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University of Florida

Fostering Intercultural Communication


UF Faculty: Amy Parziale
Department: Management Communication Center
College: Warrington College of Business

Partner Faculty: Carlos Sidarta da Silva
Department: International Program
Partner Institution: Univali - Universidade do Vale do Itajaí
Title: Fostering Intercultural Communication between Academic and Professional Student Writers
Project Description:

Partnering undergraduate academic writers with graduate professional writers, this project encouraged intercultural communication, curiosity, openness, and problem-solving by tasking students to take on new perspectives, write collaboratively, and adapt genre conventions to multinational contexts.

The virtual exchange lasted four weeks, allowing students to build teams and produce final documents that reflect their understanding of and ability to enact intercultural communication best practices. To do this, the students in Brazil wrote country-based communication guidelines that the US-based students then used to inform their writing of persuasive memos.

Students also reflected weekly on their experiences and completed pre/post-assessment surveys to measure changes in intercultural critical thinking and communication assumptions and beliefs.
Learning Outcomes:
  • Analyze audience and target their needs
  • Communicate clearly, concisely, with an eye toward action
  • Persuade others through strategic communication
  • Adapt to various communication tasks and contexts
  • Use International Communication as a tool to communicate effectively and avoid misunderstanding in different cultural scenarios
  • Decipher, understand and adapt to other cultures
Participating Countries: Brazil
Number of Participants: 17 UF students; 13 UNIVALI students
Discipline: Business
UF Course Code & Name: GEB5212 - Professional Writing
Project Duration: 4 weeks
Activity Type(s):
  • Student-to-Student Dialogue
  • Student-to-Student Project
Technology Tools:
  • MS Word or Google Docs
  • Zoom, Teams or Google Meet
  • WhatsApp or GroupMe
  • E-mail
  • Padlet
  • Jamboard
Sequence of Activities:
  • Icebreaker: Students post photos of music and food that most represented them as a person via Padlet. Assign pairs for students to work on finding non-obvious commonalities they share and put the characteristics into a Jamboard slide.

  • Engagement Activity: Analyze a document together as an initial activity. Exchange documents to see if they could find similarities or differences in style, language, customs, etc.

  • Collaboration Activity: Compose an intercultural professional document in which they have to divide up tasks, draft and revise, as well as come to a consensus on the final version.

  • Reflection Activity: Use the UF International Critical Thinking (IntCRIT) and International Communication (IntCOMM) Attitudes and Beliefs surveys as a pre/post assessment that the students need to reference in a narrative reflection on their VE experiences. Students are assigned ‘Mini-reflections’ after each interaction, activity, etc. to help them process the VE as well as better prepare them for an end-reflection. Students can either create a 5-minute video or a 3-paragraph essay as their final reflection for the VE.