Although the 21st century has seen increased internationalization of higher education, many institutions retain a deficit view of international students. Moreover, there is overwhelming evidence that home and international students rarely engage naturally in meaningful intercultural interaction. Many contributing factors have been identified, such as social isolation, problems of cross-cultural adaptation for international students, language difficulties, and peer pressure for home students. To remedy this situation, there is clearly a need for student voices to be heard. This paper presents a study of a student-run, annual, intercultural event called the Global Village, which takes place on the campus of a French Graduate Engineering School. Since 2005, this one day event has transformed the campus into a vibrant, bustling marketplace, where students from all over the world set up decorated stands, serve traditional food and perform songs and dances. Firstly, we analyze the learning outcomes of this informal event for students, using an international syllabus and our Intercultural competence framework, supported by the results of questionnaires and interviews. We then show how the event also addresses other educational standards. Finally, we discuss possible improvements and suggest transferable initiatives to further include intercultural, integrated learning experiences into engineering education.
Proceedings of the 9th International CDIO Conference, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 9 – 13, 2013.
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