Workshops

Join us to learn about this versatile and easy classroom assessment technique (CAT). This activity serves to provide instructors with valuable mid-term information on how students are doing.  We will share several ways this activity can be implemented to demonstrate its versatility.

You will experience one quick and easy “check-in’ activity, the 7-Word Story, and discuss others that can be integrated into your course design in order to 1) build and strengthen a sense of community among learners, 2) broaden participation, 3) provide frequent and brief opportunities for students to engage content and practice and develop interpersonal and intercultural skills, and, very importantly, 4) for you to gather valuable information from students about the students themselves and/or about what and how they are processing class content.

This is a fun activity that demonstrates our human tendency to gravitate to the familiar—people who look, think, and act like us, as well as the limitations of this tendency. We observe this in our classrooms all the time. Students self-segregate into their same social or cultural groups, and in doing so miss out on valuable opportunities to grow their networks, broaden their perspectives, and practice intercultural skills needed in our interconnected world.

Join us for an open conversation to discuss challenges and opportunities afforded by having international and multilingual students on campus and in classrooms.

This 30-minute webinar activity is designed to help you turn your class into a Global Village, where students examine how people in different countries are affected by global issues and trends and deepen their international and intercultural learning. Whether it is for a single assignment, module, or full semester, the Global Village activity asks students to practice representing a point of view from a different country or culture. You will learn about the original activity and its adaptations to different disciplines.

This 30-minute webinar is designed to help you consider the role of cultural communication styles in your classroom, so you can help your students deepen their intercultural communication skills. During the webinar, we will review high-context and low-context communication styles used in different cultures and countries and provide you with an opportunity to reflect on your own communication style. You will also experience a teaching activity that you can do with your students on cultural communication styles.

This one-hour webinar is designed to help you reflect on your cultural identity in teaching. You will have an opportunity to think about how the culture(s) you grew up in and lived in for an extended period of time influence your teaching. We will also discuss several strategies on how you can effectively share your intercultural experiences and lessons learned with your students and what you can do to help your students realize that their culture(s) have influenced their perspectives on self, others, and the world.

This 30-minute webinar will introduce you to the Cultural Values Collage activity, which can be implemented in a single class session or woven throughout the semester. In this activity, students reflect on how their own culture shaped their values and beliefs and deepen their intercultural learning. You will learn about the original activity and its adaptations to different class sizes and teaching formats.

Learn one approach for establishing class or group agreements and expectations. Establishing class or group agreements and expectations sets a tone for the course that reinforces intentionality and collaborative decision-making processes, and the idea that the classroom learning environment is something we all contribute to, are responsible for, and can influence. Making these explicit and clear for yourself and for students is important for all members of the class, and even more so for students who may be new to U.S. classrooms and educational practices in higher education.

In this webinar we will introduce and provide examples of different culture patterns. We will explore how they affect interactions that are part of every learning environment. Specifically, we will focus on how different cultural patterns can influence engagement/participation, instructor-student interactions, and student-student interactions. Participants will leave with practical strategies and resources for more effectively engaging and navigating those differences.

In this session, a panel of faculty and staff will discuss ways that they have applied the knowledge or skills developed via this series of workshops about centering international and multilingual students.

Experience an activity that is especially valuable for fostering rapport among students from diverse cultural backgrounds. During this 30-minute webinar, we will model and discuss effective facilitation strategies for how you can help your students "find common ground."

In this session, we’ll explore the potential benefits of learning in diverse classrooms, as well as strategies that foster a sense of belonging, and establish community and connections among our globally and linguistically diverse students.

This webinar is co-facilitated in partnership between Internationalizing the Curriculum and Campus (ICC) and the Minnesota English Language Program (MELP).

Come experience a fun, interactive review activity. Give one, get one (GOGO) is a great way to get students up and moving and talking to each other while assessing their understanding. Through this activity students can share key takeaways from a lesson, and based on what they come up with and share, you can learn what students are gaining from the lesson and if there are any underrepresented areas of content that you can address in a future class or exam review session. We will demonstrate the GOGO activity’s versatility, as well.

This 30-minute webinar will introduce you to several teaching activities designed to help your students change common misconceptions about the world and think more critically about statistical data on global tendencies. This webinar is based on the book by Hans Rosling “Factfulness: Ten reasons we're wrong about the world and why things are better than you think.” During the webinar, you will be introduced to Rosling's most important research findings, experience one of the teaching activities based on the book, and learn about other activities you can try in your class.

International and multilingual learners bring their languages, cultures, and diverse perspectives to the classroom. Their unique backgrounds allow them to approach problems in new and creative ways, interact with broader audiences, access more varied information, and engage across more diverse groups. These indisputable assets enrich the learning experience for all and can help foster critical thinking, cultural awareness, and intercultural skills among everyone in the classroom. Via a series of mini-lessons, this online, asynchronous course explores common challenges international and multilingual learners can face when learning in a new educational context and through a foreign language. You will also learn several strategies for making your content and teaching more inclusive and accessible, particularly for international multilingual learners of English.

One challenge that many instructors face is a concern about fitting in all the required course content while also engaging students in active learning. A jigsaw activity is a way to do both by partially shifting the onus of teaching content onto the students. Come experience the Jigsaw activity with your colleagues, and consider/discuss course content that lends itself to the jigsaw approach.

You have likely heard about the importance of getting to know your students and incorporating their linguistic and cultural backgrounds in the classroom. You may be less sure about ways to do that or you are looking for new ways to do this. In this workshop you will learn about an activity for inviting students to reflect on and share their linguistic and cultural identities and brainstorm ways you can build on these new understandings. You will be guided through experiencing the activity as a way to connect with your own linguistic and cultural self and have time to connect with colleagues to brainstorm use and impact of the activity in each of your contexts.

This webinar is co-facilitated in partnership between Internationalizing the Curriculum and Campus (ICC) and the Minnesota English Language Program (MELP).

International and multilingual students come to our campus with many skills, talents, and perspectives that enrich our university and learning experiences for all. However, sometimes students experience judgment or exclusion based on the way that they speak or use English. This, in turn, impacts their experiences, both social and academic. In this workshop, we will explore what is understood by this language or accent bias, how this connects with DEI efforts, and how we can work to create more linguistically affirming and just classrooms.

This webinar is co-facilitated in partnership between Internationalizing the Curriculum and Campus (ICC) and the Minnesota English Language Program (MELP).

This workshop will introduce two simple activities for learning and using names. Participants will also learn from language instructors who will provide short instruction on cultural norms and how to pronounce key sounds and common names in various languages.

In this session, you will learn about and experience an activity called Describe, Analyze, Evaluate (DAE). The DAE is a framework for practicing one’s ability to ‘frame-shift," or to understand a situation from another’s point of view. This involves cultivating a critical skill-set and attitudes for interacting effectively across differences. Nam and Condon (2010) explain, this “exercise is intended to foster self-awareness of personal and cultural assumptions, promote the appreciation of cognitive complexity, and the importance of frame-shifting when encountering the unfamiliar” (p. 81). The DAE can be used daily in a variety of ways by students and faculty alike—join us to learn how! This webinar references the following article: Kyoung-Ah Nam, John Condon. The DIE is cast: The continuing evolution of intercultural communication’s favorite classroom exercise. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 34 (2010), 81–87.

Ready, set, let’s focus on fun! We’ll turn to current trends in higher education of infusing more play in instruction. Lisa Forbes, Professors at Play, states that “Play has the ability to create connections, reduce stress, is student-centered and humanistic, allows students to overcome anxiety and fear of vulnerability, primes them for learning, is a vehicle for application of theory and skill acquisition, and produces longer-lasting learning.” In this session we’ll consider how fun and a playful mindset can engage learning in globally and linguistically diverse classrooms.

This webinar is co-facilitated in partnership between Internationalizing the Curriculum and Campus (ICC) and the Minnesota English Language Program (MELP).

An often-cited reason students choose not to ask questions or contribute to large- or small-group discussions is they are afraid they will “say something stupid.” Come learn a new activity that involves anonymity, and other concrete strategies to alleviate these fears and promote increased participation from all students.

Join a conversation on class participation to learn and share ideas, resources, and tools for establishing broader and deeper student engagement and interaction. We will facilitate this discussion using an activity that invites all voices, the Whip Around.

This is an activity that includes movement, sharing insights, negotiation, critical thinking, decision making, evaluation, anonymity...and a tiny bit of math. It can be used as a form of review and gathering key takeaways from discussions, lessons, articles, etc.

This 30-minute webinar is designed to help you integrate the UN Sustainable Development Goals into your courses. Integrating the goals can help your students build awareness of global issues and learn about concrete steps they could take to address them on both global and local levels. We will review several methods for and examples of integrating the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals that address various global challenges, including poverty, inequality, climate change, peace, and justice that you can include in your classroom discussions.

In this session, a panel of multilingual students will share their experiences on a monolingual campus. Students will respond to a series of pre-set questions, and there will also be time for Q and A. Students are experts of their own experiences in their classes and on campus. Hearing from them directly provides valuable insight and ideas for improving their experiences and learning.

This webinar is co-facilitated in partnership between Internationalizing the Curriculum and Campus (ICC) and the Minnesota English Language Program (MELP).

Learning and using students’ names, and encouraging students to do the same with each other, is essential for building community in your class. There are many creative ways to encourage students to learn and use names. In this 30-minute session, we will experience two simple activities and discuss others.