The Effects of Social Identities on Student Learning Outcome Attainment

Abstract

Communicating across Cultures (CaC) is an undergraduate course that exists to achieve the goal of equipping students to effectively work in multicultural environments. Students' worldviews, beliefs, and values shape their experience with the course materials and potentially impact the degree to which they achieve the intended learning outcomes. The objective of this study was to determine which aspects of students' identities are most salient to their experiences in CaC. The Beliefs, Events, and Values Inventory (BEVI), a psychometric instrument that illuminates how the self is structured, was administered as a pre-/post-test at the beginning and end of the Fall 2017 and Spring 2018 semesters. T1 to T2 changes in scores and between group differences on various BEVI scales emerged in interaction with several demographic variables. Based on these findings, we suggest some best practices for approaching the different layers of culture present in similar courses.