The Intercultural Experience Project: A practical tool leveraging multiple intercultural experiences at home to foster student intercultural competence

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper reports on an Intercultural Experience Project that higher education institutions could implement to foster student intercultural competence (ICC) without the need for cross-border mobility. The project requires students to engage in multiple, direct and indirect, interpersonal and non-personal experiences with a foreign culture while keeping a journal of their interactions. It guides students in writing a cultural essay, analysing both their own and the foreign culture as well as the distance between them, then a reflective essay on their ICC learning. Analysis of student journals and essays corroborates that the project fostered student ICC attitudes, skills, knowledge, and awareness, even leading some students to advanced intercultural maturity levels. The multiplicity of intercultural interactions enhanced the meaningfulness and depth of students’ experience, emboldened them to engage in various types of interactions, and helped them develop advanced ICC skills related to comparative, critical, and systemic thinking.