Leute!
Cén chaoi a bhfuil sibh?
Today I’ll be talking about.. you guessed it.. ICC! (you can never have too much intercultural communicative competence). This week we’re focusing specifically on the Soliya Connect Programme looking partly at a past project and also at my own experience from partaking in the programme. Marta Guarda describes the programme pretty accurately when she says:
“a telecollaboration project organized and hosted by
Soliya […] in response to the tensions which seemed to characterize the relationships between the “West” and the “Arab and Muslim World” after the September 11th 2001 attacks […] with the aim of fostering critical thinking and meaningful dialogue across cultural divides.” (Guarda, 2013, p.113)
The University of Padova was one of the first universities to partake in this programme in 2003. Here you can find the details, design and evaluation of the project. On the whole it appears as though Soliya was successful in imparting on its participants the merits of intercultural communicative competence. It resulted in real friendships being made. One girl even did an internship in Cairo through a connection she made while partaking in the project!
To add to Padova’s glowing review, my experience has also been fruitful. It has given faces and names and personalities to specific ethnicities. It is much harder to paint an entire nation with the same brush when you know individuals from said nations. Instead of seeing stereotypes and bad press you see someone you like, another human you can relate to. For me it’s been an important step towards building empathy for situations like in the middle east. I am 100% determined to learn Arabic! (hold me to it.. someone..please..) 
The only problem I have with the programme is the saturation of Limerick students in my group. An average session will have 8 Irish students in it and only 1 or 2 other participants.
However perhaps this was just bad luck or an imbalance in participants as the previous project mentioned didn’t seem to encounter that problem. In my most recent tutorial our tutor was speaking to us about the SMART method of learning (basically the opposite of cramming 12 weeks of information in to your head the night before an exam) If like me you’d never heard of this method before, here’s a cheeky link to help you out. The organisers of Soliya certainly respect the SMART method and in many aspects achieve it too. It is important to keep in mind that the SMART method is to be applied to individual aspects and tasks rather than an entire project (Freitas et al. 2008). For this reason I will be specifically analyzing the online interactive session.
- The goal (ICC) is specific.
- the feedback and follow up questions from the coordinator and fellow participants makes the progress measurable.
- You get out of the sessions what you put in. Whatever goal you set will be attainable as long as you make the effort to participate.
- When juggling a college work load, taking 2 hours every week to Skype may feel like a lot, however it is (in my experience) thoroughly enjoyable and 100% doable if you make the effort.
- The use of time is structured, clear and remains the same throughout the duration of the course.
All that aside, Soliya’s main strong point is that it is -as the coordinators of Padova’s exchange put it:
a type of communication between people that respects the differences of ‘the Other’, which allows for true listening in a safe environment that offers possibilities for the transformation of self-awareness in each individual (Guth, Helm & Farrah, 2012, p.6)
What more could you ask for eh?
Hope you enjoyed what I had to say this week. Please comment down below your experience with/ opinion of ICC, SMART or Soliya!
Feicfidh mé an tseactain seo chugainn sibh!
Saoirse x
Freitas, R. and Campos, P., 2008, September. SMART: a SysteM of Augmented Reality for Teaching 2 nd grade students. In Proceedings of the 22nd British HCI Group Annual Conference on People and Computers: Culture, Creativity, Interaction-Volume 2 (pp. 27-30). BCS Learning & Development Ltd.
Guarda, M., 2012. Giving voice and face to other cultures: the Soliya Connect Program and the development of intercultural communicative competence. Carte d’Occasione.
Helm, F., Guth, S. and Farrah, M., 2012. Promoting dialogue or hegemonic practice? Power issues in telecollaboration.
Saoirse Cainte 