Background and Setting

As a new instructor of composition classes at Purdue University, I have been blessed with the opportunity to teach in a very diverse environment. With a population of 8,562 international students and 1,102 international faculty and staff (Purdue University, 2012), this multicultural campus offers an excellent venue for students to study in a multinational environment and to interact daily with people of numerous ethnic backgrounds and diverse cultural experiences. Such multicultural environments provide teachers, including myself, with an invaluable opportunity to teach about intercultural communication.

In the spring semester of 2013, I incorporated cultural elements and diversity issues in two of the major course writing assignments to give students an opportunity to deepen their knowledge about other cultures, lifestyles, and traditions as well as gain more tolerance of beliefs, opinions, and points of view different from their own. The description that follows reflects the experiences students gained as a result of working on these assignments.

First Project: Multicultural Report

The first assignment of the course was the Multicultural Report. For this project, the students worked in teams on specific research tasks: investigating the difficulties that international students face while studying in North American educational contexts; looking at the resources that Purdue offers to foreign students to alleviate these difficulties, including organizations and clubs; and exploring religious organizations on the Purdue campus.

While working on these specific tasks, the students had a chance to deepen their knowledge about many aspects of the life of international students on campus, such as the difficulties of adjusting to a new cultural environment, participating in international organizations that Purdue offers for them, and learning how to appropriately interact with classmates and professors in this new academic setting. In addition, the students were able to increase their appreciation for the multicultural environment and the advantages it brings to campus. To illustrate, in one-on-one interviews with the students and in their reflections on the project, many of them expressed how much more open-minded and accepting they had become. As expressed by one student, this campus is “a gateway into a different world [that] allows students to learn about other cultures.” Another student emphasized in her reflection the strength of this cultural diversity and its ability to unite rather than disconnect people: “I learned how important it is for all students to work together to create a safer and happier campus community.”

The students also seemed to appreciate the opportunity to work with each other in teams and learn from each other’s experiences. Said one student who worked with a classmate from China:

I found it very enjoyable working with an international student because it gave me better insight into the project and I actually spoke with her a great deal about her personal feelings about Purdue and her transition. . . . I definitely had a great experience and strongly commend my partner for working so diligently despite the challenges.

Because the Multicultural Report was the first assignment of the semester, it unified the class tremendously. As the students had opportunities to work with each other outside the classroom almost on a daily basis, they learned how to effectively communicate with each other and contribute equally to the project. One student particularly appreciated the mutual effort of her group: “The most rewarding [aspect of] working in a group is that [we] all have one another’s back and will be there if [anyone] needs help.”

Second Project: Research Paper

The second assignment—an argumentative research paper—allowed the students to explore some of the topics they had encountered during their first assignment. Most of their topics revolved around stereotype issues, racism, hate crimes, and the necessity of offering diversity classes. The students were actively engaged in the entire process of writing their research papers not only because the topics were stimulating and relevant to them, but also because they felt they were addressing a “real” audience. To illustrate, one student made an argument that designing diversity classes at the university would tremendously increase students’ tolerance toward each other and eventually prepare them for a multicultural reality in the workforce. Speaking about the audience, he said,

This is something that is very pertinent to myself and all of the other students in our English class, so it is something that could really have a big impact on our education. . . . I believe that writing to one’s peers is perhaps the most appealing audience to write to in many cases.

Because the students felt they were addressing a real audience—Purdue students, faculty, and administration—some of them took one step further in their research and conducted short informal surveys and interviews with members of the Purdue community. Not only did it help them to gain a deeper understanding of their topic and incorporate other people’s perspectives to support their own arguments, but it also gave them an opportunity to interact with people of different cultural, ideological, social, and religious backgrounds, which in turn allowed them to develop their ability to understand and respect others no matter their views and circumstances. To illustrate, in their reflections, some students reported that during the interviews or in survey responses, they encountered views that were different from their own; nevertheless, they tried to accept those views with respect and understanding.

While working on their research papers, some students were also able to foresee possible solutions to the problems they addressed. One student, for example, suggested that the university organize a Holiday Week to acknowledge the many traditions that students from all parts of the world bring to the campus. Two other students argued that the school should design a course that would address the issues of multiculturalism, diversity, stereotypes, and discrimination. They proposed that the course should be mandatory for all freshmen students.

Weekly Forum Discussions

In addition to the major assignments, the students also participated in weekly discussion forums, where they responded to an article posted on Blackboard and reacted to their peers’ responses. I selected each discussion article from Purdue Exponent, the university newspaper, and to be consistent with the direction of the course, all articles were related to the issues of diversity and multiculturalism. These online discussions opened the door for the students to learn more about each other and to discover differences in the opinions of their classmates on particular issues.

Student Feedback

All in all, the outcome of this experimental integration of topics of diversity and intercultural communication in the writing projects was a success, because it met the intended goal for the course: to help students develop their respect of the diverse population of students around them. The results of the projects show that the students gained much appreciation for having so many different cultures and ethnicities on campus and for the opportunity to interact with people different from them and learn more from them. Both in my one-on-one interviews with the students and in their written reflections, they shared that they learned how important it is for all students to work together to create a safer and happier campus community.

It was also enlightening to hear nearly all students say how much more sophisticated their knowledge became about the differences that people have on various levels, and how much better they understood themselves because of the experiences they had over the course of the semester. As one student put it:

The reality of diversity makes a person realize that there are other things out there than what they have grown up around. Many students, such as I, are thrown into a miniature culture shock when they arrive in the fall for their first semester of college. The various diversity-influenced clubs bring a sort of relief because it gives students an opportunity to learn about cultures and lifestyles that they may not be familiar with and a chance to move past the fear of the unknown. . . . I also discovered things about myself that I had not recently noticed. I was now pro-diversity and now had an open mind to international students and their struggles. I definitely matured because of this assignment.

Conclusion

I believe that the students gained an invaluable experience through these writing assignments. I, personally, find it particularly important that they were exposed to these issues during their first year of college, and hopefully because of this experience, they will be able to apply the principles they learned throughout their entire academic path and plant the seeds of knowledge that they gained in this course in others around them.

Reference

Purdue University. (2012). Fall 2012 International student and scholar enrollment & statistical report. Retrieved from http://www.iss.purdue.edu/resources/Docs/Reports/ISS_StatisticalReportFall12.pdf

Elena Shvidko is a PhD student in second language studies/ESL at Purdue University, where she also teaches first-year composition courses. She has taught ESL in academic and community contexts. Her academic interests include sociocultural aspects in second language acquisition, second language writing, and critical pedagogy.