ICC 2024: Pre- and Post-Conference Workshop Information
In-person pre- and post-conference workshops are scheduled for Thursday February 22nd and Sunday February 25th; they do not conflict with any of the presentations during the main body of the conference. Workshops take place 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. (Arizona time) on the Thursday and 9 a.m. to Noon on the Sunday; they are not accessible to virtual attendees. Participants must register separately for individual workshops, as they are not included in the registration fee for the main conference. A certificate of attendance for Continuing Education (3 hours) is provided to participants at the end of each event.
Participants may opt to register only for workshop(s), if they are not attending the main conference.
All workshops are scheduled to close on February 5th, but they have capped enrollment and will close earlier if they fill before that date. Register early to ensure your seat!
For workshop abstracts and presenter bios, click on the individual titles below.
Workshop Abstracts:
Multinational businesses can contribute to sustainable peace by promoting economic growth, exercising backchannel diplomacy, practicing workplace equity, and fostering understanding among employes from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds (Fort & Schipani, 2004). An interculturally competent workforce is key for businesses to serve as peace-building agents, and business language courses provide an excellent opportunity for the development of interculturally competent professionals (Hager, 2012).
A challenge in business language courses is that commercially available materials usually focus on developing workplace vocabulary and culture-specific knowledge. This workshop argues that the development of intercultural communication skills requires a culture-general approach based on broader frameworks that can be applied in multiple contexts, domestically and abroad.
This workshop will demonstrate how to develop materials for business language courses to foster intercultural competence through a culture-general lens. It introduces basic concepts from intercultural communication theory and shows how to apply those concepts in the creation of instructional activities that promote cross-cultural competence, language development, and professional communication skills. Although examples come from a Business Spanish course, participants will be able to adapt them to their own teaching environments because of the culture-general approach they follow.
Participants will leave the workshop with 1) a better understanding of current theoretical frameworks applied in intercultural business communication, and 2) multiple activity examples they can adapt for their own teaching contexts. The workshop is intended for business language teachers and curriculum developers.
References Cited:
Fort, Timothy L. & Cindy A. Schipani (2004). The Role of Business in Fostering Peaceful Societies.
Hager, Michael (2012). Culture: The Basis for Learning Business in a Foreign Language. Global Business Languages, 17(4), 31-52.
Susana Pérez Castillejo (University of St. Thomas)
Susana Pérez Castillejo is Associate Professor in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota, in the United States. Her research focuses on multilingualism, language variation, and the role of individual characteristics in language development. She regularly teaches Spanish for professional purposes courses.
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Presenters: Liudmila Klimanova (University of Arizona, United States) and Lara Lomicka Anderson (University of South Carolina, United States)
Learning about a culture does not happen in isolation from the place and space where culture is maintained, practiced, and\or contested. Places have a profound impact on what and how we learn (Holden & Sykes, 2011). In language classrooms, however, place is often conceived as an abstraction, or broad generalization about a monolithic nation where language is often isolated from the communities in which it is spoken (Kramsch, 2014). Local investigation of a place and space allows instructors to challenge the ideologies of monolithic cultures and engage students in building a holistic understanding of places where the character, history, and needs of a place emerge more vividly (Klimanova & Hellmich, 2021).
In this three-hour workshop intended for K-16 educators, the presenters offer an overview of place-based pedagogies and engage participants in culturally rich and linguistically diverse spaces around Tucson to learn how local heritage, cultural practices, and linguistic landscapes can serve as the basis for teaching languages and intercultural concepts. The session offers an overview of critical pedagogies and map-based tools related to place-based language learning design. Participants spend time “in the field” applying what they have learned in order to develop ideas about their own place-based language learning lesson. Participants gain hands-on experience with designing place-oriented cultural activities for at home and for study-abroad contexts.
Goals:
- Introduce participants to the principles of place-based learning: models and frameworks.
- Engage participants in hands-on practice with place/mapping-based tools for implementation.
- Create a place-based activity that fits with participant goals
Activities:
- Linguistic Landscape walk. Participants explore an area of Tucson and document their linguistic landscape.
- LESCANT exploration with SIFTR app. Participants visit a culturally diverse space and engage in critical noticing and reflection.
- “Slow Campus Walks” – Participants engage in “slow journalism” to explore urban borders and cultures.
Outcomes:
- Participants gain an understanding of place-based learning and the theory/pedagogy surrounding it.
- Participants receive instruction in using place-related tools.
- Participants understand and articulate the benefits of using place-based tools in their language classes.
- Participants conceive a multimedia project, based on the concepts and examples of place-oriented cultural pedagogy.
References Cited:
Holden, C., & Sykes, J. (2011). Leveraging mobile games for place-based language learning. International Journal of Game-based Learning, 1(2), 1-18.
Kramsch, C. (2014). Language and culture. AILA review, 27(1), 30-55.
Klimanova, L., & Hellmich, E. A. (2021). Putting local on the MAP: A model for engaging foreign language students with local cultures. Foreign Language Annals, 54(1), 158–184. https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12493
Liudmila Klimanova (University of Arizona)
Liudmila Klimanova is Assistant Professor of Second Language Acquisition & Technology at the University of Arizona. Her research intersects the areas of learner psychology and CALL, digital humanistic pedagogy, and critical virtual exchange.
Lara Lomicka Anderson (University of South Carolina)
Lara Lomicka Anderson currently serves as Interim Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies at the University of South Carolina. She is a Professor of French and Applied Linguistics with a focus on computer-assisted language learning. In addition to numerous peer-reviewed publications, she has co-edited two books on technology and language learning, an edited special issue of Language Learning and & Technology (2023), and a recently published book, The Faculty Factor (2023).
Presenters: Robert O’Dowd (Universidad de León, Spain), Markus Ritter (Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany) and Sina Werner (Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany)
Virtual Exchange (VE) refers to the numerous online learning initiatives and methodologies which engage learners in online collaborative learning and interaction with partners from different cultural backgrounds as part of their study programmes and under the guidance of educators (O’Dowd, 2023). Although VE has been employed in Foreign Language education for over 25 years, it has received much greater attention since the recent pandemic and many practitioners are exploring its potential to develop intercultural competence and global citizenship in their classrooms (Porto, 2018; Ramirez, 2019; Trapé, 2018;
The aim of this workshop is to establish the basic steps for setting up and running a VE project focused on themes of Global Citizenship and to develop participants’ understanding of how to deal with the different challenges and barriers involved when designing such projects. While VE has much potential, it also brings with it challenges related to equity of engagement, learners’ rejection of difference and effective task design (O’Dowd, 2019).
The specific objectives of the workshop are the following:
- Introduce the concept of VE and present an overview of how it can be employed to develop global citizenship.
- Examine a series of case studies involving VE and examine data to explore its potential for developing global citizenship and also the challenges which can arise during such projects.
- Give participants the opportunity to develop VE tasks focused on global citizenship and to discuss these with colleagues.
By taking part in the combination of presentations and group work in this workshop, participants will learn about how VE is being employed to develop global citizenship and they will have an opportunity to develop their own plans for running a VE programme in their own teaching.
The target audience is teachers working in high school or higher education interested in learning more about how online collaborative learning can be employed effectively to develop global citizenship. Colleagues who work in international mobility programmes and who are interested in promoting VE in their own institutions may also be interested.
References Cited:
O’Dowd, R. (2019). A transnational model of virtual exchange for global citizenship education. Language Teaching, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444819000077
Porto, M. (2018). Affordances, complexities, and challenges of intercultural citizenship for foreign language teachers. Foreign Language Annals, 52(1), 141–164. https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12375
Ramirez, C. K. de. (2019). Global Citizenship Education Through Collaborative Online International Learning in the Borderlands: A Case of the Arizona–Sonora Megaregion: Journal of Studies in International Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315319888886
Trapè, R. (2019). Building Empathy and Intercultural Citizenship through a Virtual Exchange Project. Le Simplegadi, 19, 167–180. https://doi.org/10.17456/SIMPLE-136
Robert O’Dowd (Universidad de León)
Robert O’Dowd is Full Professor for English Studies at the University of León, Spain. He has published extensively about Virtual Exchange in higher education. His most recent book is Internationalising Higher Education and the Role of Virtual Exchange (2023, Routledge).
Sina Werner (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
Sina Werner is a PhD candidate and research assistant at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. Her research interests are in the areas of CALL, TBLT, and teacher education. After her teacher training and second state exam, she started her dissertation in which she investigates patterns of task-based group interactions in breakout rooms.
Markus Ritter (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
Markus Ritter is full professor and chair of EFL Didactics at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. His major research interests include digital transformation in EFL education, early foreign language learning, and learning outcomes of virtual exchanges. One of his more recent grants is the state-funded Dialoge project [Digital literacy in teacher education]. A recent publication is ‘The impact of early foreign language learning on language proficiency development from middle to high school’ (System 2022).