a re-
pository of specialist knowledge to an expert able to individu-
ally promote the formation of metacognitive skills and
self-assessment by students (Fabbri and Romano, 2018);
• the role given to students as “novices” capable of actively con-
tributing to the construction of knowledge and the consolida-
tion of the knowledge community according to processes of
progressive participation and legitimation (Fabbri and Roma-
no, 2018).
Assuming all these considerations are an epistemological pre-
mi se for international research and training leading to a substantial
paradigm shift, marking the passage from the formal representa-

44 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
tion with which internationalization activity is traditionally con-
ceived to a more attentive vision of construction of knowledge as
a cultural process, in which the situated and negotiated dimen-
sions of learning acquire particular importance.
5. References
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and language arts: An interdisciplinary approach. Educational Action
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multietnica. Educational Reflective Practices, 1, 5-17.
Broersma, C. (2014). Is it time to change? Infusing the transdiscipli-
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Brookfield S. (2017). Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher (2nd edi-
tion). Jossey-Bass.
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formazione nelle professioni sanitarie. Guerini.
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46 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
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47
Chapter 3
Diversity, management and identity
politics – A critical view from
a fuzzy-culture perspective
Francisco Javier Montiel Alafont
1. Introduction
Engagement with diversity, equity and discrimination in organi-
zations developed differently regarding time and focus on both
sides of the Atlantic. In the USA, it can be traced back to the
1980s, when equal employment opportunity and affirmative ac-
tion policies were in vogue. Although gender was a topic as well,
those policies aimed mainly to ban discrimination against eth-
nic or racial minorities, especially the African-American popula-
tion (cfr. McDonald 2010: 2-3). In contrast, the European de-
bate on discrimination was primarily raised by feminist move-
ments during the same time, leading to the first gender equality
policies (e.g. in German public institutions) in the late 1980s
(cfr. Blome et al. 2013: 97), whereas ethnic and cultural diversity
only started playing a role in diversity perspectives during the
second half of the 1990s, when companies massively undertook
processes of internationalization and integration “problems” of
a rising migrant population within societies became evident (cfr.
Wrench 2007: 27-28).
Looking at the specific case of universities, a similar gap can
be observed. North American universities have been introducing
extensive programmes for attention to diversity since the 1990s.
In contrast, the German University Framework Act, (Hochschul-
rahmengesetz) in its seventh amendment of 2005, provided spe-
cific protection in terms of equity for people affected by gender
Chapter 3. Diversity, management and identity
politics

48 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
discrimination, family concerns (e.g. students with children),
challenging life situations (e.g. disability) and mobility (foreign
students) (cfr. Vedder 2006: 131). This not only means that the
internal cultural diversity of its own population was not in fo-
cus, but also that the partial interest in acknowledging cultural
or ethnic (but more specifically national) belonging was driven
by the ongoing internationalization of higher education since
the beginning of the 21st century.
When considering diversity management specifically, a mis-
matching becomes apparent. A social or organizational instru-
ment that was developed for dealing with the discrimination of
specific social identities based on power inequalities within mul-
ticultural (an in other ways diversified) societies is now applied
in universities to support internationalization processes related
to the glocalization1 of students, lecturers, researchers and curric-
ula. While discrimination in multicultural societies is mainly
driven by the essentialization of social identities, international-
ization in higher education leads to fuzziness of identities. In this
vein, Oztugurt (2017) criticizes the lack of global perspective in
common practices of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), as-
suming that they should have “a broader compass rather than a
narrow scope», as internationalization “addresses both the local/
national and global concerns within a dynamic structure and
reach” (Oztugurt 2017: 85). In regards to higher education insti-
tutions, he concludes:
[They] are simultaneously embedded in global and national con-
text (sic), which may convey different competitive and institutional
pressures. There is a correlation with the national and local con-
cerns and needs, but they do not necessarily intersect with global
concerns and needs as they are currently articulated. International-
ization is multi-approach relationship [sic] and is fluid. Local and
national concerns are strongly connected to global intersectionality.
(Oztugurt 2017: 85)
1. According to Robertson (1994) “the concept of globalisation has involved the
simultaneity and the inter-penetration of what are conventionally called the global
and the local, or - in more general vein - the universal and the particular” (Robertson
1994: 38).

49Chapter 3. Diversity, management and identity politics
Consequently, this article aims to collect scholars’ criticism
on mainstream diversity management practice, as well as pro-
posals to recentre it from a fuzzy-culture perspective with a view
to formulate suggestions for dealing with diversity in a way that
better fits the glocal scope of higher education.
2. Diversity management: definition,
evolution and criticism
When examining the concept of diversity management, it is the
notion of management that most commonly awakes suspicion,
due to its vagueness on the one hand and to its mercantilist or
political connotation on the other. Wrench (2015), for instance,
defines diversity management as:
[...] an organizational strategy which emphasizes the need to recog-
nize ethnic, cultural, gender and other differences between groups
of employees and clients and make practical allowances for these in
organizational policies. The ‘main message’ of the approach is that
organizations must see the human diversity within them as a
strength rather than as a problem. (Wrench 2015: 254)
But at the same time, he points to the arbitrariness of its prac-
tice and to the lack of definition of instruments and outputs:
“The problem is that diversity management in practice can mean
many things. It can be little more than a desire to celebrate cul-
tural diversity, or it can incorporate the full range of previous
equal employment opportunities and affirmative action measures”
(Wrench 2015: 260).
The political and economic aspects of diversity management
are well represented in the turning points of its evolution as de-
scribed by Lorbiecki and Jack (2000). They consider the starting
point in the late 1980s a demographic turn, as companies realized
the new heterogeneity of the workforce, with women and mem-
bers of minority ethnic groups emerging, and started reconsider-
ing the identity of their future managers (cfr. Lorbiecki and Jack
2000: 20). At the beginning of 1990s, a political turn followed
when the new-right thinking, which had arisen during Reagan’s

50 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
presidency, discovered diversity management’s inclusive ap-
proach as an attractive alternative to the more radical affirmative
action movement (cfr. Lorbiecki and Jack 2000: 20). An economic
turn became apparent in the mid 1990s, giving rise to what later
has been called the business case for diversity. It consists in the be-
lief that initiatives for social justice and inclusion will improve
the organization’s productivity and performance (cfr. Lorbiecki
and Jack 2000: 21). Finally, the critical turn is described as out-
bursts of antagonism or resentment (e.g. male backlash, white
rage, political correctness) resulting from diversity initiatives
having failed to provide more equality among workforce mem-
bers (cfr. Lorbiecki and Jack 2000: 22).
In conclusion, the instrumentalization of diversity has been a
serious allegation against diversity management practices since
the beginning. On the one hand, companies are at risk of being
seen as manipulators of diversity in order to achieve social legiti-
macy. On the other hand, the political establishment may be
making use of diversity policies in order to hide its attempt to
keep power and maintain existing inequalities behind the idea
of acknowledging the radical individuality of everyone. As Got-
sis and Kortezi (2015) put it:
Rather than posing a threat to the status quo by inaugurating a pro-
cess of organizational change, diversity management is more likely
to maintain and reproduce power and social influence asymmetries
insofar as diversity strategies appear to be disentangled from moral
and humanistic discourses that might be critical in challenging basic
neo-liberal underpinnings of the business case. (Gotsis and Kortezi
2015: 46)
In their list of identified critical points on practitioner versions
of diversity management, Lorbiecki and Jack (2000) reflect simi-
larly on the aspects of essentialist identity politics, mechanisms of
power control, and the potential to keep discrimination hidden.
They refer to the risk of considering diversity something that can
be managed and, consequently, of creating a cleavage between
those who manage diversity and the diverse group to be managed.
Furthermore, they refer to claims that debates on diversity actual-
ly deal with the adverse effects of a diversity that can neither be
avoided nor accepted (cfr. Lorbiecki and Jack 2000: 23).

51Chapter 3. Diversity, management and identity politics
As to the undifferentiated inclusive approach of diversity
management in practice, the same authors collect three critical
arguments. The first one is that a radical interpretation of the fact
that everyone is different dissolves the basis for the recognition
of disadvantages of certain social groups, which in turn renders
discrimination invisible (cfr. Lorbiecki and Jack 2000: 24). A sec-
ond dilemma is the inclination of diversity management towards
essentializing identities2 in order to be able to make diversity
identifiable and manageable. This makes it difficult to elaborate
on multiple identities, creating a scenario where people are more
likely to be passive subjects of top-down policies (cfr. Lorbiecki
and Jack 2000: 26). Finally, diversity management can also be
seen as a futile attempt to depoliticize conflicts among social
groups by focusing on individual differences rather than on
power inequalities (cfr. Lorbiecki and Jack 2000: 27).
In summary, together with the suspicions of interested ma-
nipulation (management), the struggles of the diversity manage-
ment concept revolve around the risk of using a perspective that
fosters cultural essentialism and is unable to expose existing
power inequalities. A closer look at the multiculturalism debate
and at the fuzzy understanding of culture is necessary in order to
generate new and more suitable approaches.
3. Multiculturalism, interculturality and fuzziness
To be immersed within a multicultural society can be seen as a
central trigger for an organization to implement diversity man-
agement measures. However, how a society should arrange its
own multiculturality is a question that has led to an intense de-
bate over recent decades. Stokke and Lybæk (2016) have defined
the different positions best, distinguishing between liberal state
multiculturalism, interculturalism and critical multiculturalism.
Liberal state multiculturalism, as characterized by these au-
thors, celebrates culture and ethnic diversity, recognizes group
identities, grants minorities a voice in decision-making processes
2. The typical classification of diversity dimensions is mainly based on a dominant
common origin (e.g. place of birth, ethnicity) or experience (e.g. gender, religion, sexu-
al orientation).

52 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
and strives for group differentiated rights (cfr. Stokke and Lybæk
2016: 2-3). Therefore, a strong connection with the principles of
mainstream diversity management can be recognized. The criti-
cism expressed against this approach is also very similar: multi-
culturalism is ethnocentric, essentializes culture and promotes
cultural relativism. Its focus on cultural differences hinders inte-
gration and social cohesion and ends up in segregation (cfr.
Stokke and Lybæk 2016: 3).
Since 2008 the European Union promotes intercultural dia-
logue as an alternative to multiculturalism. Major traits of inter-
culturalism are its emphasis on openness, respect, tolerance, par-
ticipation and self-reflection; its aim to generate individual com-
mitment to the group and to its common values; and its
aspiration to a culturally hybrid society (cfr. Stokke and Lybæk
2016: 4). Interculturalism as a state policy was suggested as a
formula to overcome the shortcomings of liberal state multicul-
turalism. Nevertheless, it has also been the object of criticism it-
self: it is also liberal (due to the individual focus), it presupposes
equality and neglects asymmetric power relations and arguments
from a majority position, being an instrument of nation-building.
Besides, integration is not the only possible outcome of intercul-
tural dynamics (cfr. Stokke and Lybæk 2016: 5; 11-12).
Finally, Stokke and Lybæk (2016) stress the specificity of crit-
ical multiculturalism. Even though it assumes most of the princi-
ples of interculturalism, it emphasizes the distinction of a multi-
culturalism from above and a multiculturalism from below, defines
multiculturalism in terms of dialogue and negotiations between
minority mobilization, majority responses and state policy, and
focuses on change and transformation of mainstream societies
(cfr. Stokke and Lybæk 2016: 5; 9-10).
Leaving aside the question of labelling it as multi- or inter-, it
seems evident that a non-essentialist intercultural approach can
be an appropriate foundation for recentring diversity manage-
ment, as long as power asymmetries are thematized, dialogue
and negotiation are considered suitable ongoing dynamics and
the focus is set on reciprocity relationships with potential for so-
cial transformation. Indeed, the cornerstone of such a founda-
tion must be a non-essentialist perspective on culture as the
multi-relational concept formulated by Bolten (2015) and
known as fuzzy culture.

53Chapter 3. Diversity, management and identity politics
Fuzzy culture describes culture as a multi-layered, open field in
which every individual establishes differently intensive relation-
ships of reciprocity to a number of lifeworld structures (commu-
nities or collectives). Such relationships have a certain degree of
conventionalization due to partially shared stocks of common
knowledge among the collectives, but they are also responsible
for a networking dynamic between both individuals and collec-
tives3 that are able to generate polyvalence and cohesion simul-
taneously (cfr. Bolten 2015: 50-51). As Bolten (2015) stresses:
Culture is not about either assigning an element to or excluding it
from a set, but rather about modelling the degrees of membership
or networking of elements to a set. In this sense, cultural boundaries
appear increasingly blurred –or “fuzzy” in the sense of polyvalent
logic– from such a perspective. Accordingly, such a “fuzzy culture”
is to be understood more relationally than substance-oriented: It is
primarily defined by the intensity with which actors relate to it.
(Bolten 2015: 50)4
The fuzzy-culture concept offers obvious advantages in regard
to a reconsidered diversity management practice. Focusing on
relationality rather than on substance, it avoids cultural essen-
tialism. The notion of collective allows it to keep the normally
used dimensions (gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, abili-
ty, etc.) visible, but also to make them permeable. Its open and
polyvalent networking approach grants the possibility of elabo-
rating on multiple identities. Reciprocity delivers the basis for
dealing with diversity in terms of dialogue and negotiation. The
networking dynamic means per se ongoing social transformation
and the notion of cohesion harmonizes well with the aims of
integration and hybridization. Can fuzzy-culture provide an an-
swer to the struggles with power and hegemony? For this, the
concept of management must be challenged.
3. For an extensive theor y of collectives cfr. Hansen (2009).
4. Translated by the author.

54 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
4. Intercultural process moderation
Asymmetric power relationships emanate from constructed per-
ceptions of minorities and majorities within fixed dual structures
of hegemony and submission. Thus, hegemonic and supposedly
homogeneous majorities have the power to manage submissive
diverse minorities. From a fuzzy and polyvalent perspective, this
picture changes radically as the boundary lines between major-
ities and minorities get blurry; they do not disappear, but rather
become positional:
Depending on the perspective from which the participants are
viewed, and depending on whether one rather takes a micro or a
macro- perspective, someone can count among majorities and minor-
ities at the same time and in changing positions. (Bolten 2010: 3)5
Accordingly, a fuzzy-(inter)culture-oriented understanding of
diversity aims to liquefy structural diversity. Once diversity is
conceived as a process, it becomes evident that the possibilities
of controlling and managing it are very limited, for its underly-
ing dynamic is one driven by individuals themselves recognizing
and negotiating possible compatibilities of different perceptions,
interests and skills (cfr. Bolten 2011: 9). Understanding diversity
as an emergent and self-dynamic process leads Bolten (2011) to
critically consider the use of the term management, if it is to be
defined as goal-oriented control. Without insisting on a specific
label, he suggests understanding (fuzzy) diversity management
in terms of intercultural process moderation, since its nature is
rather one of an open-end process of coordination of implied
people with a view to find and formulate common goals as well
as proper ways to achieve them (cfr. Bolten 2011: 9).
5. Translated by the author. A shor t example could be helpful to make this point
understandable. In the aftermath of the 2020 Oscar nominations, US media discussed
implicit racial discrimination as only two people of colour were nominated. One of
them happened to be the Spanish actor Antonio Banderas. The consideration of Bande-
ras as a person of colour created a certain polemic among the local media and a genuine
backlash in the Spanish press as from a European and specifically Spanish perspective
Banderas cannot be perceived as belonging to any racial or ethnic minority. Not the
specific traits of the actor, but rat her the frame of reference, and eventually his particu-
lar sympathy for a certain community were what made him be part of a Hispanic mi-
nority and a white majority at the same time (cfr. Benavides 2020).

55Chapter 3. Diversity, management and identity politics
Bolten (2011) continues with the specification of two condi-
tions for obtaining a fruitful intercultural diversity moderation.
The first is intercultural dialogue, defined as “the conscious and
goal-oriented active exchange of knowledge and experience be-
tween the actors and the different collectives or cultures they be-
long to” (Bolten 2011: 11)6. Furthermore, intercultural dialogue
in an organization presupposes the existence of free accessible
systems of communication and knowledge management. The
second condition is related to the engagement of so-called con-
nectors as agents who activate reciprocity relationships, learning
processes, knowledge exchange, collaboration and trust within
the network at the micro and macrolevels. They identify cohe-
sion potentials and give rise to emergent processes with the long-
term aim of generating organizational intercultural diversity
competence (cfr. Bolten 2011: 11-12).7
Fuzzy diversity management as intercultural process modera-
tion can probably not prevent an organization from situations of
power inequality and hegemonic behaviour, but it can make
them visible and deliver the organizational tools for reverting
them. Furthermore, its openness and wide scope is able to inte-
grate the inner perspective (organizational diversity as a result of
the inherent diversity of the society in which the organization is
immersed in) with the outer perspective (organizational diversi-
ty as a result of its internationalization process), making it espe-
cially suitable for fostering the internationalization process of
higher education institutions.
6. Translated by the author.
7. Organizational intercultural diversity competence is embedded in the organiza-
tional culture in the best case scenario, so that it belongs to its basic assumptions, not
necessarily requir ing a high level of formalization. Müller et al. (2017) collected a num-
ber of case histories in diversity management practices, one of which is a good e xample
of this: the Badische Staatstheater Karlsruhe. It is a small organization of 146 people from
40 different countries. It has only a minimal instance of formalized diversity manage-
ment (One employee representative for equal opportunities and antidiscrimination)
and no official diversity statement. Nevertheless, it presents a high degree of sensitivity
towards diversit y (connected with a collective consciousness about its impor tance in the
cultural market) and an organizational behaviour free of diversity taboos. Its organi-
zational culture emphasizes internal cohesion, solidarity, equality and diversity as nor-
mality (cfr. Müller et al., 2017: 95).

56 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
5. Some proposals for diversity
management practice in internationalizing
higher education institutions
To sum up, a small number of practical considerations can be
suggested for the specific case of higher education institutions in
the process of internationalization.
The first refers to the most common measures of diversity
management practice in universities:8 normative diversity poli-
cies (e.g. access quotas for student groups considered disadvan-
taged) and institutionally managed events (e.g. intercultural day,
antidiscrimination workshops) can, at their best, raise awareness
about diversity issues, but they do not ensure inclusive organiza-
tional behaviour. At their worst, they can perpetuate cultural es-
sentialization.
A second and highly relevant reflection concerns the scope of
implementation: essentialist and hegemonic approaches can
only be avoided through cultural embeddedness of diversity
practices.9 This implies that diversity management cannot be an
extracurricular offer to the academic community. On the contra-
ry, it needs the emergent participation of all members of such a
complex community (students, lecturers and researchers, non-
academic personnel, partners, etc.) in the holistic impregnation
of all academic activities with fuzzy diversity perspectives. In this
context, a diversity approach is especially relevant in the concep-
tion and development of learning objectives, curricular contents
and didactic models, for this area is responsible for the most rel-
evant struggles of universities with diversity. As Heuchemer
(2017) emphasizes:
The diversity of the students contrasts with the desired learning out-
comes, which express the skills and competencies the students
should have at the end of their studies. Even if the learning out-
comes are uniformly defined for all students, the learning of in-
volved individuals takes place very differently. Most universities see
8. Normally ascribed to the discrimination and fairness and the access and legiti-
macy paradigms according to Ely and Thomas (2001: 261)
9. This observation and the following ones can be seen as belonging to the integra-
tion and learning paradigm according to Ely and Thomas (2001: 261).

57Chapter 3. Diversity, management and identity politics
these dynamic learning requirements and movements as a chal-
lenge, sometimes even as a threat to the academic level, and when
dealing with the diversity relevant to learning, they tend to behave
as a “homosocial” or monocultural organization. (Heuchemer
2017: 20)10
Furthermore, Heuchemer (2017) sees a direct connection be-
tween diversity management practices in universities and the
general learning objective of global citizenship as professional
qualification for future graduates (cfr. Heuchemer 2017: 24).
Third, the need for a moderated intercultural diversity dia-
logue for the generation of a diversity sensitive organizational
culture is emphasized. It mainly implies an appropriate rep-
resentation of students at all decision levels and governance bod-
ies of academic life, with special attention placed on preventing
the segregation of international students, researchers and part-
ners as guests or visitors. Besides, the consideration of academic
and scientific personnel as simple service deliverers represents a
frequent mistake that can delegitimate any attempt at dialogue.
Such a moderated intercultural diversity dialogue within the
organization’s social network can only be generated using a de-
centralized mediation practice provided by connectors. This is
the fourth consideration. A decentralized moderation fosters the
chances of freely addressing emergent diversity issues and coun-
teracts attempts at hegemonic cancelling, either from a structural
majority or a minority perspective claiming political correctness.
Fifth, diversity moderation needs to apply a fuzzy identity
policy in the formal organization. This involves, among other
aspects, consciously renouncing the practice of framing of stu-
dents and employees as well as elaborating on polyvalent per-
spectives and multiple identities.
Finally, the intrinsic openness of moderation processes en-
tails the acknowledgement that diversity management aims must
be communally and glocally negotiated. The top-down and
global formulation of diversity goals by the organization’s lead-
ers is futile due to a lack of collective legitimation.
These are only some practical suggestions derived from a con-
ceptual recentring of diversity management in higher education
10. Translated by the author.

58 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
organizations from a fuzzy culture perspective. Empirical studies
of their validity are difficult due to the current state of the art in
the field, where mainstream diversity management practices are
dominant, but they would be desirable and worthwhile.
6. References
Benavides, L. (2020). Why labeling Antonio Banderas a ‘person of
color’ triggers such a backlash. In NPR [online] https://www.npr.
org/2020/02/09/803809670/why-labeling-antonio-banderas-a-
person-of-color-triggers-such-a-backlash?t=1640127166154
Blome, E., Erfmeier, A., Gülcher, N. and Smykalla, S. (2013). Handbuch
zur Gleichstellungspolitik an Hochschulen. Von der Frauenförderung zum
Diversity Management? Springer.
Bolten, J. (2010). Fuzzy Diversity’ als Grundlage interkultureller Dia-
logfähigkeit. Erwägen – Wissen – Ethik, 21, H.2, 136-139. Also [on-
line] http://iwk-jena.uni-jena.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/
2010_FuzzyDiversity_EWE_Auernheimer.pdf
Bolten, J. (2011). Diversity Management als interkulturelle Prozess-
moderation. Interculture Journal, 13, 1-14.
Bolten, J. (2015). Einführung in die interkulturelle Wirtschaftskommunika-
tion. Vandehoeck & Ruprecht.
Ely, R. and Thomas, D. (2001). Cultural diversity at work: The effects of
diversity perspectives on work group processes and outcomes. Ad-
ministrative Science Quarterly, 46(2), 229-273.
Gotsis, G. and Kortezi, Z. (2015). Critical studies in diversity management
literature. A review and synthesis. Springer.
Hansen, K. (2009). Kultur, Kollektiv, Nation. Stutz.
Heuchemer, S. (2017). Diversity Management als Voraussetzung für
eine zukunftsfähige Hochschulbildung. In Szczyrba, B., Treeck, T.
van, Wildt, B. and Wildt, J. (eds). Coaching (in) Diversity an Hochschu-
len. Hintergründe – Ziele – Anlässe – Verfahren (pp. 19-26). Springer.
Lorbiecki, A. and Jack, G. (2000). Critical turns in the evolution of di-
versity management. British Journal of Management, 11, special issue,
17-31.
McDonald, D. (2010). The evolution of ‘diversity management’ in the
USA: Social contexts, managerial motives and theoretical approach-
es. Research Papers, E-51. Institute of Business Research, Daito Bun-
ka University.

59Chapter 3. Diversity, management and identity politics
Müller, A., Montiel Alafont, F.J. and Lietz, R. (2017). Country report Ger-
many: Halfway to Integration: Observations on Recognition, Participa-
tion, and Diversity Management Practices in the Region of Baden. Fon-
dazione ISMU.
Oztugurt, O. (2017). Internationalization for diversity, equity, and in-
clusion. Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice, 17(6), 83-91.
Robertson, R. (1994). Globalisation or glocalisaton? Journal of Interna-
tional Communication, 1(1), 33-52.
Stokke, Ch. and Lybæk, L. (2016). Combining intercultural dialogue
and critical multiculturalism. Ethnicities, 0(0) 1-16.
Vedder, G. (2006). Equity and Diversity at Universities in Germany. In
Vedder, G. (ed.). Managing equity and diversity at universities (pp.
127-147). Rainer Hampp.
Wrench, J. (2015). Diversity management. In Vertovec, St. (ed.). Rout-
ledge International Handbook of Diversity Studies (pp. 254-262). Rout-
ledge.

61
Chapter 4
Intercultural competence in
the international classroom –
The lecturers’ perception
Àngels Pinyana
Lucrecia Keim
Montserrat Vancells
1. Introduction
In the last decades the internationalisation of higher education in-
stitutions (HEI) has triggered a gradual introduction of courses or
programmes in foreign languages, especially English. Even though
the primary goals of HEI are increasing mobility, the production
of teaching or research materials in English, and ultimately im-
proving the employability of graduates as well as to increase their
institutional presence in the international student market (Cole-
man, 2004, p. 4, cited in Coleman, 2006), internationalisation
also presents an array of challenges. For example, HEIs must adapt
their own language policies (Shohamy, 2013); students must
adapt to living in an intercultural environment and cope with a
new academic style (Tatzl, 2011), which may affect their participa-
tion in class (Knapp, 2011) or lead to increased anxiety and even
reduced motivation (Inbar-Lourie and Donitsa-Schmidt, 2013).
Teachers also must address the issues that arise when teaching in a
language other than their own, such as increased workload (Vinke,
Snippe and Jochems, 1998), or the possible reduction in content
that often occurs in this situation (Coleman and Costa, 2010). All
of them, however, must assume responsibility for their linguistic
(Cots, 2013; Lasagabaster and Sierra, 2011; Studer, in this volume)
and intercultural competence (Klaassen and De Graaff, 2001).
Chapter 4. Intercultural competence in the inter-
national classroom – The lecturers’ perception

62 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
It is precisely the intercultural issue in relation to teachers that
is the main concern in this study. As the number of international
students increases, so does cultural diversity. Therefore, master-
ing intercultural competence is essential for the teacher to feel at
ease in the international classroom. This study presents the anal-
ysis of the results of a questionnaire administered to teachers of
international students at the University of Vic-Central University
of Catalonia (UVic-UCC) with the aim of finding out their per-
ceptions on intercultural competence, check whether their con-
ceptions are independent of the teachers’ field of knowledge
and, finally, find out whether previous international experience
modifies them.
2. Theoretical framework
Intercultural competence has been conceptualised in a variety of
ways in the last 50 years. While all the models that attempt to
describe it seem to agree that ‘intercultural competence’ refers
to a set of cognitive sub-competences, attitudes and skills that
are activated to interact appropriately and effectively in intercul-
tural situations, in the models there are differences in how these
sub-competences are interrelated or activated in intercultural in-
teraction.
According to Spitzberg and Changnon (2009), there has been
a shift from models developed from a structural point of view
and characterised by lists of sub-competences (empathy, flexibil-
ity, language skills, encyclopaedic knowledge etc.) to models fo-
cusing on the complexity of intercultural competence develop-
ment. Fantini’s (1995) or Byram’s (1997) models stress the im-
portance of intercultural interaction as well as the need for
mutual co-orientation during intercultural interaction, while Au-
ernheimer’s (2008) emphasises the relevance of social interrela-
tions and how they reflect power asymmetries, collective experi-
ences, prejudices and differences in the cultural, or in the com-
munities’ scripts. Other models focus on the phases of
intercultural competence development, like Deardorff’s (2006),
which postulates that internal attitudinal change precedes exter-
nal behavioural change. That is, concrete experiences can lead to
changes in attitude and skills that will, in turn, lead to changes

63Chapter 4. Intercultural competence in the international classroom – The lecturers’ perception
in subsequent actions. Another model, Bolten’s (2015), posits
that intercultural competence is polyvalent, relational and rela-
tive. In other words, it is a processual and changing competence
that enables us to decide reflexively which skills or knowledge
must be activated in different contexts with different interlocu-
tors. For example, in the university context, teachers with highly
developed intercultural competence should be able to make de-
cisions on possible adaptations in their verbal, para-verbal and
non-verbal discourse or on how they show empathy, as well as
be able to be flexible, tolerant of ambiguity and be able to dis-
tance themselves from acquired habits and roles. Most impor-
tantly, these teachers should make these decisions synergistically
and interdependently with the students. Hence, they should be
very attentive to the interaction in the classroom as it is unlikely
that the students consistently react in the same way.
Within this framework, the objectives of the present study are
threefold: To gauge the level of teachers’ awareness of their own
intercultural competence. To explore whether teacher percep-
tions are affected by their own field of knowledge and, to inves-
tigate whether their self-reported previous international experi-
ence modulates their perceptions of their present intercultural
competence.
3. Method
Data was collected using an online questionnaire which aimed
at finding out the perceptions of UVic-UCC teaching staff. After
piloting the questionnaire with a sample of 12 teachers from dif-
ferent subject areas and experts in the subject or social sciences,
the final version included a first part in which the focus was their
experience with international students, the languages they use
when teaching, their field of knowledge and the subjects they
teach. This was followed by a second section that contained 29
5-point Likert-type scale statements, where 1 was not in agree-
ment and 5 was complete agreement, divided into three large
groups corresponding to three dimensions: attitudes, knowledge
and skills in the field of intercultural competence. Cronbach’s
Alpha internal consistency coefficient stood at .881, which is an
adequate reliability for this type of instrument.

64 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
Although the questionnaire was sent to 87 teachers including
both permanent and associate lecturers who were involved in
teaching, or had already taught, international students, only 53
of them (61%) completed it. The participants’ teaching fields en-
compassed subjects related to social sciences (37.7%), life scienc-
es and technology (28.3%), and humanities (34%). The majori-
ty (88.7%) had previous experience with international students.
Concerning the languages used for teaching, 84.9% used several
languages (Catalan, Spanish and a foreign language) depending on
the subject they taught, while the remaining 15.1% only use one
language, generally English, except 1.9% of them who use French
only.
4. Results
4.1. Teachers’ perceptions
Teachers’ perceptions of their intercultural competence will be
described in three dimensions: attitudes, knowledge and skills.
The sum of the percentage of the results for the options “agree”
and “strongly agree” (values 4 and 5 respectively on the Likert
scale) for each of the items in the questionnaire will be reported.
However, percentages for all the options of the Likert scale can
be seen in the figures.
As far as attitudes is concerned, the median resulting from
grouping all the items in this dimension is the highest of all the
three dimensions (4.4) suggesting that teachers have a positive
attitude towards intercultural issues. Practically all the partici-
pants (94.2%) agree that knowledge of their own cultural back-
ground and sensitivity towards it are relevant. While 88.7% be-
lieve that this background influences them in their daily practice
as teachers and 83% recognise that they are aware of their own
limits in terms of intercultural knowledge and experience, only
66% feel comfortable with cultural differences in the classroom,
and just over a half of them (58.5%) consider it irrelevant to
know in advance if they have international students in their
classrooms.
In the area of Knowledge, the total median taking into consid-
eration all the items in this dimension stands at 3.5. Responses

65Chapter 4. Intercultural competence in the international classroom – The lecturers’ perception
related to this dimension are presented in three different sub-
sections: teachers’ knowledge of their own values and cultural
references, knowledge of the students’ culture, and knowledge of
teaching strategies.
As far as knowledge of their own values and cultural references
is concerned, three quarters of teachers (75.5%) express that they
Figure 1. Attitudes
Figure 2. Knowledge of own values and cultural references

66 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
are aware of their own cultural background and 76.9 % admit
that it affects them personally and professionally, as well as influ-
encing their own verbal and non-verbal language on academic
discourse. Similarly, 71.2% mention being aware of the effect
that stereotypes can have on the practice of their profession. Al-
most all the teachers surveyed (98.1%) believe that their teaching
style can have an influence on the learning process of students.
The second aspect within knowledge refers to students’ culture.
The results of the survey shows that most teachers (80.8%) rec-
ognise that cultural differences may influence the way students
interpret their teaching practices. However, we can observe that
even though teachers admit to have knowledge of the cultural
background of their home students, only 17% of them report
having a good knowledge of the cultural and historical context
of international students and only 39.2% acknowledge knowing
about aspects related to the social, economic and political situa-
tion that may affect their international students, their families
and their community. Furthermore, less than half (46.2%) can
identify the characteristics of verbal and non-verbal language
specific to the cultural background of their students.
Figure 3. Knowledge of students’ culture
Finally, the third division in the knowledge domain refers to
teaching strategies. Only 40.4% agree that their teaching practice

67Chapter 4. Intercultural competence in the international classroom – The lecturers’ perception
may conflict with the values of other cultural contexts, but only
20.8% of them acknowledge that they are familiar with appro-
priate pedagogy for intercultural contexts. As far as assessment is
concerned, more than half of the teachers (67.3%) are aware
that the perception of assessment instruments may differ accord-
ing to the educational culture of each student, but less than half
of the teachers (46.2%) know how to apply procedures to ensure
that assessment is not affected by such cultural or linguistic dif-
ferences.
Figure 4. Knowledge of teaching strategies
The third dimension in teachers’ perception is skills. The
grouped median in this dimension is 3.6, showing that teachers
seem to be fairly competent in terms of intercultural skills. More
than three quarters of the teachers consider that they do listen
to international students when they talk about issues related to
their culture (80.8%), but only half of them (55.8%) accept that
they discuss aspects related to these cultures with their students.
77.4% of respondents intend to improve their intercultural com-
petence on a personal level, but to a lesser extent in the educa-
tional setting (52.8%) and are even less involved in events to
promote interaction with international students outside the
classroom (30.8%). Almost three quarters of the survey partici-
pants (76%) admit to giving explanations to students about the

68 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
techniques used in the classroom and, at the same time, more
than half of them (64%) admit to adapting academic discourse
to students’ cultural and linguistic characteristics, although they
find it more difficult to adapt their non-verbal language (49%).
Finally, less than half of the respondents (49%) modify their
teaching practice when teaching in a language other than their
mother tongue. Nearly the same percentage indicate that they
use specific teaching strategies in the intercultural classroom
(45.1%) and consider themselves able to identify the motivation
of a conflict in the classroom. Specifically, whether the interpre-
tation of certain actions may be influenced by stereotypes or
prejudices (49%).
Figure 5. Intercultural skills
4.2. Area of knowledge and perception
of intercultural competence
The goal of the second research question was to see whether
there is any relationship between the perception of intercultural
competence and the participants’ area of knowledge (Social
Sciences, Life Sciences and Technology, and Human Sciences).
A Kruskall-Wallis test provided a significant difference in
“Knowledge of students’ verbal and non-verbal discourse”
(p=.009), and “Knowledge of strategies to reduce the effect of
cultural background on assessment” (p=.040). Life Sciences and

69Chapter 4. Intercultural competence in the international classroom – The lecturers’ perception
Technology teachers have a lower mean in these two items, im-
plying that their knowledge is probably minor than teachers of
Social Sciences or Humanities. There was no significant differ-
ence in any other item or when the three dimensions were ana-
lysed as a whole.
Table 1. Means of items 14 and 17 by area of knowledge.
Item 14
Knowledge of students’
verbal and non-verbal
discourse
Item 17
Knowledge of strategies to
reduce the effect of cultural
background on assessment
Social Sciences 33.84 31.29
Life Sciences and Technology 19.20 18.73
Humanities 24.83 27.61
4.3. Self-reported international experience and
perception of intercultural competence
The third research question aimed at investigating whether the per-
ception of intercultural competence varies according to teachers’
previous international experience. Teachers self-identified as
experienced if they had already taught international students
(N=47. 88.7%), and inexperienced if they had not (N=6, 11.3%).
A Mann-Whitney U test showed that there was a significant
difference (U = 248,5, p = 0.001) between skills of the experi-
enced and inexperienced teachers. The median score in the skills
dimension for the experienced group stood at 3.6 whereas that
of the non-experienced group was 2.6 suggesting that the non-
experienced group did not have as fine-tuned intercultural skills
as those teachers who had international competence. No nota-
ble differences were found in attitudes or knowledge.
5. Discussion
The overall analysis of the results shows that teachers are aware
and have a positive view of intercultural competence, which is
an assessment shared by Sercu (2006). However, with the three
dimensions that have been analysed in mind -attitudes, knowl-

70 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
edge and skills- a number of considerations about teacher per-
ceptions stand out.
Firstly, the high values observed in both the domains of atti-
tudes and knowledge of one’s own cultural references indicate a
favourable view towards these two domains. In particular, it
seems that these teachers are aware of the extent of their own
cultural background and the influence it has on their perfor-
mance in the intercultural classroom, while at the same time
they acknowledge that certain aspects, such as stereotypes, affect
their practice. Teekens (2000, p. 31) corroborates this descrip-
tion of the ‘international classroom’ teacher by highlighting the
value these teachers place on their own cultural awareness and
their concern to broaden it. Deardorff (2006) considers that
self-knowledge and awareness of the influence of one’s own cul-
tural background are prerequisites to be able to listen and show
empathy in intercultural interactions and to be open to start in-
ternal transformation. These internal processes are essential be-
fore making external changes in intercultural interactions.
Secondly, although the teachers in the present study are aware
of the cultural differences intrinsic to the multicultural class-
room, they are more uncertain about the students’ cultures. This
may be a cause of concern as the influence of the interactions
between members of different cultures on the development of
the international classroom is often unpredictable. In particular,
non-verbal language is one of the issues that tends to raise inse-
curity, as the skills involved in this type of discourse are more
difficult to observe than those of verbal discourse. For example,
as non-verbal discourse is spontaneous and emotionally marked
(Matsumoto, Hee Young and LeRoux 2007), being aware of its
use or be able to consciously change or adapt it while interacting
in a multicultural context requires prior practice.
Thirdly, in terms of pedagogical aspects, these teachers are
aware that their own teaching style may influence individual pu-
pils differently. Following Auernheimer (2008) contextual fac-
tors and cultural scripts, that is teachers’ prior experiences, be-
liefs and teaching habits may have an impact on intercultural
interaction. It is worth noting that the item I know the effects of
my teaching methods has the highest percentage in the knowledge
dimension, which seems to suggest that teachers attach impor-
tance to pedagogical aspects, or at least, are aware of the effect

71Chapter 4. Intercultural competence in the international classroom – The lecturers’ perception
that their teaching style may have on students. However, a large
number of teachers express ignorance about culturally sensitive
teaching practices. In fact, the item I have a good knowledge of in-
tercultural pedagogy results in the lowest score in the whole ques-
tionnaire. Even so, the responses to the item I use special teaching
techniques in the intercultural classroom seem to indicate that, in
some cases, some adaptation takes place in the intercultural
classroom. In this vein Teekens (2000) argues that teaching mul-
ticultural groups draws on personal or family experiences and
previous international experiences rather than on knowledge of
intercultural pedagogy. In other words, teachers may not always
have the background in intercultural pedagogy to systematically
and consciously activate specific intercultural techniques.
Fourthly, the teachers surveyed do not perceive intercultural
pedagogy as a compulsory element in their classes. In fact, less
than half of the teachers surveyed believe that it is not essential to
change teaching practice by changing the language of instruction.
Similarly, in Dafouz, Núñez, Sancho and Foran’s (2007) study
on the perceptions of Spanish teachers who teach in English,
they reported that it was not necessary to change the assessment
system depending on the language of instruction. This percep-
tion contrasts with the opinion of authors like Gress and Ilon
(2009), who state that teaching styles vary according to cultures,
customs and history (p. 190) or Klaasnen et al. (2001), Björkman
(2010) and Hellekjaer (2010) who agree that there is a need for
international teachers to use methodologies appropriate to the
multicultural environment.
Fifthly, a large proportion of the teachers involved in this
study demonstrate a strong willingness to engage in activities
that help them develop their intercultural competence, but only
slightly more than a half are willing to act to improve it. Björk-
man (2010) also alludes to the difficulty of motivating teachers
to engage in intercultural-specific training.
Finally, looking at the questionnaire items separately, we
found a significant difference between interculturally experi-
enced and inexperienced teachers in terms of intercultural skills.
The latter seem to use fewer teaching techniques and minimise
discussions on aspects related to the different cultures in the
classroom. In addition, inexperienced teachers seem to take less
action to improve their intercultural competence and would be

72 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
less able to adapt their non-verbal language than experts. How-
ever, within the group of teachers surveyed, belonging to differ-
ent subject areas does not have a significant impact on their atti-
tudes, knowledge and skills towards interculturality.
Although the results of the study are restricted to a single uni-
versity, these considerations may be relevant for other similar in-
stitutions or for further research.
6. Conclusion
In conclusion, teachers seem to be open to teaching in intercul-
tural classrooms, they seem to be aware that their own cultural
background can influence how international students perceive
their teaching activity. Whereas their own field of knowledge
does not seem to affect their perceptions, their intercultural ex-
perience does have an effect especially in intercultural skills.
Hence, training that involves reflective practice in situations and
contexts similar to those in which they teach seems advisable, as
debate and discussion would be encouraged, and last but not
least, such practice could be adapted to the constant evolution of
intercultural competence and learning theories. Dervin (2010)
states: “Intercultural competence is not permanent, ‘for life’, and
its practice and learning never end” (p. 168).
7. References
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sional betrachtet, mit Konsequenzen für das Verständnis von in-
terkultureller Kompetenz. In Auernheimer, G. (Hrsg.), Interkulturelle
Kompetenz und pädagogische Professionalität (pp. 35-65). VS Verlag.
Björkman, B. (2010). So you think you can ELF: English as a lingua
franca as the medium of instruction. HERMES-Journal of Language
and Communication in Business, 23(45), 77-96.
Bolten, J. (2012). Interkulturelle Kompetenz. Landeszentrale für poli-
tische Bildung.
Bolten, J. (2015). ¿Qué competencia intercultural? Modelos teóricos y
consecuencias para su aplicación práctica. In Springer, F.W. (ed.),
La comunicación hispano alemana (pp. 263-279). Reichenberger.

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Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communication
competence. Multilingual Matters.
Coleman, J.A. (2006). English-medium teaching in European higher
education. Language teaching, 39(1), 1-14.
Coleman, J.A. and Costa, F. (2010). Integrating Content and Language
in Higher Education in Italy: Ongoing Research. International CLIL
Research Journal, 1(3), 19-29.
Cots, J.M. (2013). Introducing English-medium instruction at the Uni-
versity of Lleida, Spain: Intervention, beliefs and practices. In Doiz,
A, Lasagabaster, D. and Sierra, J.M. (eds.), English-medium instruction
at universities: Global challenges (pp. 106-130). Multilingual Matters.
Dafouz, E., Núñez, B., Sancho, C. and Foran, D. (2007). Integrating
CLIL at the tertiary level: teachers’ and students’ reactions. In Marsh,
D. Diverse Contexts-converging goals. CLIL in Europe (pp. 91-101). Pe-
ter Lang.
Deardorff, D.K. (2006). Identification and Assessment of Intercultural
Competence as a Student Outcome of Internationalization. Journal
of Studies in International Education, 10(3), 241-266.
Deardorff, D.K. (2011). Assessing intercultural competence. New Direc-
tions for Institutional Research, 149, 65-79.
Dervin, F. (2010). Assessing intercultural competence in language
learning and teaching: A critical review of current efforts. New ap-
proaches to assessment in higher education, 5, 155-172.
Fantini, A.E. (1995). Language, culture and world view: Exploring the
nexus. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 19, 143-153.
Gress, D.R. and Ilon, L. (2009). Successful integration of foreign faculty
into Korean universities: A proposed framework. KEDI Journal of Ed-
ucation Policy, 6, 183-204.
Inbar-Lourie, O. and Donitsa-Schmidt, S. (2013). Englishization in an
Israeli teacher education college: Taking the first steps. In Doiz, A.,
Lasagabaster, D. and Sierra, J.M. (eds.), English-medium instruction at
universities: Global challenges (pp. 151-173). Multilingual Matters.
Klaassen, R.G. and De Graaff, E. (2001). Facing innovation: Preparing
lecturers for English-medium instruction in a non-native context.
European Journal of Engineering Education, 26(3), 281-289.
Knapp, A. (2011). When comprehension is crucial: Using English as a
medium of instruction at a German University. In De Houwer, A.
and Wilton, A. (eds.), English in Europe today: Sociocultural and edu-
cational perspectives (pp. 51-70). John Benjamins Publishing Com-
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Lasagabaster, D. and Sierra, J.M. (2011). Classroom observation: desir-
able conditions established by teachers. European Journal of Teacher
Education, 34(4), 449-463.
Matsumoto, D., Hee You, S. and LeRoux, J. (2007). Emotion and inter-
cultural adjustment. In Kotthoff, H. and Spencer-Oatey, H. (eds.),
Handbook of intercultural communication (pp. 77-97). De Gruyter.
Ricardo, C.T. (2013). Formación y desarrollo de la competencia intercultur-
al en ambientes virtuales de aprendizaje (Doctoral dissertation, Uni-
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uned.es/fez/view.php?pid=tesisuned:Educacion-Ctricardo
Sercu, L. (2006). The foreign language and intercultural competence
teacher: The acquisition of a new professional identity. Intercultural
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riences and teaching behaviours. Teaching in Higher Education, 3(3),
383-394.

75
Chapter 5
Fostering global and
intercultural competence at a
medium-sized university
Lucrecia Keim
Sarah Khan
Joan Masnou
Àngels Pinyana
Àngel Raluy
1. Introduction
The University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia (from here
on UVic) is a medium-sized university in Spain founded in 1997
as a private institution under public supervision. It re-established
higher education in the city of Vic dating back to the literary
studies of the XVI century. From its very beginnings UVic has de-
veloped international relations with other higher education in-
stitutions (HEIs) and placed an emphasis on foreign language
learning and student mobility. These first directions were devel-
oped in line with the general trend in higher education contexts
towards internationalisation strategies focused on the challenges
of increasing worldwide intercultural communication. The inter-
nationalisation of the curriculum, and more particularly, the de-
velopment of global and intercultural competence appears to be
paramount to preparing undergraduates to act in an integrated
world system (Pinto, 2018). Nevertheless, somehow initiatives in
higher education are struggling to adjust their pace and courses
that promote global and intercultural competence still remain
uncommon (Sit, Mak and Neill, 2017). It is no easy feat for uni-
versities to address this challenge let alone make it fit to the
Chapter 5. Fostering global and intercultural
competence at a medium-sized university

76 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
unique characteristics of their own local contexts, and conflict-
ing interests in a highly diversified academic community often
mean that intercultural competence is undervalued. In this pa-
per we aim to present UVic’s comprehensive internationalisation
strategy, as well as three selective initiatives that have emerged
from its implementation: intercultural training, collaborative
online international learning (COIL) and a proposal for a Certif-
icate of Global Studies, as an example of a university working to
enhance the status of intercultural and global competence. These
initiatives have been developed under the influence of partner
universities and current trends, and although they are not unique
in themselves, by describing the underlying processes, we hope
they may provide useful guidelines to other policymakers in
HEIs aiming to work in similar directions.
2. Theoretical remarks
The complex and fuzzy nature of so-called global and intercultural
competence is well-known and has been widely discussed. Indeed,
there is still debate around the terminology1 that is used to refer
to the sum of attitudes, values, knowledge and skills that allow
an efficient and respectful interrelation between persons with
different cultural backgrounds enabling them to negotiate un-
derstanding in both local and global interactions (Arasaratnam-
Smith 2017; Bolten, 2015; Byram, 1997; Deardorff 2006;
Fernández-Villanueva, in this volume; Montiel Alafont, in this
volume; OECD, 2018). In this paper we understand global com-
petence as an umbrella term that includes intercultural compe-
tence. In line with the scholars cited above, we believe that its
acquisition is a lifelong process that implies both questioning
and adapting to local norms while considering them globally.
With reference to higher education, Deardorff (2006:259) states:
Intercultural competence is a complex construct that involves more
than one component. For example, knowledge or language does
not guarantee intercultural competence. Thus, internationalization
1. This debate includes the use of the singular term “competence” instead of the
plural “competences” or the more professional one “competencies” (see Deardorff 2006).

77Chapter 5. Fostering global and intercultural competence at a medium-sized university
strategies need to address the development of the components of
intercultural competence in a variety of ways (i.e., course work,
study abroad, on-campus interaction with students from different
cultural backgrounds, etc.) as well as the actual process for acquir-
ing intercultural competence, including necessary cognitive skills.
Complexity and challenges of acquiring global and intercul-
tural competence have been overlooked by the educational com-
munity in the past. Too much focus seems to have been placed
on just practical aspects of international mobility. Nonetheless,
according to Byram (1997) and Deardorff (2006) successful in-
tercultural training in higher education has to consider affective
and cognitive factors. The affective dimension refers to attitudes,
motivation, curiosity, self-awareness, management of uncertainty
and flexibility, among others, whereas the cognitive dimension
includes knowledge of cultural patterns, worldviews, social prac-
tices and perceptions such as critical thinking. More recently, oth-
er authors such as Aba (2015) have highlighted the importance
of the behavioral dimension, defined as the ability to empathise,
build relationships and resolve cultural conflicts to enhance mo-
bility in higher education. Furthermore, intercultural training is
crucial before, during and after an international exchange in or-
der to effectively learn from the intercultural experience (Gopal,
2011). So, in order to achieve positive learning results when ac-
quiring global and intercultural competence, in addition to need-
ing time, it is necessary to learn to observe oneself reflectively
and be aware of one’s own Gestalt (Bardhan, 2016). It may seem
obvious, but it has to be stated, that training should take into ac-
count the special demands and collective Gestalts of all the differ-
ent agents involved in internationalisation at higher education.
A positive example of such training is one developed by the Sys-
temic University Change Towards Internationalisation (SUCTI)
project at Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Spain, unique in address-
ing administrative staff, whose needs are often overlooked. As for
students, the length of an international exchange is frequently
limited in time, making in-depth involvement in learning pro-
cesses more difficult. Working on global and intercultural com-
petence, therefore, at all study levels and as a cross-disciplinary
competence, and appreciating potential learning opportunities of
internationalisation at home would mitigate this.

78 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
3. Comprehensive internationalisation strategy
Any innovation in higher education is unthinkable without a
global strategy that implicates all involved agents. In the case of
internationalisation this means taking into account the perspec-
tives of university management, the lecturers, students and ad-
ministrative staff in a comprehensive strategy.
Except for the mobility programmes, which were institution-
alised through a Mobility Office, most of the first international
initiatives at UVic resulted from individual initiatives. In 2008
an action plan was drawn up aimed at building an inclusive and
coordinated internationalisation strategy, which would not only
impact on the quality of education and research but also equip
both domestic and foreign students with knowledge and skills to
work in an international and multicultural context.
Besides setting a clear institutional stance on internationali-
sation, this first action plan set up the basic structure and organ-
isation for its objectives to be achieved. It is worth mentioning
that the plan included, among other measures, the expansion of
the Mobility Office into an International Relations Office, the
opening of an Internationalisation Unit in each faculty, the crea-
tion of a Language Service in charge of serving the language
requirements of the institution, such as the creation of a multi-
lingual website, a translation service, and several training work-
shops in languages and global and intercultural competence for
teaching and administrative staff and for incoming and outgoing
students.
This embryonic period of internationalisation was strength-
ened by the first UVic Strategic Internationalisation Plan (2011-
2016), including a first Internationalisation Plan which built on
previous objectives and highlighted the fact that all parts of the
university community (management and human resources,
teaching, research and administration) should incorporate an
international outlook in their organisational procedures.
The plan focussed on six main areas: international projection
of the institution, mobility and exchange, international students’
recruitment, international academic collaboration, internation-
alisation at home (Nilsson, 2003) and research. Each of these
areas was assessed by a series of numerical indicators updated
yearly and analysed both by an Internationalisation Committee

79Chapter 5. Fostering global and intercultural competence at a medium-sized university
and the University Board of Management. Rankings and analysis
of growth rate over a number of years are two of the usual meas-
ures which are used to quantitatively assess the degree of success
of these plans. In the last ten years the increase in the number of
international activities and staff involvement with international
collaborations has been huge, the number of incoming and out-
going students has grown, the number of subjects with English
as a medium of instruction (EMI) has increased, an international
perspective has been gradually incorporated in the students’ cur-
riculum and, consequently, there has been an impressive rise in
the ranking position of the University.
Ten years after the first Internationalisation Plan, the Univer-
sity collected accurate quantitative information on its impact on
the institution as a whole, but not on the real qualitative impact
in the various sectors of the university: How did the university
community experience and perceive the internationalisation
process? How did the Internationalisation Plan impact on every-
day procedures in the various departments? How did students
actually feel in a multicultural English-taught classroom? How
did the teaching staff experience the increase of foreign students
in the classrooms? What changes did they introduce in the cur-
riculum to cope with cultural and language diversity? Did uni-
versity members have the feeling that they were sufficiently
trained for the challenge? The assessment of how teaching, re-
search and administrative staff had experienced working togeth-
er with colleagues from all over the world and how local stu-
dents interacted with foreign students was considered crucial in
order to adjust, modify or update the policies established
through the Internationalisation Plan. Besides, numerical perfor-
mance indicators together with a formal and methodologically
structured qualitative assessment of the internationalisation pol-
icies would be a powerful tool to measure international perfor-
mance and to provide a useful launching platform for a new In-
ternationalisation Plan.
Qualitative research can take many forms and in the case of
Uvic, a focus group methodology was chosen as a way to gauge
the real impact of its internationalisation plans. For the purpose
of the research, fourteen focus groups were created as shown in
Table 1, each one consisting of 10-12 people. The members were
selected based on their professional background, levels of inter-

80 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
national experience, gender, seniority and level of studies, in or-
der to account, as far as possible, for the diversity in perspectives
among the participants.
Table 1. Focus group participants
No. of focus groups Participants
2University management
3Faculty members
3Administrative staff
3Undergraduates
2Postgraduates
1PhD students
The focus group sessions allowed the University 1) to find
out the actual knowledge participants had of the institutional in-
ternational plans; 2) to discuss the perception they individually
had of how the internationalisation process had impacted on
their work prospects and even on their personal growth; 3) to
encourage critical reflection on the need for intercultural skills;
4) to spot the main problems or limitations of the strategy to
reach all levels of the university community; 5) to gather sugges-
tions for improvement.
Findings from these focus group discussions presented the
University’s international performance from a different perspec-
tive compared to the numerical performance indicators. It high-
lighted the impact on people’s daily work, staff training needs to
deal with the increasing number of foreign students, the various
degrees of motivation, students’ growing awareness of the rele-
vance of foreign language and intercultural skills acquisition or
the feeling that institutionalised internationalisation was an op-
portunity for growth, but also, in some cases, the feeling of annoy-
ance, even of frustration with the difficulties associated with be-
coming more international. All the members in the focus groups
were clearly aware of the benefits they could obtain from the in-
ternationalisation policies set by the University, but some of them
admitted some personal and contextual shortcomings which lim-
ited their capacities to fully develop an international profile.

81Chapter 5. Fostering global and intercultural competence at a medium-sized university
In some courses where the language of instruction was English,
a number of lecturers observed that the cultural codes of stu-
dents had an impact on their methodological expectations and
communication patterns. Some lecturers expected the University
to provide more intensive training to improve their intercultural
competence and manage classes more successfully. Besides,
teachers observed how reluctant local students were to work to-
gether with foreign students. Local students felt they had a more
limited proficiency in English which discouraged them from
interacting with foreign students and lecturers. Students also
stressed that a limited knowledge of English (the lingua franca in
most mobility programmes) and a fear of direct exposure to a
new culture undermined their wishes to enrol in a mobility pro-
gramme.
Theoretically, a comprehensive internationalisation strategy
includes all the areas of the University, but the focus groups
showed that some administrative staff did not consider interna-
tionalisation as positive, but an added complexity in their work-
ing lives. Areas such as the University Secretary, infrastructures
and community services like sports, cultural activities or accom-
modation recognised their lack of intercultural skills when inter-
acting with international students.
Another relevant point that emerged was that of recognition.
This was the case, for instance, with the COIL (Collaborative
Online International Learning) projects which require a lot of
extra preparation time for lecturers but are not recognised in
terms of teaching hours. There was also a feeling among both
lecturers and students that student participation in international
activities (mobility, intercultural workshops, COIL projects)
should be reflected in some way in their academic records.
4. Intercultural training, COIL and
certification of competences
Three recent initiatives at UVic aim to respond to the needs de-
tected from the focus group research in keeping with the Interna-
tionalisation Plan. The initiatives, at different stages of planning
or implementation, mark the university’s commitment to inter-

82 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
nationalisation: intercultural workshops, COIL projects and the
Certificate of Global Studies, an add-on certificate in the pipe-
line for recognising students and staff’s global and intercultural
development.
Some key pedagogical issues were considered in the design
and implementation of these three initiatives. In order to facili-
tate experience-based reflective learning, intercultural training
closely considers various elements and phases: experiences, re-
flection, interaction and conceptualisation. A positive emphasis
on methodologies that reinforce experience-based learning and
learners’ agency, by attaching value not only to the results but
also to individual and group learning processes, face-to-face or
virtual interaction among peers and more expert individuals,
coupled with time for individual and group reflection processes
constitute a fruitful learning pathway. The training programmes
and the educational platform in which they are integrated aim to
enable virtual interaction among current participants and those
of previous years to facilitate interactive learning among those
with different levels of expertise and encourage learning in a
more autonomous, self-managed way. Mentoring sections or the
use of certain self-evaluation criteria, which would not only offer
guidelines to participants, but also help them to relate their ex-
periences with new acquired skills have still to be developed in
order to help participants to focus their reflection.
4.1. The Intercultural Workshop
The intercultural workshop was developed within the framework
of an Erasmus+ Project called Connect. Intercultural Learning Net-
work 4 Europe (2015-2018). This initiative was carried out by a
European Consortium of 10 partners, and it aimed to create an
innovative intercultural learning scenario that consisted of an
e-learning platform and training for outgoing Erasmus partici-
pants before, during and after their sojourn abroad. Figure 1 de-
scribes the stages of the workshop:

83Chapter 5. Fostering global and intercultural competence at a medium-sized university
Figure 1. Stages of the Intercultural Workshop
The intercultural workshop proved an enriching addition for
mobility students to capitalise on their international exchanges.
Indeed, students valued the training prior to their sojourn highly
because it had helped them familiarize with ideas, techniques
and resources that were key to their cultural integration. Addi-
tionally, they appreciated the experience sharing with other out-
going students that took place upon their return as a way to
compare cultural viewpoints. However, what about the remain-
ing majority of students who could not contemplate an interna-
tional exchange for one reason or another? As part of UVic’s in-
ternationalisation-at-home strategy, special attention was given
to COIL.
4.2. COIL projects
Growing numbers of educators from a range of disciplines in
higher education have incorporated COIL into their degree pro-
grammes (see Moore and Simon, 2015; O’Dowd, 2018; Rubin,
2016) and since 2020 the COVID pandemic and resulting re-
strictions on travel have accelerated interest in this alternative to
physical mobility. As barely 5% of students in the EU are able
to go abroad during their studies, COIL has great potential as a
more inclusive internationalization approach, engaging all stu-

84 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
dents in intercultural communication as well as developing digi-
tal skills, teamwork and professional skills.
COIL is a term which describes a form of virtual exchange or
“pedagogically-structured online collaborative learning between
groups of learners in different cultural contexts or geographical
locations” (O’Dowd, 2018: 3). The same or similar concepts are
also known as telecollaboration, virtual exchange, e-tandem,
global virtual teams, global networked learning environments or
online exchange, and include a range of different approaches or
methodologies. In the classroom COIL involves groups of learn-
ers working online on a common collaborative task with other
learners from one or more other HEIs or companies. The collab-
orative project, related to the course content and the objectives
at each of the collaborating institutions, is designed and devel-
oped jointly by all parties involved. It could mean students work
together to discuss course materials, solve a problem or create a
product. A project can be set up between students within the
same discipline or may be cross-disciplinary.
At UVic teaching staff have been involved in online projects
for many years and under their own personal initiatives. Howev-
er, until very recently no specific institutional attention was given
to them. In 2020, in line with the new Internationalisation Plan
(2019-2023), benchmarking, piloting and monitoring the imple-
mentation of projects began with the formation of a multidisci-
plinary COIL focus group including members from different fac-
ulties and services with expertise in International Relations, ICTs,
Teaching Innovation and Intercultural Competences.
The COIL focus group first collected survey information to
gain an understanding of the state of the art of COIL at UVic, ex-
ternal benchmarks (University of Coventry and Universitat Rovi-
ra i Virgili) with experience in COIL were consulted and some
group members undertook basic training for trainers (Erasmus+
Virtual Exchange Training).
The main work of the COIL focus group consisted of drawing
up institutional guidelines for projects which included, how
COIL would be recognised institutionally, technical and teach-
ing support available, step-by-step instructions for participants
new to COIL and examples of best practices and resources. New
projects were piloted and monitored and a website was prepared
to promote ongoing projects and receive proposals. All these

85Chapter 5. Fostering global and intercultural competence at a medium-sized university
measures have been essential in promoting COIL as a form of
internationalisation at home for both students and staff.
4.3. The Certificate of Global Studies
Participation and active involvement in intercultural and global
learning experiences must be recognised by the institution to en-
sure their success and continuity. Badges or certificates are possi-
ble ways to visualize this competence in students and staff’s CVs.
With this aim in mind, UVic is planning for a Certificate of Glob-
al Studies (CGS), an add-on certificate for students proving they
have taken steps to acquire intercultural competences while
studying at the university. It is inspired by the certificate with the
same name developed at Bern University of Applied Sciences
(Ali-Lawson and Bürki, 2018). To obtain the CGS, students will
need to compile a personal portfolio during their degree with
which they show that they have undertaken a series of actions to
develop their intercultural competence. The portfolio is worth a
total of 100 points which are acquired by gaining competencies
in four areas: Intercultural Knowledge (30 points), Intercultural
Activities & Engagement (30 points), Language (20 points), and
Final Reflection Report (20 points):
4.3.1. Intercultural Knowledge
To obtain the 30 points in this section, students have two op-
tions to choose from, either to provide evidence of having passed
subjects that focus on intercultural issues or to write their final
undergraduate project on an intercultural topic and/or partici-
pate in the aforementioned Intercultural Workshop (30 hours)
showing evidence of additional self- learning with the online
learning modules (30 hours) developed by the project Connect.
Intercultural Learning Network 4 Europe.
4.3.2. Intercultural Activities & Engagement
In this section students must prove that they have taken part in
activities that promote intercultural competences by choosing
from the following:
• Study Semester Abroad (at least one semester), 30 points.
• Summer School Abroad (at least 60 hours), 15 points.

86 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
• Short Stay Programme at a university abroad (at least one
week), 10 points.
• International Mentor at UVIC (at least one semester), 10 points.
• Participation in a COIL project (at least one semester), 10 points.
• International Internships, work in an international job abroad,
cooperation abroad. 10 points if the stay is under a month,
20 points for stays between 1 and two months, 30 points for
stays over three months.
• Engagement in projects for immigrants/refugees such as chari-
ties or community programmes (20 h), 5 points per semester.
4.3.3. Languages
Students can obtain the 20 points in this section by fulfilling one
of the following requirements:
• official Level C1 certificate of 1 foreign language
• self-declaration of Level C1 of 2 foreign languages
• official Level B2 certificate of 2 foreign languages
• official Level B2 certificate of 1 foreign language and prove of
having taken a minimum of 18 ECTS in another foreign lan-
guage
4.3.4. Final Reflection Report
The last step to obtain the CGS is for the students to write a Final
Reflection Report, in which students should articulate the im-
provement they perceive they made while engaging in the inter-
cultural and global learning experiences. It should be considered
an overall summary of their experience connected with their per-
sonal reflection.
The International Relations Office and academic manage-
ment staff will liaise to manage this CGS for students and the
next step is to develop a corresponding certificate for academic
staff as an incentive to develop their intercultural competence.
5. Conclusion
Placing global and intercultural competence on the agenda in
higher education is no easy task but intercultural training and
COIL projects are concrete steps universities can take towards

87Chapter 5. Fostering global and intercultural competence at a medium-sized university
making this happen. In the case of UVic a top-down approach
led by the university’s comprehensive internationalisation strat-
egy has endorsed and facilitated the implementation of such in-
itiatives. However, involving all sectors of the university com-
munity to express their attitudes and opinions towards increas-
ing internationalisation leads to more inclusive and realistic
strategy development compared to what can be gleaned from
purely numerical performance indicators. Without this close ex-
amination and grassroots research, the global and intercultural
competence needs of the university community cannot be
gauged, which could lead to serious mismatches between theory
and practice in local contexts. Finally, providing certification,
although fraught with challenges in terms of university resources
(Ali-Lawson and Bürki, 2018), brings multiple benefits and is
particularly valuable as a key incentive for students and staff,
opening up further avenues for developing global and intercul-
tural competence, but most importantly, making the concepts
of global and intercultural competence more tangible in higher
education, more difficult to ignore and therefore easier for HEIs
to commit to.
6. References
Aba, D. (2015). Towards an Intercultural Communication Competence
Tool for Academic Mobility Purposes. Journal of Intercultural Com-
munication, 39. https://immi.se/intercultural/nr39/aba.html
Ali-Lawson, D. and Bürki, J. (2018). Organisational challenges and op-
portunities when implementing an international profile. Bulletin
VALS-ASLA, 107, 127-141.
Arasaratnam-Smith, L. (2017). Intercultural Competence. An over-
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10.1016/j.ijintrel.2017.01.001

PART II: INTERNATIONALIZATION
ANDINTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE:
BESTTEACHING PRACTICES

91
Chapter 6
Discursive, pragmatic and interactional
aspects of intercultural competence–
Contributions from interactional
linguistics for meaningful learning
Marta Fernández-Villanueva
1. Introduction
From an intercultural studies perspective, we assume that interact-
ing successfully with people from different cultures involves spe-
cific knowledge, skills and attitudes. Nevertheless, most of them
are merely related to effective communicative usage, since com-
munication does not only involve transmission of information but
also management of social relations (Locher, 2013; Spencer-Oatey &
Franklin, 2009). People’s use of language can clearly influence in-
terpersonal reactions and relations, and different cultures may
have different conventions as to what is appropriate behaviour in
what contexts. Actually, we cannot directly apply cultural dos and
don’ts in any interactional context, they need a fine-tuning in con-
text according to the specific communicative event and the ex-
pected social roles, topics and interactional intentions at play.
Interactional sociolinguistics researches specifically that play:
how we dynamically adjust our behaviour in communication
identifying and co-ordinating some multimodal hints. Merged
with intercultural pragmatic approaches, it offers a powerful the-
oretical and methodological research frame and improves our
understanding of intercultural competence materialized in dis-
course practices.
How can intercultural competence be researched in specific
intercultural interactions in higher education (HE)? How can
Chapter 6. Discursive, pragmatic and interactio-
nal aspects of intercultural competence

92 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
this research approach improve intercultural experiences of HE
members and lead to meaningful learning and development of
their intercultural competence? To address these questions, first
some relevant assumptions of interactional approaches about
language will be introduced, in order to re-define intercultural
competence as effective intercultural interactional communica-
tive competence (IICC), sensitive to cultural variation and regu-
larities. Then some challenges and opportunities in analysing
intercultural encounters in HE from a sociopragmatic interac-
tional approach will be pointed out, in terms of multigroup
membership, relevant intercultural scenarios in HE, data type
and research focus on discursive, interactional, sociopragmatic
or strategic levels. This will be illustrated with some examples
that can be used to train intercultural noticing in Higher Educa-
tion and foster IICC with three different kind of data: recordings
of naturally occurring interactions in relevant intercultural HE
scenarios, cultural artifacts and self-reported critical incidents
elicited through interviews (developed in the InCriT- Project).1
The chapter will close with some final remarks on the contribu-
tions of sociopragmatic interactional approaches, especially to
refine indicators of intercultural pragmatic development related
to noticing multimodal discursive and pragmatic devices to rene-
gotiate meaning in intercultural encounters. Some pedagogical
implications will also be drawn as these approaches contribute
to metapragmatic awareness and therefore towards meaningful
intercultural learning in HE.
2. Assumptions of interactional linguistics
Following Couper-Kuhlen and Selting (2018:541) we can de-
scribe language as a form of social behaviour, an inherently in-
teractional activity observable in social encounters, existing
therefore not just in the mind of its users but linguistically mate-
rialized in their communication with others, displayed along
with other resources, of a visual, acoustic or haptic nature, in a
1. Incidentes Críticos en la Comunicación Transcultural Alemán-Español-Catalán
(Critical Incidents in German-Spanish-Catalan Transcultural Communication)
(FFI2015-70864-P), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.

93Chapter 6. Discursive, pragmatic and interactional aspects of intercultural competence
semiotic ecology for communicative purposes. Communication
is therefore embodied, situated, partner-oriented and multimodal,
characteristics also emphasized nowadays in learning: learning
as an embodied, situated, plan-oriented and multimodal prac-
tice since an important part is conveyed through communicative
interactional activity.
In contrast to an abstract, universal-grammar-notion of compe-
tence, interactional approaches follow the ethnographic explora-
tion of communicative competence in context that includes com-
municative form and function in integral relation to each other.
Such a language notion encompasses three assumptions: indexical-
ity, accountability and reflexivity, based on regularities in language
use: Firstly, in interactions we display different multimodal de-
vices to give our interlocutors some hints (indexicalities) regarding
how to interpret what we mean in the specific interactional con-
text. Secondly, in language use we produce specific disclosure and
reason clauses used especially to deliver accounts for something we
have just done or just said, after or even before the accountable
action (as anticipatory accounts according to Schegloff, 2007). Fi-
nally, the property of reflexivity bases on the fact that:
changes in an understanding of an event’s context will evoke some
shift or elaboration of a person’s grasp of the focal event and vice
versa. When it is employed in a temporally dynamic context, which
is a characteristic of all situations of social action and interaction
(...), [it] forms the basis for temporally updated shared under-
standings of actions and events among the participants. (Heritage,
2009: 302 elaborating on Garfinkel 1963, 1967)
Reflexivity is the key concept for language, communication
and cultural awareness, these are intertwined and can be devel-
oped precisely focusing on noticing indexicalities, interpreting
accounts and formulating reflections. Byram connects explicitly
the language and cultural awareness:
(...) a person’s conscious attention to language or culture and, im-
portantly, their engagement with these, (...) first in the social con-
text, and second, (...) in their own lives. (...) But it it is more than
paying attention. It also involves analysis of, and learning about,
language and culture, and crucially the relationship between the

94 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
two. In other words, someone who is ‘aware’ of ‘language and cul-
ture’ and the language-culture nexus is able to reflect on this nexus
as it exists in society and in their own selves. (Byram, 2012: 6)
This interactional language notion aligns with a cognitive-
communicative approach to foreign language teaching as elabo-
rated in the CEFR communicative competence model (Common
European Framework of Reference for Languages CERF 2001,
2020) comprising several components in three areas: linguistic, so-
ciolinguistic and pragmatic competences. The first includes lexical,
phonological, syntactical knowledge and skills and other dimen-
sions of language as a system. The second embraces the value of
variation and refers to the sociocultural conditions of language
use, through its sensitivity to social conventions, even though par-
ticipants may often be unaware of their influence. The last is con-
cerned with “the functional use of linguistic and non-linguistic
resources to produce speech acts, drawing on scenarios or scripts
of interactional exchanges. Furthermore, it also concerns the mas-
tery of discourse, cohesion and coherence, the identification of
text types and forms, irony, and parody” (CERF, 2001: 13). The
Companion Volume updates and extends the main communica-
tive language activities from the receptive and productive ones to
the interaction and mediation activities and strategies (CERF, 2020:
70ff.). All these are performed in embodied, situated, partner-
oriented multimodal interactions fostering a context sensitivity re-
lated to specific communicative events and culturally shaped so-
cial roles and identities in communities of speech and practice.
In this expanded model and from interactional approaches,
interaction can be seen as a kind of umbrella that articulates and
intertwines the different components in order to cope with regu-
larities and variation within language and cultures. The latter
should be understood not just in the traditional sense of high
national culture but also in the broader sense that encompasses
values, beliefs and behaviors shared by a social group from a
specific (predominantly monolingual) country. Therefore, even
interactional competent monolinguals can transfer their interac-
tional competence to improve their intercultural communica-
tion while communicating in their first language with members
of other linguistic or cultural groups. This is because from a varia-
tionist perspective, monolingual speakers who had acquired just

95Chapter 6. Discursive, pragmatic and interactional aspects of intercultural competence
one language system still manage a rich repertoire of sociolects
developed in their social interactions in different contexts. As a
result, an interactional competent language user can quickly
transfer these abilities to develop an intercultural competence
while interacting with people from other cultures because of his/
her context sensitiveness related to specific communicative
events and culturally-shaped social roles in communities of
speech and practice.
In conclusion, interactional competence involves always the
mobilization of linguistic and cultural in-group-knowledge and
communicative skills attuned to the context through socioprag-
matic awareness to recognize regularities and notice hints to re-
interpret variation. This cannot be achieved without an open at-
titude in order to be prepared to negotiate meaning in the inter-
action mobilizing the appropriate communicative strategies.
Therefore such an interactional approach is especially useful to
foster the intercultural competence in HE.
2.1. Interactional Intercultural
Communicative Competence (IICC)
In the literature, many terms have been proposed to address the
phenomena concerned: intercultural sensitivity, international
competence, cross-cultural awareness, transcultural communica-
tion and intercultural competence, to mention just a few. In re-
cent decades, an array of models have been proposed from dif-
ferent research areas, such as social psychology, international
business management or linguistics, mostly with focus on a gen-
eralized ability to function effectively across cultures, within
three specific areas: establishing and maintaining relationships;
communicating with minimal loss or distortion; and collaborat-
ing to accomplish tasks of mutual interest or need. Despite dif-
ferent terms and models, there is consensus that knowledge,
skills and attitudes are involved together with their underlying
beliefs and values to build up that specific competence. Leung,
Ang and Tan (2014) pointed to the increasing sophistication of
these models over the years, trying to capture and explain the
structural relationships between these three main areas and com-
ponents related to individual traits, dynamic group behaviors
and performances. They also argued for a more contextualized

96 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
notion of intercultural competence, what they called in situ com-
petences. For instance, not just knowing about the importance of
rapport management or relationship building in certain cultures
before getting down to business, but “identify[ing] the appropri-
ate moments to initiate business discussion in a specific Asian
culture and orchestrate events that give rise to such moments”
(Leung, Ang and Tan, 2014:511). Interactional sociolinguistic
approaches focus precisely on describing and explaining what
makes a moment appropriate, relying upon the regularities and
variation of the communicative situation within a specific cul-
tural group with its own conventions in terms of discourse and
pragmatic devices to convey communicative intentions. Discur-
sive conversational approaches focus precisely on describing and
explaining how and why discourse types such as business discus-
sions are organized the way they are, the importance of sequenti-
ality, repairs and projections and how turn-taking can be used
strategically to know whether a topic introduction or shift can be
negotiated or not. The noticing of cultural words and activation
of cultural scripts, on the one hand, can trigger assumptions and
expectations and, on the other hand, facework and rapport man-
agement will help to “give rise to such moments” and negotiate
the dynamic outcomes of the interaction according to the inter-
actional purposes at play.
Aligned with needs and from an interactional apprach, Spencer-
Oatey and Franklin propose this definition of IICC:
The competence to communicate verbally and non-verbally and be-
have effectively and appropriately with people from other cultural
groups and also handle the psychological demands and dynamic
outcomes that result from such interchanges. (Spencer-Oatey and
Franklin, 2009: 51-52)
Such a competence cannot be achieved merely through a de-
scription of fine-granular regularities, which would produce an
infinite list of contextualized dos and don’ts, but through an at-
tuned development of socio-pragmatic and strategic competen-
cies, to perceive and dynamically interpret indexicalities and ac-
counts in the sequentially materialized interaction to negotiate
meaning in (pro-)active or reactive communicative moves. The
ability to intertwine linguistic competences with discursive and

97Chapter 6. Discursive, pragmatic and interactional aspects of intercultural competence
socio-pragmatic ones can only be achieved in communicative
practice. Thus interactional research should be carried out in
context-situated social encounters in order to identify shared reg-
ularities and describe and interpret variation between cultural
groups, know better how they relate to each other and use these
results to foster that IICC.
2.2. Describing regularities and explaining
variation between and within cultural groups
Interactional linguistics allows the combination of etic and emic
perspectives, which complement each other. On the one hand,
etic frames allow the comparison of cultural groups behaviours,
so that regularities can be identified and multimodal indexicali-
ties described. On the other hand, emic frames allow us to un-
derstand and explain the variation within cultural groups regard-
ing accounts and reflexivity in the interaction. With this com-
bined approach, it is possible to avoid some risks of traditional
intercultural studies, such as an excessive essentialism and reduc-
tionism, inappropriate stereotyping and over-generalizations on
the basis of minimal evidence.
But beyond essentialism and stereotyping, who can be regard-
ed as belonging to a cultural group? From an interactional socio-
linguistic point of view, it should be anyone who shares a pat-
tern of behavioral regularities in social encounters within specif-
ic contexts, materialized in his/her multimodal communication
with others, because this approach does not rely on a restrictive
notion of national culture, but on a notion of communities of
speech and practice, as we have mentioned. Based on these con-
siderations, challenges and opportunities for analyzing intercul-
tural encounters within HE’s members will be briefly discussed
in the next section.
3. Analysing intercultural encounters in
HE from an interactional approach
Three main areas will be addressed related to participants and
interactional events, data type and research foci. They will also

98 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
be presented and discussed, using examples from different re-
search projects.
3.1. Intercultural groups in HE: challenges and opportunities
A variety of cultural groups can be identified in HE according to
regularities of their interactional practices, conforming commu-
nicative repertoires with patterns of behaviour within the specif-
ic communities of practice at play related to
• teaching and learning,
• research and innovation or
• administrative and organizational activities.
Nevertheless, there is also variation within these groups, for
example between novice and experienced teachers, or between
undergraduate and postgraduate students, international students
such as incomers or outgoers, but also among different “academ-
ic tribes” (Becher, 1989) with apparently distinctive epistemo-
logical stances that shape not just research practices but also as-
sumptions and values about cooperation or competition, team-
work etc. Nevertheless, within the “tribes” we find again as much
diversity and variation, for example, regarding educational ide-
ologies or gender, to mention just a few (Trowler, Murray and
Bamberg, 2011).
The challenge is therefore twofold. On the one hand to cope
with multigroup membership in HE, since individuals belong at
the same time to different groups, which implies that they have
to do more varied types of academic and administrative work
and therefore master a greater repertoire of conventions. On the
other hand, to cope with the institutional variation among uni-
versities that can differ in assumed values of public services or
economic enterprises, in a research-orientation or more teaching-
orientation, and in established practices and procedures, for ex-
ample related to standardization of learning assessment, forma-
tive feedback, types of in and out-class activities or grading.
This complexity is a challenge, but also offers plenty of op-
portunities to develop a critical cultural awareness in Byram’s
(2012) sense. Let’s now look at some examples of these opportu-
nities for interactional analysis in intercultural encounters in HE

99Chapter 6. Discursive, pragmatic and interactional aspects of intercultural competence
to illustrate the different foci we can take on discursive, sociolin-
guistic or pragmatic components, selecting relevant scenarios to
analyze and describe these intercultural practices and explore
ways to foster a critical cultural awareness.
3.2. Observation of natural occurring data
Ideally, we should use naturally occurring data of face-to-face in-
teractions with members of the different cultural groups in HE,
gathered through participant or non-participant observation and
videorecorded to facilitate the multimodal analysis in different
steps.
Scenarios, in which intercultural encounters can be more eas-
ily videorecorded, are academic events such as conferences, sym-
posiums, roundtables and peer-seminars, where international
researchers meet. Also some teaching-learning events such as lec-
tures or small seminars, where national and international stu-
dents and teachers participate. Tutorials, teamwork sessions with
national/international students, where student-student or
student- teacher interaction take place, are also to be considered,
although technically more complicated.
Other appropriate scenarios are open days, informative coun-
selling sessions for mobility students, as well as administrative
and paperwork encounters at the International/Admission Office.
There are also some other relevant scenarios such as organiza-
tional and administrative encounters to launch international co-
operation projects or joint programmes where different kinds of
tasks, decision-making or problem-solving processes are in-
volved and can be culturally challenging in terms of establishing
and maintaining relations, communicative styles and negotiat-
ing meaning. Last but not least, scenarios of conflict mediation,
arbitration or negotiation encounters may be considered.
These kind of data can be analysed to identify indexicalities
of relevant intercultural mismatches and accounts related to re-
actions and expectations in order to establish a diagnosis and to
design intervention with intercultural training purposes (for in-
comers, outgoers and ‘buddy-students’, administrative or aca-
demic staff).
Unfortunately, it is not so easy to obtain permission to record
or even observe interactional encounters, and data protection

100 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
should always be assured. Logically, the more sensitive the inter-
action, the more difficult it is to be granted access to record or
even observe, therefore a second option is to use cultural arte-
facts as data.
3.3. Observation using cultural artefacts
An alternative to naturally occurring data is authentic audiovis-
ual material close to the specific interactional context concerned,
not created for didactic or research purposes, but for cultural
consume. Sequences from movies or documentaries, broadcast-
ed interviews and interactional social media posts can be taken
into consideration. We present here the analysis of a sequence as
an example, from the first film by Elena Martin “Julia ist” (2017).
The novice director and actress was herself an Erasmus student in
Berlin and directed her first movie based on her own experiences.
The film is performed by herself and some of the acquaintances
she made during her stay in Berlin. The fact that there was no
script and the actors performed improvising under the director’s
indications mobilizing their own experiences recreates quite
closely some intercultural encounters. The material was edited
selecting relevant interactional sequences from a future outgoer
student’s perspective:
• the first day of the seminar at the university
• an argument with her Catalan boyfriend
• a scene where Julia is flirting in a club
• an argument with her German boyfriend
• a conversation with the first and second roommate
• a conversation during a students’ teamwork session
Each sequence was transcribed and analyzed to identify inter-
cultural mismatches at linguistic, socio-pragmatic and interac-
tional level. In the sequence “Seminar at the university: Julia’s
first day”, for example, three interactions take place in 2’02’’ be-
tween the German lecturer and a German student, between the
Catalan student and another German student and between the
German lecturer and the Catalan student. Results were found re-
garding:

101Chapter 6. Discursive, pragmatic and interactional aspects of intercultural competence
• Noticing cultural words (such as Seminar, Referat =oral pres-
entation / written assignment) that trigger different assump-
tions (here of communicative genres related to course and
assignment types with a specific discursive structure and
turn-taking organization related to assumed cultural teacher
and student roles) and the need for meaning negotiation.
• Discursive-interactional non-verbal devices such as indexical-
ities of culturally appropriate turn-taking organization: Ges-
tures, eye contact, body orientation for turn-taking, turn over-
lap or rejection of parallel conversation (when Julia tries to
interact with the student seated next to her while the lecturer
is talking), as well as repair, stance and footing or the use of
artifacts (hand out, folders, tea cup).
• Pragmatic-interactional patterns: question and answer and
feedback, claim and justification, request and refusal, instruc-
tion followed by oral interaction or writing activity (take
notes).
• Strategic choices: conventional indirectness, hedging, teasing
and anticipatory accounts, for example:
Haben Sie uns noch was mitzuteilen? Do you have something to share?
[to Júlia, while taking folders, papers and tea cup to leave]
Ahm, nein, ah ja, ich bin, ich bin (.) Erasmusstudentin (.) ich komme (.)
ich komme aus Barcelona (...) ahm no ah yes I am I am (.) Erasmus
student I come (.) I come from Barcelona
This kind of analysis and results can be used for students’ in-
tercultural training2. Video clips, transcriptions inserted after a
contextual description, with a selection of frames and a few
guide-questions as in a case study are powerful materials for
awareness diagnosis or to start a reflection on different ways of
achieving understanding, managing rapport and fostering inter-
cultural metapragmatic awareness. After visualizing the scenes,
students can share perceptions and then train observation, fo-
cussing their analysis on the identification, description and in-
terpretation of linguistic, paralinguistic, nonlinguistic and socio-
2. Projecte d’innovació docent: Tutories de Comunicació Intercultural, Universitat
de Barcelona

102 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
linguistic indexicalities and accounts, being more aware of the
mobilized cultural preconceptions.
3.4. Reported intercultural critical incidents
Another possibility is to elicit self-reports of authentic critical in-
cidents through reflective semi-structured interviews of people
with a high degree of interaction with members of the other cul-
ture3. This produces narratives, based on frequently occurring,
mostly task-related encounters, in which the interactional part-
ners reacted in an unexpected way. Critical incidents are very
useful because they concentrate on the most problematic aspects
of specific interactions that are potentially difficult to cope with.
They can have a successful or an unsuccessful outcome, and they
can be analyzed from an etic and emic perspective, exploring in-
dexicalities, accounts and reflections on noticing linguistic and
discursive devices or emotional reactions. Also the use of strate-
gies to check shared understandings of the event and to elabo-
rate on that can be analyzed.
Ins Wort fallen: In die Unterhaltung “platzen” (Irruption into an
ongoing conversation) is an example of that kind of elicited nar-
rative, where a German student at the University of Barcelona re-
ports about a critical intercultural interaction that took place out-
side the classroom with another student from Barcelona, who
joined the conversation while she was talking, interrupting her.
From this interview, some sequences were analysed following
prompts to foster stances, footing and accounts such as: Can you
briefly describe the situation? Where and when did this happen?
Who was there? What did everyone say exactly? Let’s try to repro-
duce the verbatim wording. How did you react? Can you de-
scribe your feelings? And your behaviour? Why do you think you
reacted like this?
After the analysis and having in mind a pedagogical interven-
tion with outgoers students, following sequences were edited
and stored in the UB repository ready to be used (image 1):
1. In die Unterhaltung “platzen” (01:33) Burst into conversation
2. Die Reaktion (01:29) Reactions
3. Interview protocols were developed for the InCriT-Project.

103Chapter 6. Discursive, pragmatic and interactional aspects of intercultural competence
3. “Unsere Regeln” (00:46) Our rules
4. Bekanntschaftsgrad & Kontext (00:47) Acquaintance and context
5. Initiierende bzw. reaktive Direktheit (00:43) initiating or reac-
tive directness
6. Wild geschimpft (00:45) Scolded strongly
They are especially appropriate to raise sociocultural aware-
ness as case studies, stimulus for discussion groups or even as
examples of how to foster accountability and reflexivity in a con-
versational way among students.
Image 1. Data repository for pedagogical interventions
Through these very short inputs on video some discursive, prag-
matic and interactional activities of the interlocutors can be ob-
served and analyzed by the students, specifically with a focus on:
• Stance: the way the speaker positions herself with respect to
an interlocutor concerning knowledge/necessity/desirability
as epistemic stance: what I know and how I know; or through
an affective stance: what my mood, my attitude, feeling or
emotion is, and how intense it is (discomfort, irritation)
• Accounts on used discursive-interactional devices related to
turn-taking, turn overlap, repair and footing experience
• Pragmatic-interactional patterns such as reproach and re-
sponses, claim and justification, request and responses

104 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
• Strategic choices regarding initial and reactive directness, se-
quentially and topicality regarding cultural-linguistic politeness.
The expressed reflection on stance, sequentiality and topicali-
ty can be interpreted as an indicator of (intercultural) metaprag-
matic awareness.
4. Final remarks and pedagogical implications
An interactional sociocultural approach supports meaningful
learning and fosters IICC development because in language use
we find materialized to some extent reflections and constructions
of different conceptualizations of the physical and social world,
embedded in the lexicon, in syntactic constructions, in discourse
patterns, in genres, in pragmatic realizations and in strategic
choices. IICC is closely related not only to the acquisition of
rules for behaviour in the sense of do and don’t, but to the acqui-
sition of concepts which mediate decision-making in social in-
teraction, leading to noticing hints and tuning conventions, expec-
tations and reactions in context among a specific community of
practice, in our case HE members. IICC development is based
especially on the achievement of a critical sociopragmatic inter-
actional awareness of one’s own and other cultures.
The kind of interactional analysis presented fosters the ability
to detect (in-) appropriate language use and to verbalize the social
meanings of language use. Most importantly, it incorporates a
multilingual and multicultural perspective, avoiding the risk of
a hegemonic one-way-perspective, because it recognizes diversity
as a fundamental trait of human beings. Moreover, it assumes that
we are all lifelong learners on communication matters, particularly
in a (technological) global dynamically connected world, who
will need to engage with interlocutors of diverse linguistic and cul-
tural backgrounds in constant transformation and with a high de-
gree of variation. As a result, we have to be socioculturally aware
and prepared for a dynamic, multilingual communication, con-
tinuously attuned, informed by diverse assumptions on appropri-
ate language use (Leung and Scarino 2016), as an active process of
meaning construction by interlocutors rather than a process of in-
ternalizing restricted notions of others’ cultural norms.

105Chapter 6. Discursive, pragmatic and interactional aspects of intercultural competence
5. References
Becher, T. (1989). Academic tribes and territories: Intellectual enquiry and
the culture of disciplines (2nd edition 2001). Oxford University Press.
Byram, M. (2012). Language awareness and (critical) cultural aware-
ness - relationships, comparisons and contrasts. Language Awareness,
21(1-2), 5-13.
CEFR (2001). Common European framework of reference for languages:
Learning, teaching, assessment. Press Syndicate of the University of
Cambridge.
CEFR (2020). Common European framework of reference for languages:
Learning, teaching, assessment. Companion volume. Council of Eu-
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tories in the 21st Century: Rethinking the significance of disciplines in
higher education. Routledge.

107
Chapter 7
Making intercultural competence
meaningful in the classroom and in
international mobility programmes
Marta Panadés
1. Introduction
The reported teaching practice is framed in a pioneering pilot
project implemented at the Economics and Business Faculty of
the University of Barcelona during the 2018-19 and 2019-20 ac-
ademic years. This teaching action ran parallel to the develop-
ment of the pilot project during the first year (2018-19), while
during the second year changes were included resulting from the
first implementation.
The pilot project Intercultural Communication Mentoring for Ex-
change Students at the Economics and Business Faculty, funded by
the Vice-Rectorship of Teaching and Academic Organization and
Quality of the University of Barcelona, consists in developing in-
tercultural communication training for the international office
staff, international tutors, outgoing students and local ‘buddies’
at the Economics and Business Faculty. From this experience, it
is worth noting that for the first time, specific training in inter-
cultural competence was provided for the participants, both for
staff and for international academic tutors, outgoing students
and mentoring students in the ‘Buddy-Program’. Furthermore,
the implementation of this pilot project also led to the involve-
ment for the following academic years of one last stakeholder,
the students of the Master in International Business at the same
faculty, where the group is made up of students from different
cultural backgrounds.
Chapter 7. Making intercultural competence me-
aningful in the classroom...

108 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
For the pilot project training, supporting material and resources
were used from both the InCriT-Research project1 (Incidentes
Críticos en la Comunicación Transcultural Alemán-Catalán-
Español), funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of
Spain, and from the European project Connect 2.0 - Intercultural
Learning Network 4 Europe https://weconnecteurope.eu/project-
results/, and content was revised and adapted to fit this new con-
text: students, teachers and staff at the Economics and Business
Faculty. The background of the teaching action proposal present-
ed in this article is based on three main objectives:
• how the intercultural dimension is taught in the compulsory
course Second Foreign Language for Business II - German with 6
ECTS points in the degree of International Business (IB,
henceforth), where undergraduate students need to be trained
with an international approach and therefore be competent
in terms of interculturality;
• how to create intercultural sensitive content by and for peers
and for the institution; and
• how teaching innovation in the classroom can be used to
promote international mobility programmes.
For these goals, a collaborative environment has been created
among three different realities:
• the practical reality of the classroom;
• the students’ immediate environment in the faculty itself; and
• the students’ future reality as Erasmus outgoing students or
international trainees.
The degree of IB is a demanding degree taught entirely in En-
glish. It focuses on the economy and the business world and aims
to raise intercultural awareness and to develop intercultural skills
among its graduates, as they will be working in international set-
tings (Deardoff, 2006). Nevertheless, in practice, the foreign lan-
guage syllabus to date has been orientated to acquire linguistic
knowledge rather than intercultural competencies, which have
been left as something to be learned implicitly, for instance dur-
1. Project number FFI2015-70864-P.

109Chapter 7. Making intercultural competence meaningful in the classroom...
ing international academic exchanges or traineeships in the
countries where the foreign language is spoken. By contrast,
there are still very few international traineeship opportunities, so
it is desirable to encourage international mobility and the devel-
opment of intercultural awareness and skills through new ac-
tions.
In order to respond to the growing demand for acquiring in-
tercultural skills and boosting international exchange, different
initiatives have been promoted by the German Studies Section at
the faculty, one of them being the initiative in the classroom il-
lustrated in this article, and the other the aforementioned pilot
project to develop intercultural competence.
2. Context: classroom research in second
foreign language for business II - German
The teaching innovation action was implemented in the com-
pulsory course Second Foreign Language for Business II – Ger-
man in the IB degree programme, where students develop lan-
guage skills corresponding to level A1+. It is spread over the sec-
ond semester, and the focus of the course is both on the
acquisition of the linguistic contents based on German for spe-
cific purposes (business) and of the competence contents and
on the full-scale implementation of this teaching innovation
plan. The course has 6 ECTS points with 60 teaching contact
hours (4 hours a week for 15 weeks), 40 hours of tutored and
directed work and 50 hours of autonomous learning. The course
involves around 30 second-year undergraduates per academic
year, and for the teaching-action one teacher-researcher, one re-
searcher and two staff members of the international office par-
ticipate.
The course components are articulated on the basis of a pro-
ject to create virtual guides for outgoing mobility students and
places a strong emphasis on reflective and collaborative activi-
ties related to one’s own experiences, as we shall see below. By
its very nature, the implementation of teaching-learning activi-
ties based on reflection and cooperation demands a high level
of commitment from both the teachers and students. The teach-

110 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
ing approach adopted is student-centred, with a strong empha-
sis on developing communicative and linguistic skills. It follows
an action-research approach (Burns, 2010; Feldmeier, 2014), in
which grammatical and lexical components are chosen from the
course syllabus to be redesigned for the classroom-research as
interactional scenes in four thematic settings: The new faculty,
Accommodation, Leisure in the new city and Traineeship, to be
adapted to promote intercultural understanding as a core ele-
ment for cooperation and collaboration. Those contents are re-
designed to promote interculturality and the course plan is
based on the project-based-learning teaching methodology
(PBL) (Valero-García, 2012; Guisasola and Garmendia, 2014;
Du and Han, 2016). This involves the use of a framework with
intercultural settings linked narratively to collaboratively create
a meaningful and original end product in the target language
(Alcantud et al., 2014; Roy and Schlemminger, 2014): a virtual
guide for international mobility students, suitable to be pub-
lished on the International Relations Office (IRO, henceforth)
site. As a support tool for the guides, a virtual site has been cre-
ated by the teaching staff, where students publish the final out-
come of their guides:
Image 1. Screenshot of the site with the virtual guides created by the students. As
of September 10, 2021
Each thematic setting has been divided into two interaction-
al scenes: pre-departure scene and, during the stay, simulated
scene. The aim of the scenes listed below is to pose concrete

111Chapter 7. Making intercultural competence meaningful in the classroom...
problems related to the students’ reality e.g. budget, choice of
faculty, choice of city, type of accommodation, etc. The sequenc-
ing starts with the scene Choice of host university, followed by
Orientation and academic life in the new faculty (setting 1, The new
faculty); Search for accommodation and sharing a flat (setting 2,
Accommodation); Exploring the new neighbourhood and Sightseeing
in the city (setting 3, Leisure in the new city); and ends with the
Search for traineeship in companies and Job interview (setting 4,
Traineeship).
In this regard, the project aims to enable students to feel the
international world and to handle and interact in different situa-
tions: to simulate an internationalization experience; to make
them virtually explore the context by examining potential inter-
cultural mismatches; to select the most relevant information in
German and thus to design a virtual guide by peers and for peers
with a similar language level, useful for future potential interna-
tional outgoing mobility students. The different teaching-activities
in each interactional scene comprised information-search or
problem-solving tasks using the linguistic resources and intercul-
tural hints previously introduced in in-class activities. The con-
tent variety in the virtual guides created by groups was used to
reflect on different ways of preparing a mobility experience, ini-
tially within the group and then as a whole class. This gave the
students opportunities to raise intercultural awareness and
stresses the importance of developing intercultural communica-
tion skills.
For the learning activities of the four settings, the teaching
staff and researchers have designed previous scaffolding using
materials collected from the IRO related to host universities,
such us free places, useful links or rankings. For some faculties,
even information on students’ experiences and feedback are also
published on IRO’s website. These materials from IRO have been
combined with case studies adapted from the modules of the
project Connect 2.0 - Intercultural Learning Network 4 Europe and
from its Experience-Map platform, where experiences and expec-
tations of exchange students participating in the project are
shared. All these materials were used, adapted or re-elaborated
to create the ensuing learning activities.

112 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
3. Design of the activities
To reflect on the applicability of the linguistic content they have
learned, different activities have been designed in order to create
a context close to the future students’ reality. For each activity,
the students’ input has mainly taken the form of immediate
feedback when discussing specific situations and solutions, and
regularly weekly or biweekly when related to linguistic skills
(proofreading), giving both face-to-face and written feedback. In
addition to the IRO resources used for the development of the
ensuing activities, two members of the international office staff
were involved in the design of the virtual guides and in the dou-
ble assessment of the students’ final oral presentations of their
guides. The international office staff assessed the quality of in-
formation in the dimensions of usefulness, intercultural sensitivity
and originality in relation to the four syllabus topics, while teach-
ing staff assessed language and intercultural learning achieve-
ment. The conception, purposes and development of the activi-
ties are summarized as follows.
3.1. Setting 1: The new faculty
As for the first setting, The new faculty, the following activities re-
garding pre-departure scenes promote previous reflection and
make students aware of their own point of view. Each of them is
individually assigned a short questionnaire with specific ques-
tions on different issues, such as:
• How would you like your stay abroad to be?
• Are you interested in an international stay or/and in an inter-
national traineeship?
• Are you interested in the local language and culture?
• Are you interested in a top-ten ranked university?
With regards to the latter questions of this scene, where stu-
dents need to individually make a choice about their host facul-
ty, they are asked about how important the following items are
for them: university ranking, course offer (by language, by con-
tents), learning methodologies, location of the university or way
of life in the host city.

113Chapter 7. Making intercultural competence meaningful in the classroom...
Image 2. Table to select services and facilities in every host university

114 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
In a second stage after the individual activities, groups are cre-
ated on the basis of the matching in the selection of the host
university. The students then study their questions in groups and
familiarize themselves with the information about their selected
university, so that afterwards they can write a descriptive text in-
cluding the services and facilities offered by the new faculty (uni-
versity canteen, copy shop, library...):
Image 3. Example of a text about the new faculty
This activity focuses on how to engage in local activities in-
side and outside the host faculty, which enriches learning oppor-
tunities and allows students to identify characteristics of aca-
demic and organizational life. Emphasis is placed on the search
for information about the ‘Buddy-Program’, as it can be essen-
tial, especially for the first days of the academic exchange, e.g.,
for the registration process. This content component has been
retrieved from experiences in the pilot project about intercultur-
al communication mentoring for outgoing students and from the
Experience- Map platform mentioned above. As an example,
the following text illustrates the enrolment at the new faculty:
[...] but the worst thing was that I felt completely lost. So much time
spent on choosing the courses to find that there was no guarantee

115Chapter 7. Making intercultural competence meaningful in the classroom...
that I could take part in any of them! The whole situation was very
frustrating and the amount of paperwork and nonsensical bureau-
cracy enraged me.
As time was running out, I decided to sort things out before the
classes began. I emailed some of the professors of the courses I
wanted to be part of but most of them did not know what the pro-
cedure was. That is when I decided to contact the International Of-
fice of the university but also to enrol in a mentor program, where I
would receive help from a student from the university. Both of them
helped me to sort everything out (enrolment, professors, time lim-
its, etc.) and get an answer, as well as giving me some advice. They
told me to enrol in as many courses as I [...] (ExperienceMap, 2021)
In the next step, we move into a recurring activity in each set-
ting: students make a word cloud containing the most frequent
words found in the texts explored on the internet. Word clouds
are aimed at facilitating the learning of a specific vocabulary in
this case related to the semantic field faculty:
Image 4. Example of a word cloud about the semantic field Faculty

116 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
The next activity is a simulation with intercultural interaction
regarding problems of working in international groups, retrieved
from Connect modules and whose content is also part of the stu-
dents’ experiences discussed on the Experience-Map platform. In
this reading activity, students are challenged to put themselves
in the role of outgoing students learning and living in a different
culture with different points of view and attitudes. This activity is
complemented by scenes from the film Júlia ist (Martin, 2017),
where the students are again placed in a simulated academic
role, that of a young Catalan as an Erasmus student in Berlin. For
both activities, students are asked to focus on various intercul-
tural issues which emerged in both situations, in order to raise
awareness of critical intercultural incidents related to their future
academic situation. There is then a group discussion comparing
notes and exchanging opinions and ideas, and the activity ends
with feedback, including suggestions for improvement and
change, so that the students become sensitized to real problems
outgoing students may have and begin to establish a critical view
towards their own attitude.
3.2. Setting 2: Accommodation
As for the second setting Accommodation, the first activity promotes
previous reflection on the student’s own profile and decision-
making. This activity is also carried out with a questionnaire,
where students must decide their choice of accommodation
(flat-sharing or dormitory), which price, independence or social-
ization and international or local environment.
For further writing activities related to the topic Accommoda-
tion, we ask students to explore information regarding price, lo-
cation or relevant features both on the local IRO website and on
the IRO host university website (those links are provided by the
teaching staff). The links are related to the interest and reality of
the students themselves as outgoers. As a final step, we also en-
courage students to select keywords that summarize the content
of each link, thus facilitating information previewing. At the end,
they are asked to prepare a written report on their findings.

117Chapter 7. Making intercultural competence meaningful in the classroom...
3.3. Setting 3: Leisure in the new city
To avoid overgeneralization and stereotyping, with the scene Ex-
ploring the neighbourhood in the setting 3, students have the op-
portunity to zoom in on the host culture and observe specific
realities. The students first explore individually the definition of
the German term Kiez2 and then share the information in a ple-
nary virtual chat and are encouraged to help each other in seek-
ing out a complete definition of the term.
Students are also required to write a pre-reflection group exer-
cise describing their home Kiez in Barcelona/Catalonia, to pub-
lish it in a wiki format and to include information such as the
location and means of transport, services, facilities and leisure
offer, opening hours, shops, interesting links and photographs
of their home Kiez. They are required to imagine that the target
readers are incoming students at the University of Barcelona
(UB) and aim to facilitate their adaptation if they were to live in
their home Kiez.
The second part of the activity consists in writing a similar
parallel text, in this case about the Kiez in the host city where the
students’ dormitories or flat-sharing are located. Similar situa-
tions are also presented and handled in the Connect modules,
where students express their purpose of living in, not visiting,
the host city.
As in the other settings, students are asked to make a word
cloud with the most common abbreviations and terms, in this
case from the semantic field Kiez (my neighbourhood).
Following the same procedure as in the other settings, stu-
dents make a selection of the explored links on city neighbour-
hood and means of transport that may be of interest to future ex-
change students, e.g. recommended means of transport, prices,
routes dormitory-faculty, and summarize them with keywords.
3.4. Setting 4: The international traineeship
In the last setting, the students are projected into their future
professional world. It starts with a group activity, where students
2. This term refers to a city neighbourhood defined by its social fabric, location,
particular features or its history.

118 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
explore the economic area where their host university is located.
Each group is given a list of selected links by the teaching staff to
facilitate their findings. The students then explore the main eco-
nomic sectors, the main companies, products and so on and
then write a brief report with relevant information. The aim
of this activity is to make future outgoing UB students aware of
the sectors in which they are most likely to find traineeships in the
area of their host university.
The second part of this last activity consists in exploring and
selecting the most prominent links related to the search and of-
fer of a traineeship. The students are again given materials and
resources previously selected by the teaching staff to provide
them with better guidance. These materials come from both the
IRO and the Traineeship Office at the Economics and Business
Faculty, as well as from other sources such as state agencies in
Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The activities conclude with
a final report required of each group, which should include the
most relevant information found about traineeships. This text is
used as an introduction to the links mentioned previously, and
it highlights information such as average salary, type and vol-
ume of the offer, location of the traineeship places, required
skills and so forth.
4. Concluding remarks
From this experience, it is worth noting the first-time collabora-
tion between the Business German language course and the IRO
had a direct impact on the classroom. Moreover, the IRO materi-
als, together with those directly retrieved from real exchange stu-
dents’ experiences published in the Connect modules and the
Experience-Map, have been used to design the activities aimed at
achieving linguistic content and competencies. In addition, as a
result of the class-activity outcomes, new materials have been
created that are at the disposal of the IRO for the international
mobility programmes.
The experience implementing the project after two years with
two different groups of students is encouraging in terms of, first,
achievement of the required linguistic skills and professional
competencies such as complex task management, teamwork, in-

119Chapter 7. Making intercultural competence meaningful in the classroom...
tercultural skills (Panadés and Fernández-Villanueva, 2020) and
creativity, due to the use of multimedia tools and the need to
create an original product; and second, of having bridged the
gap between course contents and the competencies necessary to
perform in the working world. Furthermore, the activities aim
to equip the students with new insights into the construction of
their own competence to cope with uncertainty and complex sit-
uations in international settings. Nowadays, higher education
faces the challenge of providing students with autonomy and the
ability to manage their own professional development.
As we have seen, a good proportion of the activities provide
students with a way to identify problems on the basis of reflec-
tion, with the purpose of raising awareness of their needs and
difficulties, and of motivating them to seek solutions to meet
these needs and resolve possible intercultural incidents. At the
same time, the proposed activities are related to students’ inter-
ests and their immediate and future reality as outgoing exchange
students or international trainees, which results in an increasing
interest in international mobility. A questionnaire among the
participants in the 2018-19 academic year was carried out with
satisfactory results, considering that they rated it the second most
liked element (Panadés and Fernández-Villanueva, 2020).
In other words, students who attend the course Second For-
eign Language for Business II – German develop intercultural
awareness and are more confident about their future interna-
tional academic or traineeship stay. This experience leads us to
believe that a language course designed not only for linguistic
purposes but also related to the students’ immediate reality is
an accurate and motivational proposal to enhance the course’s
development. In this regard, it is worth noting that the imple-
mentation of the project has made it possible to explicitly intro-
duce the teaching and learning of intercultural skills by means
of collaborative and reflective learning for peers and for the in-
stitution, while improving the quality of teaching (Panadés and
Fernández-Villanueva, 2019) and boosting international mobil-
ity, encouraging students to undertake an international trainee-
ship.
Finally, for further research we suggest carrying out an analy-
sis of the possible impact of the teaching innovation action ei-
ther on the students attending the course or on exchange stu-

120 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
dents from other business language courses. Additionally, a po-
tential action research on different foreign languages with specific
purposes would provide insights into further contrastive studies
among a wide language spectrum. In conclusion, we can state that
the proposed teaching action reinforces competencies that are in
great demand in the professional world; promotes teamwork and
participation of the student by proposing collaborative teaching/
learning activities framed in a project through which they can
meet the objectives set in the course Second Foreign Language for
Business II - German and helps students to become competent in
the target language and able to continue autonomous and inde-
pendent learning.
5. References
Alcantud-Díaz, M. et al. (2014). Share your experiences. Digital story-
telling in English for tourism. Ibérica, 27, 185-204.
Burns, A. (2010). Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching. A
Guide for Practitioners. Routledge.
Connect Intercultural Learning Network (2018). Manual Online Curric-
ulum and Experience Map. Erasmus Program of the European Union.
Connect. (n.d). https://weconnecteurope.eu/project-results
Deardoff, D.K. (2006). Identification and Assessment of Intercultural
Competence as a Student Outcome of Internationalization. Journal
of Studies in International Education, 10(3), 241-266. Doi: https://
doi.org/10.1177/1028315306287002
Du, X. and Han, J. (2016). A Literature Review on the Definition and
Process of Project-Based Learning and Other Relative Studies. Crea-
tive Education, 7, 1079-1083. Doi: 10.4236/ce.2016.77112.
ExperienceMap. (n.d). www.experience-map.org
Feldmeier, A. (2014). Besondere Forschungsansätze: Aktionsforschung.
In Settinieri, J. et al., Empirische Forschungsmethoden für Deutsch als
Fremd- und Zweitsprache. Ferdinand Schöningh.
Fernández-Villanueva, M. and Strunk, O. (2014). InCrit. Incidentes
Críticos en la Comunicación Transcultural Alemán-Español/Catalán.
http://www.ub.edu/lada/?page_id=165
Guisasola, J. and Garmendia, M. (2014). Aprendizaje basado en proble-
mas, proyectos y casos: diseño e implementación de experiencias en la uni-
versidad. Servicio Editorial de la Universidad del País Vasco.

121Chapter 7. Making intercultural competence meaningful in the classroom...
IRO Economics and Business Faculty, Universitat de Barcelona. (n.d).
http://www.ub.edu/economiaempresa-internacional/app/erasmus.
php/home
Martin, E. (Director) (2017). Júlia ist [Film]. Lastor Media; Antaviana
Films.
Panadés, M. and Fernández-Villanueva, M. (2020). Collaborative
Learning in the Business German Classroom: a Gamification Expe-
rience to develop Oral and Written intercultural Skills and Intercul-
tural Awareness. In Sevilla, A. and Rosca, A. Buildling up Tellecolabo-
rative Networks for Intercultural Learning in the Digital (pp. 117-134).
Comares.
Roy, M. and Schlemminger, G. (2014), Immersion und Interaktion in
virtuellen Realitäten: Der Faktor Präsenz zur Optimierung des ge-
leiteten Sprachenlernens. Zeitschrift für Interkulturellen Fremd-
sprachenunterricht, 19(2), 187-201. http://zif.spz.tu-darmstadt.de/
jg-19-2/beitrag/Roy_Schlemminger.pdf.
Valero-García, M. (2012). PBL. Piénsatelo Bien antes de Liarte. ReVisión,
5, 2. http://www.aenui.net/ojs/index.php?journal=revision&page=a
rticle&op=view&path%5B%5D=105&path%5B%5D=162

123
Chapter 8
Intercultural virtual collaboration in
perspective – Overall conclusions and
developments from two international
inter-university collaborations
Luana Ferreira-Lopes
María José Bezanilla
Iciar Elexpuru-Albizuri
1. Introduction
Intercultural competence has become an essential tool to navi-
gate everyday life in increasingly diverse communities and work-
places. Universities have been expanding efforts to offer their
students the opportunity to develop such competence, not only
through physical mobility, but also by including the develop-
ment of it in their curricula, through active, collaborative and
reflective practices. By adopting such approaches and pedagogi-
cal strategies to the development of students’ intercultural com-
petence, universities have been aiming to establish what has
been called by experts in the field as “Internationalization at
home” (Knight, 2004; Wachter, 2003).
In this context, technology has been key. Digital tools have
not only allowed institutions to recruit students from all over the
world to their online courses, but have also provided teachers
with the opportunity to enrich the learning experience in their
everyday classes with digital resources and with the possibility of
having global interconnectedness from within the limits of class-
room walls.
Intercultural virtual collaboration (IVC) has been employed
by teachers and institutions to connect students from different
Chapter 8. Intercultural virtual collaboration in
perspective

124 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
locations to develop different kinds of learning outcomes. The
practice can be found in literature under a vast array of labels
(O’Dowd, 2018): Telecollaboration (Guth, Helm and O’Dowd,
2012), Online Intercultural Exchange (O’Dowd and Lewis,
2016); Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)
(Guth and Rubin, 2015); Networked Learning (McConnell,
Hodgson and Dirckinck-Holmfeld, 2011); Global Virtual Teams
(GVT) (Taras et al., 2013) and probably others. According to
O’Dowd and Dooly (2020), “all definitions intend to highlight
both the medium (virtual, online, digital, distance, global, net-
worked) and the underlying purpose (exchange, intercultural,
collaboration, learning)” (p. 362).
Having emerged at the turn of the millennium (Helm and
Guth, 2010), IVC has been shown to achieve different pedagogi-
cal goals (like intercultural competence development, language-
learning and digital literacies) and, since 2020, in face of the ex-
traordinary circumstances imposed by the COVID-19 epidemic,
it has even been seen as a tool “to offer students an international
and intercultural experience today when mobility is not actually
possible, and to prepare students for quality mobility experien-
ces in the future” (Helm, 2020).
Still, disregarding its pedagogical potential, IVC is currently
quite far from becoming an established practice in Higher Edu-
cation given the complexity involved in its implementation:
What sets it apart from other online approaches is precisely what
makes starting and scaling new programs complex. Whether they
are classroom-based or peer-to-peer conversations, meaningful ex-
periences require intentional facilitation and authentic tasks. They
also have components to help students prepare, work together, and
then debrief after a project. And if the goal is to foster the same
kinds of serendipitous experiences that come from in-person inter-
national learning, all these tasks - preparation, facilitation, collabo-
ration, and reflection - must be more intentional. (NAFSA, n.d.)
For this reason, there is a need for sharing evidence of applied
models and tools that can be replicated by IVC practitioners
(Crossman and Bordia, 2012; Ferreira-Lopes and Van Rompay-
Bartels, 2020; Helm, 2015) and that can inform policy makers
on the ways ICV can be successfully integrated into university

125Chapter 8. Intercultural virtual collaboration in perspective
curricula (Garcés and O’Dowd, 2020). Considering this, this
chapter presents overall conclusions about the implementation
of a task sequence teaching-learning strategy for the develop-
ment of intercultural competence in Higher Education through
intercultural virtual collaboration with the final objective of fa-
cilitating the work of teachers when integrating IVC into Higher
Education studies.
Before we finally reach such conclusions, in the next section
we will briefly discuss the use of tasks in virtual collaborative
environments and describe the main characteristics of the
task-sequence analysed.
2. A task sequence proposal for
intercultural virtual collaboration
Finding its roots in language teaching, the task-based approach
to education has been evolving for the last 30 years. Drawing its
theoretical foundations from classical educational philosophies
such as social constructivism (Vygotsky, 1962) and ‘learning by
doing’ (Dewey, 1938), the task-based approach primes experi-
ence, interactions and authenticity
Skehan (1998) defines the four main characteristics of a task
as being: (a) exchange of meaning is primary; (b) there should
be a common goal to be achieved; (c) the outcome in sight is
whether the learners were able or not to achieve such an objec-
tive; and (d) the task performed should resemble real-world situ-
ations. Other definitions of task also emphasize the role of
teachers in structuring and sequencing interactions, as well as on
regulating them (Lee, 2000).
According to Lai and Li (2011), “the introduction of technol-
ogy into this equation enlarges the number of venues and re-
sources for task performance” (p. 501). In the computer-mediated
context, they define tasks as “holistic activities in which learners
make use of their language and (cross-)cultural and communica-
tive resources to achieve some nonlinguistic outcome through
stretching their linguistic, (cross-)cultural, internet-based com-
munication, and digital literacy skills” (p. 501). By using tech-
nology to connect students from different locations, intercultur-

126 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
al virtual collaboration breaks the limitations imposed by physi-
cal separateness and allows for real-life interaction between
different cultures, carrying with it the potential to enhance the
authenticity of tasks that aim to develop intercultural and lin-
guistic competences. As Woo et al. (2007) explain,
Before the widespread diffusion of computers and Internet technol-
ogies, it was much more difficult—and in some situations even im-
possible—for instructors or instructional designers to use authentic
activities in real-life settings because of the limitations of the subject
matter, time and finances, and practical constraints and risks of
physically moving students to fields of practice. With the develop-
ment of web technology, such limitations have eased. (p. 37)
However, in complex environments such as those involved in
intercultural virtual collaboration, different variables (pedagogy,
technology, language and culture) interplay and, with this,
task-design assumes a pivotal role (Kurek and Müller-Hartmann,
2017). In this regard, Kurek (2015) defends that “the greater the
complexity of a learning environment, the more learning oppor-
tunities it may generate, if only learners’ activity is framed with
adequate tasks” (p. 17).
In terms of instructional design, the typology of tasks identi-
fied by the seminal work of O’Dowd and Ware (2009) has been
widely used by intercultural virtual collaboration researchers
and practitioners. Such authors synthesized the variety of tasks
used in telecollaboration into three main categories: the first cat-
egory is composed of (1) information exchange tasks. These
tasks usually require little negotiation and consist of partners in-
troducing themselves to each other by providing information
about their own cultures and interests. The second type of tasks
is (2) comparison and analysis of cultures and demands a little
more from students by asking them to make a critical analysis of
cultural products (e.g. newspapers, magazines, books, etc.) and
finding similarities and differences between them. The last cate-
gory is (3) collaborative tasks, which require students to go fur-
ther in collaboration by requesting them to produce a joint
product or conclusion together. After analysing a number of
studies that fall under each of the categories mentioned, O’Dowd
and Ware (2009) concluded that combining different types of

127Chapter 8. Intercultural virtual collaboration in perspective
tasks in a sequence can expose students to different aspects of
intercultural communication and allow educators to set diverse
learning objectives in an online exchange.
By having the typology of O’Dowd and Ware (2009) as a
main reference and based on other previous literature in the
field of telecollaboration, in her doctoral work Ferreira-Lopes
(2021) proposes a detailed task sequence (Figure 1) for the de-
velopment of intercultural competence through intercultural vir-
tual collaboration. The sequence is composed of four tasks, each
of them followed by reflection exercises. The full proposal of the
referred sequence can be found in Ferreira-Lopes, Bezanilla and
Figure 1. Task-sequence proposed by Ferreira-Lopes, Bezanilla and Elexpuru (2018)

128 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
Elexpuru (2018). In this publication, the authors describe how
the sequence was built in a way that the notion of community/
group is gradually constructed between members, with tasks
growing from the preliminary exchange of personal information
to more intense and demanding forms of collaboration. They
also provide considerations to support teachers in the pre-imple-
mentation set-up process and suggest the use of user-friendly
technology tools, as well as of a multi-method assessment strate-
gy (with different types of assessment tools) to better capture
students’ intercultural competence development.
In order to analyse the effect of the proposed task sequence in
students’ development of intercultural competence and to ex-
plore how much students enjoy participating in each task, the
referred task sequence was implemented in two different IVC
projects. First, in 2016, a pilot implementation was carried out
in a master programme involving universities from two different
countries (Spain and France). Then, in 2017, another implemen-
tation took place in a project involving undergraduate Business
students from Spain and undergraduate Business students from
Holland. Quantitative and qualitative data was collected from such
implementation through pre-posttests, after-task questionnaires
and a final satisfaction survey.
3. Overall conclusions and developments
The task sequence previously presented proved to be operatio-
nalizable in practice as it was implemented in two different Busi-
ness courses at different academic levels (in undergraduate stu-
dies and in a master programme) and with partnerships involving
different institutions and countries. The experience in both im-
plementations showed that having a ‘pre-packaged’ and concrete
pedagogical strategy at hand facilitated discussions and allowed
agreements between collaborating universities and teachers to
depart from a more advanced stage (Ferreira-Lopes et al., 2019).
An analysis of the results of the second implementation also
showed that, according to students’ perceptions (Ferreira-Lopes,
Elexpuru and Bezanilla, 2021), the most developed intercultural
competence indicators across the sequence related to developing
a positive attitude towards intercultural relationships and to de-

129Chapter 8. Intercultural virtual collaboration in perspective
veloping skills to work in diverse teams. Other indicators that
students reported to have been very much developed by the se-
quence were related to intercultural knowledge, intercultural
awareness, intercultural relationship building and intercultural
teamwork1. In addition, results revealed that a vast majority of
students very much enjoyed participating in all the tasks from
the sequence and nearly all students would recommend the tel-
ecollaborative project to be implemented again with new stu-
dents. When asked about what they most liked about the pro-
ject, students mostly reported their excitement with the opportu-
nity of working in intercultural teams, of gaining cultural
knowledge and highlighted the real-life application of the pro-
ject. On the other hand, workload, some aspects of instructional
design (specific tasks, task length and instructions), and misun-
derstandings in the group were the issues that students least
liked about the sequence (Ferreira-Lopes and Van Rompay-
Bartels, 2020).
As it demonstrated to be applicable in practice, well-perceived
by students and effective in developing different intercultural
competence building blocks and configurations, the task se-
quence proposed proved to facilitate the integration of intercul-
tural virtual collaboration into the university curriculum and be-
came a sustainable and integral part of both the master pro-
gramme in which the pilot took place and in the two
undergraduate courses involved in the final implementation. As
such, it has been successively applied in the programmes referred
to in the academic years that followed the first implementations.
In the case of the IVC project involving Spain and Holland, the
high satisfaction of all those involved with the initiative caused
1. The study adopted the Erasmus Mundus Intercultural Competence model
(EMIC, 2015) to serve as a reference for the definition, development and measurement
of intercultural competence in the Higher Education context. The EMIC model defends
that intercultural competence is a multidimensional concept composed of building
blocks (knowledge, awareness, attitudes and skills), supporting capacities (emotional
intelligence and critical ref lection), a meta-capacit y (developing intercultural compe-
tence) and three interrelated competence configurations or sub-competences (intercul-
tural teamwork, intercultural conf lict management and intercultural relationship
building). In order to better suit EMIC to the online work that takes place in intercultur-
al virtual collaborative env ironments, the doctoral research also proposed the addition
of a new conf iguration (intercultural virtual teamwork) and four related indicators to
the original composition of the model.

130 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
the project to collaborate in different ways since its first imple-
mentation:
• Increase in the number of participating students: in the Nether-
lands, the number of participating students increased in the
implementation that followed the first project, allowing
groups to have a better balance of members from both loca-
tions;
• Adaptation/replication of the task sequence in other IVC projects:
the task sequence proposed herein was adapted and used by
the Dutch teacher in another similar exchange held in part-
nership with a university in the United States;
• Integration of a new partner: in the implementation that took
place in the academic term of September 2020-January 2021,
a third university from South America was integrated into the
project, enriching it with another cultural perspective;
• Broadening the concept of intercultural competence: also in the
implementation of 2020, teachers decided to start to incorpo-
rate some principles of global citizenship (Byram, 2008;
Council of Europe, 2016) into the project by inviting students
to discuss in the intercultural virtual groups, as part of the fi-
nal assignment, how the COVID situation has been addressed
by governments in the countries represented in the group and
to reflect on how such approaches have impacted everyday
life and businesses in such places. Although the task does not
reach a deep level of active engagement in society – which is
the ultimate goal of global citizenship (O’Dowd, 2019) – it
does aim at “encouraging learners to engage with themes
which are of social and political relevance in both partners’
societies” (p. 11).
Future projects could go deeper into and beyond these as-
pects, showing in what ways the task sequence proposed in this
work can evolve and exploring the implications that such deve-
lopments might have on students’ intercultural competence and
satisfaction. Especially with regards to approaching the concept
of global citizenship, there is a lot of room for improving the
collaborative tasks of the sequence in order to engage students in
intercultural dialogical and critical processes that might lead
them to actively take part in societal issues.

131Chapter 8. Intercultural virtual collaboration in perspective
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135
Chapter 9
Internationalization at home – Joint
study project between Spanish and
Finnish engineering students
Qian Zhang
1. Introduction
This paper describes the experience of a joint study project be-
tween groups of engineering students at the University of Vic-
Central University of Catalonia (UVic-UCC) in Spain and Häme
University of Applied Sciences (HAMK) in Finland during the
spring semester of the 2020 academic year and the autumn se-
mester of the 2020-2021 academic year. The project was planned
and conducted together by three English educators from both uni-
versities and a subject matter teacher from HAMK. The assessment
of the students was conducted by their own lecturers. As meetings
were organized independently by the students as self-study tasks,
most of the communications took place at their homes, especial-
ly after the Covid-19 breakout in February 2020. Thus, the goals
of the project were to develop students’ teamwork and project
work skills as well as their multicultural awareness and commu-
nication skills. This paper reflects on the extent to which these
goals were achieved and provides recommendations for setting
up COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) projects.
2. Joint study project overview
This international joint study project for engineering students
was first proposed in 2019 by Niina Valtaranta from Häme Uni-
Chapter 9. Internationalization at home

136 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
versity of Applied Sciences (HAMK) to Qian Zhang from the Fa-
culty of Science and Technology at The University of Vic-Central
University of Catalonia (UVic-UCC). It was finally mainly con-
ducted by Niina Valtaranta (HAMK) and Qian Zhang (Uvic),
with the support of Susan Heikkilä (HAMK) as the project ma-
nager.
The goals of this joint study project were as follows:
1. to familiarize meeting practice, documentation and termino-
logy,
2. to acquire the skills of preparing and delivering an effective
presentation related to the engineering field through peer as-
sessment and feedback,
3. to develop engineering students’ teamwork and project work
skills,
4. to raise engineering students’ multicultural awareness and
communication skills,
5. to strengthen engineering students’ language skills, in this
case in English.
Due to complications of course planning, the project was not
carried out until February 2020. Between January 2019 and Fe-
bruary 2020, the two lecturers communicated about the project
planning via emails, including a visit by the HAMK lecturer to
Uvic Granollers in February 2020 to give the automotive engi-
neering students a guest lecture, introducing the joint study pro-
ject, which kicked the project off.
Two sets of joint study projects were conducted between 2020
and 2021. From February to June 2020, the project was imple-
mented in the subject ‘engineering communication skills’, and it
included first-year automotive engineering degree students from
Uvic and second-year engineering students from module 8
HAMK. The topic was ‘Circular economy –recycling, recovery
and reprocessing of materials.’ From September 2020 to Februa-
ry 2021, the project involved first-year engineering students from
both universities. The students were given an ILO (International
Labour Office) list of 39 industries, from which they chose one
industry to research on the use of robotics.

137Chapter 9. Internationalization at home
3. Communication between the educators
How we communicated
As mentioned above, communication between the educators
(Qian Zhang, Niina Valtaranta) was made mainly via emails.
Zoom conferences were carried out before each implementation
to plan it and also after each implementation to discuss feedback
and possible improvements.
Feedback and self-reflections on communication
The combination of these two ways of communicating worked
very well, although emails did not work as well as video confer-
ences as the communication was not instantaneous.
Recommendations for communication
More short video conferences between educators are recom-
mended regarding this matter, together with the support of
emails on Moodle. It was felt that the communication via emails
on Moodle were not instantaneous, which prolonged the time
for decision-making situations. If more short video conferences
were carried out, some decisions can be made instantly during
the meetings instead of sending emails back and forth. However,
arranging the meeting time for both lecturers could be an issue,
even though they are more efficient.
4. Topics
Two different topics were used in these two sets of project imple-
mentations:
• From February to June 2020, the topic applied was ‘Circular
economy –recycling, recovery and reprocessing of materials.’
Students were asked to look at these global issues from the
perspectives of 1) significance at an individual, societal and
global level; 2) significance in the students’ own field of
study: automation and electrical engineering, mechatronics
engineering, etc. Students then were asked to make develop-
ment proposals on how to proceed towards a more sustaina-
ble environment.

138 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
• From September 2020 to February 2021, the students were
given the ILO1 list of industries, from which they chose one
industry to research on the use of robotics.
4.1. Feedback and self-reflection
Most of the students showed great interest in the topic of ‘Circu-
lar economy –recycling, recovery and reprocessing of materials’,
and they focused on this matter in their daily lives. For this rea-
son, as we could see from their presentations, their projects were
not as focused on their industries as we expected. Many of the
presentations were fairly simple and short, except a few groups
who delivered very thorough and professional work studying
this matter within their chosen industries. This topic is very easy
to address for first-year students, and also for educators with no
prior experience in international projects
Most of the students also showed great interest in the second
topic of examining robotics use, yet with a different attitude
from the previous project on the circular economy as this topic
seemed more specific to what they were studying and relatively
more difficult. As we saw from their final presentations, they had
done more thorough research on specific industries and had de-
livered more professional and comprehensive work.
4.2. Recommendations
Both topics mentioned above worked remarkably well. The first
topic was relatively easy to use for the first-year students, but the
second topic was more specialized and related to the students’
degree and interests, and it was thus more beneficial as an edu-
cational project, especially for mechatronic engineering stu-
dents.
5. Activities
The activities implemented were slightly different for these two
sets of projects.
1. International Labour Office

139Chapter 9. Internationalization at home
For the February to June 2020 project, the activities students
were asked to carry out were as follows:
1. Have a kick-off meeting of the project during week one. They
were given emails of their partners from the other university
and started communicating via emails. Then they had to agree
on a platform to conduct this first meeting, to get to know
each other.
2. Make an introduction video of the teams. Students were asked
to record an introduction video to show their teams from
their university, presenting their studying environment, their
interests, and so on.
3. Virtual team meetings on the chosen platform. Students then
decided on a platform to use to carry out regular meetings,
discussing the project content, making project plans, dividing
work, etc. Students were asked to record at least two of these
meetings to submit to their teacher for monitoring and possi-
ble evaluation.
4. Article reading. Two articles supporting the project were given to
students to read, and tasks were given to each of them to com-
plete. The articles were: “What do engineers need to learn about
sustainable development?” (University of Cambridge, 2006);
“4R guide: Reduce Reuse Recycle Recover” (Skanska, 2012). Stu-
dents were asked to read these two articles and then were re-
quired to answer comprehension questions to submit the tasks.
5. Intermediate project plan presentations were made and mon-
itored by the educator in HAMK, but not in UVic due to diffi-
culties in course planning timeline.
6. Final project presentations. All the teams gave their final pro-
ject presentations online explaining their research on this
matter. Each team was required to give a presentation of ten
to fifteen minutes and then answer peers and educators’ ques-
tions. Each member of the team was required to speak for a
relatively equal amount of time. Teams which could not at-
tend the final presentation day were asked to send a recorded
presentation on the same day.
7. Peer assessments were made by other groups during the pres-
entations. Students were given this tool to evaluate the other
teams’ presentations. This tool was developed by Niina Val-
taranta (HAMK).

140 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
Figure 1. Peer assessment of presentation
For the September 2020 to February 2021 project, as the topic
was different, the activities and tasks were slightly different too.
Instead of being given articles to read, students had to choose
one industry and do their research. They were asked to examine
robotics in connection with the industry chosen, with these pro-
posed questions: What applications are used? To what extent
does the industry use robotics? Are there any new applications
and trends? What are the advantages and disadvantages of using
robotics there?

141Chapter 9. Internationalization at home
5.1. Feedback and self-reflections
1. The kick-off meeting is usually done quite efficiently, as stu-
dents are excited to meet their partners from the other univer-
sity. There could be awkward silences at times as it is the first
meeting, and it is online. However, the objective to get to
know their partners briefly is usually completed during this
first meeting.
2. Making a team introduction video has proved to be a relative-
ly difficult task to carry out. Teams from both sides should
decide how they want the introduction video to be and what
each member does and says. It is also the first task that should
be done as a team. Some decisions should be made as a team,
and work should be divided. Most of the teams delivered the
task with delays, some with good quality of a video, others
not so good.
3. Virtual team meetings on the chosen platform are one of the
most important activities for this project. Most of the com-
munications for the project happen during these meetings,
and a lot of skills required for this project, such as language
skills, discussion skills, communication skills and project
planning skills, are practised during them. From the meeting
videos students submitted, we could see two major obstacles:
a) it seems to be difficult to organize a meeting with all the
team members due to group size, team members’ timetable
and motivation; b) meetings seem to be long with low effi-
ciency due to punctuality issues of the meeting members, lack
of meeting planning and lack of communication skills. De-
spite these obstacles, most meetings succeeded in reaching
their goals and completed the tasks. It can be seen very clearly
in the final presentations if those meetings were effective or
not. Furthermore, having to submit two recorded meetings
pushed the students to plan these meetings well and conduct
them efficiently.
4. Article reading was only implemented in the first project. In
general, it is a great method to introduce the topic to the stu-
dents and broaden their view and knowledge related to the
matter. Tasks were simple but moderately time-consuming,
which also helped students to learn the vocabulary related to
the topic.

142 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
5. Final project presentations are the harvest, which educators
look forward to and the students feel nervous about as it is
the final presentation of their three-month-long projects. One
of the most challenging tasks for the educators in this project
is to organize the presentation day. As the number and size of
the groups are large, the educators need to have a complete
plan and considerably tight schedule, otherwise the presenta-
tion time could be prolonged without control. Another factor
to consider, and one that at times is an obstacle, is finding a
date and time that suits both the students and educators. De-
spite all these challenges, this is still considered the favourite
activity of the project, as the results are seen and the presenta-
tions are interesting.
6. Peer assessments are not included in the official evaluations;
instead, they work more as self-reflections for the observers
and a different perspective for the educators. It can frequently
be seen that the peers are at times stricter than the educators.
5.2. Recommendations
All seven activities are highly recommended as they work togeth-
er towards the final goal of the project. However, some changes
could be made in the future projects:
1. As mentioned above, delays of delivery for the team introduc-
tion video task have been observed, thus a deadline and delay
penalty are suggested.
2. Requiring students to provide at least two meeting videos is an
excellent way to monitor students’ work, although there could
be technological problems involved. Some teams may not
know how to record the meeting, or they might not find the
recordings afterwards. Another issue is the platform to share
with the educators. From the experiences of these two sets of
projects, a tutorial on how to record a meeting should be pro-
vided by the educators, either directly in class or a recorded
tutorial in the video. As for the platform to share, WeTransfer
has proved to be the one most used by the students. However,
other better sharing methods are to be explored.
3. As the large number and size of the groups is unavoidable, fi-
nal presentation time can be as long as three to four hours. It is

143Chapter 9. Internationalization at home
undoubtedly a challenge for educators to observe and evaluate
for such a long time, and also for the students to stay engaged.
Therefore, two separate presentation days are recommended.
6. Evaluation
Evaluation system
HAMK and Uvic implemented this project in their course with
different evaluation systems:
• For HAMK, peer assessment of the project outcome of anoth-
er team was made straight after each presentation, which were
assessed orally by their teachers on site and individually as
oral exams afterwards.
• For Uvic, two different systems were used for the two sets of
projects. For the February to June 2020 project with the auto-
motive engineering degree, it comprised ten percent of the
whole course evaluation system. Two recorded meetings from
each team were required to be submitted and then evaluated
by the educator. The final presentations were not evaluated.
However, for the September 2020 to February 2021 project
with the mechatronic engineering degree, it comprised fifteen
percent of the course, the recorded meetings were not evaluat-
ed, and the final presentations were evaluated.
We have implemented these two different evaluation systems
for these two sets of projects for various reasons. For the auto-
motive engineering course, there was an extra project already in-
cluded in the course, which is an interdisciplinary and transver-
sal project called PBL (project-based learning), which comprised
fifteen percent of the evaluation system and also required a final
presentation in English. The final presentations of the PBL joint
study project were not evaluated; instead, we only evaluated the
recorded meetings to examine students’ communications skills,
meeting skills and language skills. No PBL was included for the
mechatronic engineering course, so the final presentations were
evaluated, which comprised fifteen percent of the course evalua-
tion system.

144 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
6.1. Feedback and self-reflections
This joint study project had been done by Niina Valtaranta at
HAMK before, and it has a relatively mature system compared to
the project implementations at UVic. Therefore, these two evalu-
ation methods at UVic were experimented to find the appropri-
ate way to implement this project in various degrees in the fu-
ture. Both had their own functions. Evaluating the recorded
meetings focused more on observing communications skills,
meeting skills and language skills, whereas evaluating the final
presentations focused more on the final results with presenta-
tion skills and language skills.
6.2. Recommendations
Both systems are recommended, but the best option could be
the combination of both evaluation methods. For instance, eval-
uating one recorded meeting and the final presentations.
In this way, all the skills required for this project are evalua-
ted, the process of the project is monitored and included in the
evaluation, and the final results are observed and evaluated.
7. Supporting technologies
7.1. Platforms
Emails on Moodle was the first platform both educators and stu-
dents used to communicate. Via Moodle emails, students agreed
on a platform to conduct video conferences. Four platforms were
chosen: Zoom, Skype, Discord and Microsoft Teams. Zoom was
the official platform for educators to communicate between them-
selves and the students. WeTransfer was used to submit recorded
meeting videos by the students. Google drive was also used among
students to share their project work. Moodle was used to share
project materials by the educators. Mentimeter was used to collect
students’ feedback.

145Chapter 9. Internationalization at home
7.2. Feedback and self-reflections
All the platforms mentioned above had their functions and
worked considerably well, either for information sharing or for
direct communication. Although Zoom was the official platform
for educators to use to communicate with the students, Discord
was a very popular tool and chosen to be the communication
platform to conduct video conferences by some of the teams.
7.3. Recommendations
All these platforms are highly recommended for this project.
However, there is a feeling by the educators that more could be
explored and applied in the future to facilitate this international
project.
Another factor to consider is the democratic digital perspective
(Beneyto-Seoane, M. and Collet-Sabé, J., 2020), since not all the
students have the same facilities at home. As mentioned in the in-
troduction, most of the communications of this project took place
at students’ homes, therefore the democratic digital perspective
should be paid attention to.
We believe that with the educator’s willingness to explore
new platforms and to have a more democratic digital environ-
ment in the project, together with the help of the technology de-
partment of both universities, better platforms and technologies
can be found and applied in this type of future international
projects. As Beneyto-Seoane and Collet-Sabé (2020) state:
...that the democratic digital perspective promotes, on the one
hand, the recognition of all members of the educational communi-
ty in decision-making bodies. On the other hand, it encourages the
generation of new digital spaces for participation that are more in-
clusive and less unequal.
8. Students’ feedback
Students’ feedback was collected after each set of projects had
finished. Here is some of their feedback for both the spring and
autumn projects.

146 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
8.1. Feedback for the spring project
from February to June 2020
A nice change to teamwork compared to other courses. If I could
think of something to improve, it would be nice if the students all
came from the same field, and the task would be related to that.
I got some courage for the use of English. I learned that the English
does not have to be perfect for the others to understand you. I feel
like I have been left out of a lot of English because I have been
afraid of making mistakes when speaking.
I learnt a lot in the project. You learn English by speaking it. There
should be more speaking related tasks in English. That way the
threshold for speaking would be lowered. Solving problems was
the most useful part.
8.2. Feedback for the autumn project from
September 2020 to February 2021
Figure 2. Students’ feedback for the autumn project from September 2020 to
February 2021
As we can see in Figure 2, both positive and negative feedback
was expressed. Students mostly felt that this joint study project
was a good way to learn, and the content was interesting. They
enjoyed the interaction with students from different cultural

147Chapter 9. Internationalization at home
backgrounds online. Their language skills improved throughout
the project, and it was a different study experience compared to
the traditional way of learning.
However, some negative feedback was received. Firstly, the
communication between team members was poor, thus the ex-
perience was not pleasant. A lack of response or delayed replies
from the team members of the other university caused a lot of
tension and frustration. When one side of the team did not reply
after a few emails or messages, the other side of the team were
easily demotivated. Spanish students said that Finnish students
were less enthusiastic, probably due to different cultural back-
grounds. Secondly, the engineering fields that the team mem-
bers were interested in were different. Even though they were en-
gineering students from both universities, the specific field of
engineering which they were interested in varied. Thirdly, the fi-
nal presentation time was way too long, due to the amount of
the students involved in the project. This problem remains to be
discussed and solved in future projects.
9. Final reflections
The educators believe that no two projects are the same. It is not
an easy way to teach as the workload is much more than tradi-
tional lecturing. For example, much more attention is paid to the
students’ problems and more communication between teacher
and student is needed; more instant communication between
teachers is required; and the ability to organize and mediate is
also required. However, it is considered to be much more inter-
esting and beneficial for the students, and the results are rewar-
ding. The UVic and HAMK educators worked well together, and
it was a pleasant experience on both sides.
Specific recommendations are made above. In general, the
project was an educational experience both for the staff and stu-
dents. Feedback from students included improved language skills,
communication skills and project developing skills working in a
multicultural context. With the reflections above, the project will
be revised and conducted with new students in the future.

148 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
10. References
Beneyto-Seoane, M. and Collet-Sabé, J. (2020). Democratize digital
school governance:action research results. OBRA DIGITAL, 19, Sep-
tember 2020 - January 2021, 29-44. https://doi.org/10.25029/
od.2020.258.19
Skanska AB. (2012). 4R guide: Reduce Reuse Recycle Recover. SKANSKA,
April 2012, 1-11. https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/
31883051/4-r-guide-reduce-reuse-recycle-recover-skanska
University of Cambridge, The Cambridge-MIT Institute (2006). What
do engineers need to learn about sustainable development? THE
IMPEE PROJECT, 2006, 1-23. https://tinyurl.com/y844k3xh

149
Chapter 10
Joint approach to
interdisciplinary teaching
Juan Antonio De Los Cobos-Molina
Montse Romero-Mas
Anna Schmaus-Klughammer
Thomas Spittler
1. Introduction
The internationalization of education policies in higher educa-
tion is one of the most significant forces affecting universities
inthe Western world today (Knight, 2015). In a European con-
text, the Bologna Process (European University Association
(EUA), 2016) represents the most systematic drive to date for in-
creased international academic cooperation and mobility. How-
ever, few students have the chance or resources to engage in mo-
bility opportunities (Wihlborg et al., 2018). In fact, even though
overall student numbers has substantially increased recently, the
proportion of students studying in another country has remained
almost constant at about 2% or only slightly more (Crowther etal.,
2017). Besides, in the context of the current pandemic, almost a
quarter of students’ mobility periods were cancelled (Gabriels
and Benke-Aberg, 2020). Still, universities aim to contribute to
society by fostering global citizens, as the development of a glob-
al mindset can foster inclusive attitudes (Andresen and Bergdolt,
2016). Consequently, Internationalization at Home (IaH) be-
comes crucial in the internationalization of higher education.
Collaborative learning is an educational approach to teaching
and learning that involves groups of learners working together to
solve a problem, complete a task or create a product (Brown and
Lara, 2011). Collaboration is a promising mode of human en-
Chapter 10. Joint approach to interdisciplinary
teaching

150 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
gagement that has become a twenty-first-century trend, and on-
line collaboration has come to stay. Specifically, Collaborative
Online International Learning (COIL) is an umbrella term used
to refer to the different ways in which groups of learners are en-
gaged in online interaction and collaborate with partners from
other cultural contexts or geographical locations as an integrated
part of course work and under the guidance of educators (Jager
et al., 2020; O’Dowd, 2018).
In recent years, collaborative online learning and interdisci-
plinary course programmes have become the key to enhancing
internationalization and intercultural competences (Cai and
Sankaran, 2015; Deardorff and Arasaratnam-Smith, 2017).
Hence, COIL became a notable opportunity to expand the scope
and reach of physical exchange programmes, due to its inclusive
and scalable character (EACEA and EU, 2020). Intercultural
competences and skills development are outcomes of the COIL
programmes (Jager et al., 2020). Students as team players with
common objectives (Creelman and Löwe, 2019) may reach
higher achievement and greater productivity; more caring, sup-
portive and committed relationships; greater psychological
health, social competence and self-esteem (Laal and Ghodsi,
2012). Regarding the academic benefits, collaborative learning
helps to: promote critical thinking skills; involve students active-
ly in the learning process; improve classroom results; and achieve
new problem-solving techniques (Laal and Ghodsi, 2012).
The primary uses of COIL mainly remain concentrated in the
Arts and Humanities disciplines (Jager et al., 2020). However,
other fields like health sciences and engineering have been ex-
plored (Wihlborg et al., 2018), and interdisciplinary courses
have been successfully implemented (Albá-Duran and Gerdient-
je, 2019; Rui-Molina and Cuadrado-García, 2008).
2. Context
In June 2020, the University of Vic – Central University of Cata-
lonia (UVic-UCC) in Spain and the Deggendorf Institute of
Technology (DIT) in Germany started discussing the possibility
of collaborating in a COIL activity. The two universities were
committed to working on a course for preparing global citizens.

151Chapter 10. Joint approach to interdisciplinary teaching
UVic-UCC participated with its Faculty of Health Sciences and
Welfare and DIT with its Faculty European Campus Rottal-Inn
and Faculty of Applied Health Sciences. UVic-UCC teaches
Health Sciences bachelor degrees and DIT imparts Health Infor-
matics bachelor degrees. Considering the importance of e-Health
today, a collaboration within this domain was the goal. E-Health
is as an emerging field of medical computing, which refers to the
organization and delivery of health and information services
through the Internet and related technologies (Eng, 2001). In a
broader sense, the term characterizes not only technical develop-
ment, but also a new way of working, an attitude and a commit-
ment to global and networked thinking to improve local, region-
al and global health care through the use of information and
communication technology (Pagilari et al., 2005). Therefore,
e-Health involves health professionals and ICT (information
and communication technology) professionals at the same level
and with a great need to work collaboratively.
Staff from both universities worked collaboratively for a full
term (spring term year 2020) to design a COIL course for their
students in the domain of e-Health: “Interdisciplinary e-Health
Course”. On the one hand, health science students would be
able to assess the functional health status and the technological
needs of users; and on the other hand, ICT students have the
skills and knowledge needed to develop technological interven-
tions. Thus, ICT and health science students working collabora-
tively would be able to acquire a deeper understanding of the
healthcare perspective and the designs of technological interven-
tions to address the problems in today’s healthcare systems via
an interdisciplinary educational setting (Kim, 2019).
The “Interdisciplinary e-Health Course” was integrated into
the curricula as part of a subject in both universities. In the UVic-
UCC, it was part of the “E-Health” elective subject (3 ECTS) of
the last year in their Nursing and Physiotherapy bachelor’s de-
grees. In the DIT, the “Interdisciplinary e-Health Course” was in-
cluded in the “Collaborative Systems” (5 ECTS) from the Health
Informatics bachelor’s degree, a mandatory subject in the third
year of study. The first edition of the course started in the spring
term of 2021.

152 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
3. Objectives
The COIL was designed as a collaborative course with different
teaching models, such as flipped classroom, debates or case
studies. The main objective was to bring undergraduate students
from different disciplines, in this case, health informatics, nur-
sing and physiotherapy, together online, to work collaboratively
on the task of elaborating a solution for a real-world problem in
the context of health. The theoretical input was taught by tea-
chers from both universities. The course should provide the stu-
dents with a unique and fruitful environment for debating topics
related to healthcare. The course engaged students in activities
that develop not only their professional but also personal and
social competences, such as collaborating with colleagues from
different cultures, using digital tools for collaborating, negotia-
tion skills, critical thinking and analytical skills.
4. Course Design
Online teaching was examined within the context of the two
universities: UVic-UCC in Spain and DIT in Germany. The main
goal of this experience as explained above was to share know-
ledge between two different countries and two different speciali-
ties (ICT and health sciences) in the field of e-Health. Further-
more, to equip the students with 21st century skills, which are
valued in the world of work, such as problem solving, social and
cross-cultural interaction, critical thinking, collaboration and digi-
tal literacy (Chu et al., 2017).
Starting from the original content of the “E-Health” subject
taught at UVic-UCC, gamification as well as the ethics and law
content from the DIT, which was included in the “Collaborative
Systems” subject, was introduced. The new content was reduced
and adjusted to follow a logical path without the elimination of
key concepts from the single subjects. The new English course
“Interdisciplinary e-Health Course” was integrated into an exist-
ing accredited course.
Learning outcomes, the main topic, the tasks, the schedule
and the online learning environment(s) were discussed virtually.
The schedule proved to be the most challenging aspect of the

153Chapter 10. Joint approach to interdisciplinary teaching
planning because the teaching periods invariably did not over-
lap. Once the project got started, the workflow was managed
from the background by sending out instructions, deadline re-
minders and feedback. This arrangement was beneficial for the
students as it made them concentrate on group work. The pro-
jects lasted for 8 weeks (4 February to 31 March 2021).
A total of 26 students took the “Interdisciplinary e-Health
Course” via virtual teaching and were part of four study pro-
grammes, as indicated in Figure 1. Students participated in virtu-
al lectures designed to support them in group projects that were
presented at the end of the course. Students were intentionally
divided into groups with at least one member from each faculty,
and the total student population included students from nine
different countries.
Figure 1. Background of Participating Students
The overall model of the “Interdisciplinary e-Health Course”,
as shown in Figure 2, was to bring students from different coun-
tries and cultures and from different knowledge backgrounds to-
gether in order to work on a common project. The theoretical
background of e-Health, robotics, Electronic Health Record, se-
rious games and ethics and law was taught with various models.
Both students and lecturers benefitted from virtual exchange and
knowledge transfer, and the students also learned how to work
together in groups and to understand important aspects of digi-
tal health.

154 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
Figure. 2. Class model for “Interdisciplinary e-Health Course”
The “Interdisciplinary e-Health Course” lectures were taught
virtually using a Moodle platform, a type of learning management
system (LMS). Moodle was the central hub which hosted and
communicated the different tools and content throughout the
course. The online classroom methodology is seen in Figure 3:
Figure. 3. Online Classroom Method
The synchronous Zoom lectures were each taught for approx-
imately 30 minutes, and they adopted one of the following four
forms: traditional lecture, watching a video followed by a class-
room-wide review, group work followed by a whole class review

155Chapter 10. Joint approach to interdisciplinary teaching
and teambuilding exercises. All the synchronous lectures and
teambuilding exercises helped prepare students for the team
work by taking into account international and interdisciplinary
considerations. The additional content was made available on
Moodle in the form of external videos or published articles. This
content was selected based on the relevance to the topic and
the perceived ease for the students to self-learn. Evaluation of the
students’ knowledge retention was carried out through an exam.
The synchronous lessons were recorded for asynchronous tea-
ching. There were three starting points where the students could
join the course: a) the students prepared themselves by studying
the additional learning content; b) the students joined the virtu-
al lecture with included group work; or c) the students watched
the recorded content. Regardless of the selected starting point,
both additional learning content and recorded lectures were
available to students at all times.
At the end of the course, the students worked together in in-
ternational and interdisciplinary teams to develop a digital
health solution proof-of-concept for users who had undergone
hip replacement to reactivate their motor skills after surgery
through the use of gamification or serious game. All presenta-
tions were shared in a final Zoom session.
5. Data Collection
To ensure the success of the initiative, students’ and teachers’
feedback was collected at the end of the “Interdisciplinary
e-Health Course”. First, an online survey (see Figure 4) was sent
to all the students participating in the course at the end of the
activities:

156 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
Figure 4. Online survey
Then, a debriefing session after the course with all teachers
together served to acquire feedback regarding their experience.
6. Data analysis and results
Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the quantitative ques-
tions of the students’ survey. An initial thematic analysis (Braun
and Clarke, 2012) was developed to get an impression of how
the COIL was experienced by the students. Moreover, a SOAR

157Chapter 10. Joint approach to interdisciplinary teaching
(strengths, opportunities, aspirations and results) analysis was
used to debrief the teachers about their experience. SOAR is a
strategic planning technique which helps to focus on positive re-
sults in business (Cole et al., 2019).
6.1. Demographics
Countries of the students
The project comprised 26 students from two European universi-
ties. However, it included 17 European students (from France,
Germany, Spain and Romania) and nine non-European (from
Bangladesh, Kenia, Kosovo, Pakistan and Taiwan) students.
University degree of the students
A total of nineteen students participated in the course while
taking the mandatory subject “Collaborative Systems” (5 ECTS)
of the third year of the Health Informatics bachelor’s degree
(DIT), and twelve students were from the Faculty European
Campus Rottal-Inn and seven from the Faculty of Applied
Health Sciences. Three students participated in the project while
taking the elective subject “E-Health” (3 ECTS) of their Nursing
bachelor’s degree (UVic-UCC), and four students while taking
the same subject of their Physiotherapy bachelor’s degree
(UVic-UCC).
6.2. Student Survey
We received nine answers. With regard to the digital tools, six
out of nine students reported that they were suitable. Despite
this, only four students reported that the content of the course
was what they expected.
The feedback of the survey’s open questions may be summa-
rized as follows:
• An experience with high value for future team work.
• Lack of communication and harmonization between group
members from different countries.
• Interest in relationships between students from different coun-
tries.
• Language barriers when performing conflict resolution tasks.

158 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
• Lack of toleration between group members to accept the con-
clusions.
• The result of the final group work was very good.
• Difficulties getting to know each other.
• Language skills were improved.
In addition, students made suggestions to improve the course:
• Ensure that all the students will cooperate and perform some
preliminary training around this shared task.
• Create groups of students with similar personal skills in order
to have balanced groups.
• Improve the scheduling tasks.
6.3. Lecturers Evaluation
The lecturers’ evaluation of the “Interdisciplinary e-Health
Course” was conducted applying SOAR.
Strength
In a project with international students from two international
universities challenges arise. Different knowledge backgrounds,
different languages and different cultural backgrounds were
managed well by the students. In the working groups, the differ-
ences became strengths as the achieved results were character-
ized by the different input from students during the final exam.
Opportunities
There were nine nationalities among the participants. Coopera-
tion with so many students in a relatively small cohort (26 stu-
dents) was seen in quite a few discussions in the working groups.
The students of DIT (German, Sub-Sahara African, Asian and
East European countries) and the students of UVic-UCC (Spa-
nish and French) shared their cultural background knowledge.
Aspirations
This programme was developed between UVic-UCC and DIT for
the first time. We saw the challenges when many students with
different cultural backgrounds participate in such a course, but
we also saw the positive outcome. The overall experience ena-

159Chapter 10. Joint approach to interdisciplinary teaching
bled us to decide to continue the “Interdisciplinary e-Health
Course” next academic year with students from UVic-UCC and
DIT. Our goal is to invite another European university to partici-
pate in the course, so that the international character of this pro-
ject will be intensified.
Results
The project was shaped by the experience of international stu-
dents. Exams were held by both universities for all the students
at the end of the teaching period. Twenty-nine students took part
in the exams at the end of the course; all of the students passed.
The students’ experiences were gathered through a survey which
was done online. Nine participated in the survey.
7. Discussion
The existing literature indicates that creating some small integra-
tion activities on the first day, mixing students from both centres
is needed (EACEA and EU, 2020). Even though an introductory
explanation of the course including the presentation of the par-
ticipants was given, participants said it was not enough. In addi-
tion to this, they were not totally aware of the course contents.
However, the digital environment was not viewed by the students
as a problem, and the chosen tools were essentially viewed as the
most appropriate. These findings are aligned with the literature,
as improperly functioning technology may interfere with learn-
ing and engagement if students and teachers have to invest time
and resources to simple content access (Restauri et al., 2001).
Despite the Bologna Process, the two universities had their
own idiosyncrasies concerning the schedule of their pro-
grammes. The schedule of the course was a challenge raised by
the lecturers and students. Different countries at different mo-
ments in the academic calendar affected attitudes toward the
tasks. These results are aligned with previous literature, which
indicates that participants and staff should be equally commit-
ted and motivated (Háhn, 2019).
Students had difficulties working together. The course inclu-
ded students of nine nationalities with three different disciplines.
Therefore, differences in cultural and professional skills created

160 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
teamwork conflicts. In addition, not all the students had the
same language skills. However, as in previous COIL courses, stu-
dents managed to solve these discrepancies by improving their
intercultural competences and soft skills, as well as their lan-
guage skills. In addition, in prior research into students working
together cooperatively, higher productivity and greater produc-
tivity were reached and they showed an enhancement of class-
room results (Laal and Ghodsi, 2012). In our study, probably
heightened by the interdisciplinary approach, the outcomes of
the final task were outstanding.
Finally, there is evidence in existing research that collabora-
tive learning fosters committed relationships (Laal and Ghodsi,
2012). In our study, students showed interest in relations out-
side the course. Furthermore, the collaborative work between the
staff opened a door to cooperation in future projects as we got to
know each other and learnt to work together as a team.
8. Conclusions
The “Interdisciplinary e-Health Course” was the first interdisci-
plinary COIL experience in both universities. The inclusion of
the different students’ professional knowledge level boosted the
groups to a new level. These kinds of interdisciplinary activities
support the development of global citizen skills and the critical
thinking and reasoning expected of future health professionals
and ICT professionals when collectively solving global health
care challenges.
Higher Education Internationalization is so much more than
students’ and teachers’ mobility. IaH plays a major role in this
context, and COIL courses are useful resources; they open inno-
vative communication and learning contexts across nations and
cultures. The strength of COIL courses as “an effective option to
address challenges related to cultural awareness, intercultural
collaboration and transversal/soft skills” (European Commis-
sion, 2017, p. 29) cannot be denied. Despite this, still more
commitment at the institutional level is definitely required
(Beelen and Leask, 2011).
Current debates on the economic and environmental cost of
study abroad programmes, as well as the challenges to physical

161Chapter 10. Joint approach to interdisciplinary teaching
mobility posed by global pandemics, have made COIL an attrac-
tive option for institutions of higher education as they search for
sustainable and low-cost models of international learning, which
will serve as an alternative or to complement physical mobility
programmes (De Wit, 2016). However, it is not a cost-free activity.
9. References
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Andresen, M. and Bergdolt, F. (2016). A systematic literature review on
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Beelen, J. and Leask, B. (2011). Internationalisation at home on the
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Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2012). Thematic analysis. In Coope, H. M.
(ed.), APA handbook of research methods in psychology (pp. 57-71).
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Brown, L. and Lara, V. (2011.). Professional Development Module on Col-
laborative Learning. El Paso Community College, Texas; USA. http://
www.texascollaborative.org/Collaborative_Learning_Module.htm
Cai, W.W. and Sankaran, G. (2015). Promoting critical thinking
through an interdisciplinary study abroad program. Journal of Inter-
national Students, 5(1), 38-49. https://doi.org/10.32674/jis.v5i1.441
Chu, S. K.W., Reynolds, R. B., Tavares, N. J., Notari, M. and Lee, C. W.
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165
Contributors
María José Bezanilla Albisua
PhD Department of Education, University of Deusto, Spain
Marijose.bezanilla@deusto.es
Research and Teaching fields: Educational innovation; Teaching
and learning in Higher Education. Transversal competences. ICT
for learning.
Juan Antonio De Los Cobos-Molina
Department of Social and Community Health, Faculty of Health
Science and Welfare, University of Vic‐Central University of Cata-
lonia, Spain; Werfen Spain, SAU
juanantonio.deloscobos@uvic.cat
Research and Teaching fields: Digital Health, Global Public
Health, Health Informatics, Data Mining in Healthcare
Iciar Elexpuru-Albizuri
PhD Professor. Department of Education, University of Deusto,
Spain
elexpuru@deusto.es
Research and Teaching fields: Development of competences and
values. Developmental Psychology, Ethics, Service Learning.
Marta Fernández Villanueva
PhD Department of English and German, University of Barcelona
fernandezvillanueva@ub.edu
Contributors

166 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
Research and Teaching fields: Applied Linguistics, Discourse
Analysis, Second Language Acquisition, German Language, In-
tercultural Communication
Luana Ferreira-Lopes
Department of Teaching Innovation, University of Deusto, Spain
luana.ferreira@deusto.es
Research and Teaching fields: Teaching innovation, Virtual Ex-
chage in Higher Education, Cross-cultural Communication,
Competence development in Higher Education.
Lucrecia Keim Cubas
PhD Department of Translation, Interpretation and Applied Lan-
guages, University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia, Spain
lucrecia.keim@uvic.cat
Research and Teaching fields: intercultural communication, Ger-
man as a foreign language, computer assisted language learning
and teacher training.
Sarah Khan
PhD, Department of Biosciences, University of Vic-Central Uni-
versity of Catalonia, Spain
sarah.khan@uvic.cat
Research and Teaching fields: EMI (English-medium instruc-
tion), CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) and in-
ternationalisation in higher education
Joan Masnou Suriñach
PhD Department of Communication, University of Vic-Central
University of Catalonia, Spain
joan.masnou@uvic.cat
Research and Teaching fields: Literary and Cultural Studies, In-
tercultural Communication and International Affairs.
Francisco Javier Montiel Alafont
PhD, EWA Madrid – Dual European Academy of Economics, Spain.
fjavier.montiel@feda-madrid.com
Research and teaching fields: Intercultural business communica-
tion, diversity and inclusion, regional economics, scientific
work, dual higher education.

167Contributors
Carlo Orefice
PhD, Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences,
University of Siena, Italy
carlo.orefice@unisi.it
Research and teaching fields: Medical education, pedagogy of
care, adult education, transdisciplinary research
Marta Panadés Guerrero
PhD Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and En-
glish Studies, University of Barcelona
martapanades@ub.edu
Research and Teaching fields: Applied Linguistics, German for
Business, Intercultural Communication
Àngels Pinyana Garriga
PhD Department of Communication, University of Vic-Central
University of Catalonia, Spain
mangels.pinyana@uvic.cat
Research and Teaching fields: EMI (English-medium instruc-
tion), Computer Assisted Language Learning and Intercultural
Communication in higher education
Àngel Raluy Alonso
PhD Department of Languages and Literature, University of
Vic-Central University of Catalonia, Spain
angel.raluy@uvic.cat
Research and Teaching fields: English as a foreign language, Inter-
cultural Communication, European Projects and teacher training
Alessandra Romano
PhD, Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences,
University of Siena, Italy
alessandra.romano2@unisi.it
Research and Teaching fields: transformative and emancipatory
learning; collaborative research; innovation in teaching and
learning
Montse Romero-Mas
PhD Faculty of Health Science and Welfare, Centre for Health
and Social Care Research (CESS), University of Vic‐Central Uni-
versity of Catalonia

168 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
montse.romero@uvic.cat
Research and Teaching fields: internationalisation in Higher Edu-
cation; communities of practice and Ehealth
Anna Schmaus-Klughammer
LLB(hons) Faculty of European Campus Rottal-Inn, Deggendorf
Institute of Technology (DIT), Germany
anna.schmaus-klughammer@th-deg.de
Research and Teaching fields: Digital Health, Telemedicine in
Low- and Middle Income Countries, Global Public Health, Law
and Ethics
Thomas Spittler
Faculty of European Campus Rottal-Inn, Deggendorf Institute of
Technology (DIT), Germany
thomas.spittler@th-deg.de
Research and Teaching fields: Digital Health, Global Public
Health, Health Informatics, Digital Health in rural areas
Patrick Studer
PhD School of Applied Linguistics, University of Applied Sciences
Zürich (ZHAW), Switzerland
patrick.studer@zhaw.ch
Research and Teaching fields: English-medium Instruction, Inte-
grating Content and Language in Higher Education (ICLHE),
Language Ideologies, Sociology of Language
Montserrat Vancells Flotats
Department of Translation, Interpretation and Applied Languages,
University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia, Spain
montse.vancells@uvic.cat
Research and Teaching fields: Intercultural communication and
translation
Qian Zhang
Bachelor of English Education, associate English Lecturer at the
Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of Vic- Central
University of Catalonia (UVic-UCC), Spain
Charleen.qian@uvic.cat
Research and Teaching fields: language and communication skills

169
Index
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
PART I: QUALITY AND INNOVATION
ININTERNATIONALIZATION
Chapter 1. Re-visiting English-medium instruction in the
light of comprehensive internationalization – A case
for sociocultural competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2. EMI and Internationalization: A dysfunctional marriage . . 18
3. Extending EMI teacher competence: Building
international and intercultural competence . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
5. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Chapter 2. Internationalization as strategic leverage for
innovation in Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
1. Internationalization and Intercultural Competences in
Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2. The Forward Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.1. Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.2. The FORwARD Project’s internationalization activities . 36
2.2.1. The Bachelor’s Degree in Education Sciences . . . 37
2.2.2. The healthcare system and hospital
practitioners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

170 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
2.2.3. The faculty members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3. Transformative learning perspectives to multicultural
education. Cultural humility and cultural safety . . . . . . . . 40
4. Concluding note: towards a transdisciplinary curriculum . . 42
5. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Chapter 3. Diversity, management and identity politics –
A critical view from a fuzzy-culture perspective . . . . . . . . 47
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2. Diversity management: definition, evolution and
criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3. Multiculturalism, interculturality and fuzziness . . . . . . . . . 51
4. Intercultural process moderation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
5. Some proposals for diversity management practice in
internationalizing higher education institutions . . . . . . . . 56
6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Chapter 4. Intercultural competence in the international
classroom – The lecturers’ perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
2. Theoretical framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3. Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4. Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.1. Teachers’ perceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.2. Area of knowledge and perception of intercultural
competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.3. Self-reported international experience and
perception of intercultural competence . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5. Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
6. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
7. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Chapter 5. Fostering global and intercultural competence
at a medium-sized university . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
2. Theoretical remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
3. Comprehensive internationalisation strategy . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4. Intercultural training, COIL and certification of
competences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.1. The Intercultural Workshop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.2. COIL projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

171Index
4.3. The Certificate of Global Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.3.1. Intercultural Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.3.2. Intercultural Activities & Engagement . . . . . . . . 85
4.3.3. Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.3.4. Final Reflection Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
5. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
PART II: INTERNATIONALIZATION
ANDINTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE:
BESTTEACHING PRACTICES
Chapter 6. Discursive, pragmatic and interactional aspects
of intercultural competence– Contributions from
interactional linguistics for meaningful learning . . . . . . 91
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
2. Assumptions of interactional linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
2.1. Interactional Intercultural Communicative
Competence (IICC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
2.2. Describing regularities and explaining variation
between and within cultural groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
3. Analysing intercultural encounters in HE from an
interactional approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
3.1. Intercultural groups in HE: challenges and
opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
3.2. Observation of natural occurring data . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
3.3. Observation using cultural artefacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
3.4. Reported intercultural critical incidents . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
4. Final remarks and pedagogical implications . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
5. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Chapter 7. Making intercultural competence meaningful
in the classroom and in international mobility
programmes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
2. Context: classroom research in second foreign language
for business II - German . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
3. Design of the activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
3.1. Setting 1: The new faculty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
3.2. Setting 2: Accommodation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
3.3. Setting 3: Leisure in the new city . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

172 Internationalization and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
3.4. Setting 4: The international traineeship . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
4. Concluding remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Chapter 8. Intercultural virtual collaboration in
perspective – Overall conclusions and developments
from two international inter-university collaborations . . 123
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
2. A task sequence proposal for intercultural virtual
collaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
3. Overall conclusions and developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
4. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Chapter 9. Internationalization at home – Joint study
project between Spanish and Finnish engineering
students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
2. Joint study project overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
3. Communication between the educators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
4. Topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
4.1. Feedback and self-reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
4.2. Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
5. Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
5.1. Feedback and self-reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
5.2. Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
6. Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Evaluation system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
6.1. Feedback and self-reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
6.2. Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
7. Supporting technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
7.1. Platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
7.2. Feedback and self-reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
7.3. Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
8. Students’ feedback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
8.1. Feedback for the spring project from February to
June 2020 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
8.2. Feedback for the autumn project from September
2020 to February 2021 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
9. Final reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

173Index
Chapter 10. Joint approach to interdisciplinary teaching . . 149
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
2. Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
3. Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
4. Course Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
5. Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
6. Data analysis and results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
6.1. Demographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
6.2. Student Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
6.3. Lecturers Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
7. Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
8. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Internationalization
and
Intercultural
Competence
in Higher Education:
Quality
and Innovation
Lucrecia Keim (coord.)
Sarah Khan, Àngels Pinyana,
Àngel Raluy (eds.)
Horizontes Universidad
Horizontes Universidad
Internationalization and Intercultural
Competence in Higher Education:
Quality and Innovation
is volume contributes to the construction and definition
of comprehensive and sustainable internationalization and
emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary, transversal and hybrid
learning. e majority of contributions have emerged from the
Spanish higher education context, but the topics addressed are
believed to resonate worldw ide with higher education inst itutions,
professional practice and 21st century society. In the first part
of the book, the chapter contributions shed light on systemic,
conceptual or programme features related to internationalization
and global and intercultural competence in higher education.
In the second part the authors present concrete teaching
experiences of internationalization and intercultural competence
and highlight different questions related to interdisciplinary
work, digitalization, collaborative online international learning
(COIL) and project learning. By embedding COIL within and
across course programmes, participants who would otherwise be
unable to take part in international exchanges are included. is
respect for diversity, as well as active and reflective engagement
in international communication with an emphasis on students’
own experiences are fundamental elements of this pedagogical
approach. e book concludes by advocating sustainable
internationalization through an interdisciplinary approach to
intercultural competence training which is integrated into the
curriculum.
INTERNATIONALIZATION AND INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE IN
HIGHER EDUCATION: QUALITY AND INNOVATION
Lucrecia Keim (coord.), Sarah Khan, Àngels Pinyana, Àngel Raluy (eds.)
H
U