| Theoretical
Foundation for the Project
The past two
decades have witnessed an explosion of interest in globalization,
transnational studies, and cultural codes of communication and
the concurrent scholarly attention to developing better methods
of implementing technological tools in educational settings. Yet,
a key problem remains: how best to use information and communication
technologies (or ICTs) to offer students hands-on learning of
transnational and intercultural differences. To address this problem,
our WGLN project “Developing Intercultural Competencies
through Collaborative Rhetoric” has experimented with innovative
uses of technology by bringing together students at Stanford and
Örebro Universities in globally-distributed teams to analyze
rhetorical artifacts (speeches, advertisements, architectural
landmarks, representations of nationhood) with the aim of facilitating
both practical and deep learning of effective cross-cultural communication
skills and transnational cultural understanding.
In addition to this academic impetus, this project emerged to
meet a very practical goal: how to prevent deep misunderstandings
that can lead to conflagrations such as seen in the recent furor
over a series of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad; this
incident focused worldwide attention not only on the power of
images but also on the violence that can result from miscommunication
stemming from narrow perspectives that fail to take into consideration
intercultural contexts. Scholars Carl Lovitt and Dixie Goswami
label this increasingly important skill intercultural competence
and sensitivity.
In such a globally connected world – where published words
and images give rise to bombing and burnings – teachers
need to know how to instruct students in intercultural rhetoric,
that is, how to persuade people to understand the way in which
others located in different global contexts perceive, analyze,
and produce situated knowledge. By addressing this situation faced
by academics and people in the field, our project aims to contribute
both theoretical knowledge and a practical methodology for scalable
implementation in other institutions as well as business and professional
settings. Our larger goal is to build meta-knowledge about the
critical role that intercultural competences and effective technologies
solutions can play in global communication and international relations.
Learn more
about the project by visiting our website at https://www.stanford.edu/group/ccr/
|
