Developing Cultural Intelligence in a Serious-Game-Centered Blended Course

Abstract

The current discussion about how to best develop cultural intelligence (CQ), as well as increasing demands for digitalization in education, was the starting point for introducing and empirically testing an innovative blended intercultural management course involving a serious game as its central component. The design of the serious game and the course was primarily based on experiential learning theory, aiming to address different learning preferences as operationalized by the four experiential learning styles: Diverging, accommodating, assimilating and convergent. In a longitudinal study, using matched samples and pre- and posttest measures, we found that students who participated in the course, were able to significantly improve their overall CQ significantly, regardless of their learning styles, and they also developed all four CQ dimensions, namely, cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, and behavioral CQ, respectively. These findings contribute to understanding the antecedents of cultural intelligence and how culture-in-context learning can be facilitated virtually by using serious games. In addition, the paper emphasizes the relevance of experiential learning theory in designing intercultural management courses in order to increase learning effectiveness for a diverse student population.