Experiential Learning About Intercultural Communication Through Intercultural Communication: Internationalising a Business Communication Curriculum

Abstract

This paper reports on a rich, qualitative research study that aimed to discover how undergraduate and culturally diverse students experienced a collaborative, international, online, experiential project to learn about intercultural communication. Student participants in the study endorsed experiential learning in culturally diverse groups about intercultural communication through intercultural communication. The data revealed how participants made sense of and responded to intercultural communication amongst team members by juxtaposing personal experience of working in the online international learning group, their own cultural heritage and the literature available to them. The author concludes that experiential learning is a powerful tool for learning about intercultural communication through intercultural communication in the context of online, international and culturally diverse teams working on business case studies. It is also recommended as an activity that serves the process of internationalising a business communication curriculum and some of the broad aims of global citizenship.