Takeaways from ICCS

ICCS course

In today’s fast paced world where science and technology keeps advancing and global interactions have become more common. Integration between different corners of the world is becoming easier as days pass by. This leads to an increase in the need to understand and implement intercultural competence. One's culture often determines the way they comprehend different situations and react to it. The world culture is very diverse and unique from one another that it is often very hard to understand and interpret the traditions and behaviour in the correct way. Hence, the course about intercultural competence is a very relevant and important course in current time.

The course started off with us interacting with the groups that we were split into. The groups consisted of students from different cultural backgrounds from different parts of the world. The initial coaching session with our coach was used as an ice breaking session where everyone introduced themselves to each other and learnt about their group mates. The initial few weeks were hard to coordinate as anticipated as everyone had their own different ways of working and their own schedule. The biggest challenge that we took on in this course is learning how to coordinate meetings and get work done in a group of people who have completely different lives, studying different courses and living in different time zones. The collaboration skills that we gained through this course is the biggest asset we take back from this course.

The coaching sessions were extremely helpful in keeping us in track of the goals we had set for ourselves at the beginning of the module. With the help of the mentor’s we planned how to take small steps in moving towards our goals. We also reflected on our journey and discussed possible improvements during these sessions. The project sessions on the other hand were completely different from the coaching sessions as we had no one who had the role of coordinating the meetings. All the students had to coordinate the meetings themselves and keep themselves on track. This is where the influence of different cultures were seen taking place. For example, for some students, good performance in exams is a very important aspect that they are grown up with, that they give up on everything else when it is exam time. Whereas for others, this is not the case and they try to take part in everything even during exam time. This is just a difference in educational traditions in different countries. However, when we are working in a group, this does affect the group's work. Hence, these sessions helped us gain more insight into how cultural differences affect a working environment and helped us think and implement ways to tackle this issue.

These insights that we gained throughout the course, helped us on our trip to Barcelona as we got the opportunity to work again with people from different cultures in person in a different country, where the culture of the country also plays an important role.

Mobility Week

As we arrived in Barcelona, after a tiring journey by either train or bus, the beauty of the city took us by surprise. In anticipation of what was to come, we travelled full of energy to our hostel. Tiredness seemed to be a temporary problem and the city air of Barcelona cured the problem. After arriving at the hostel, the reality of the long awaited mobility week kicked in. Excited for the first real meal in Barcelona, we scrambled to find a restaurant. With a good meal in our stomach and excitement in our heart all of us went to bed.

Before the first workshops started, there was some free time to be spent in the beautiful city known as Barna to the locals. It is safe to say that the favourites were visited and photographed to be remembered forever.

Monday the mobility week was officially kicked off during the introduction lecture. In this introduction lecture the week was discussed and the students were told what was expected of them. It was kindly reminded to us that partying is part of this week, but to not miss out on the amazing learning opportunities that are created. The fun and light-hearted introduction by a great teacher is, without doubt, the best way to start this week full of joy. As students, we know now what we had to do this week, but also what there is to do next to the classes. After all, it would not be an intercultural experience if you do not experience the culture yourself. It would be a waste of potential if you did not attempt to learn from this city full of rich culture. We took these lessons to heart as we planned our week.

After the introduction, it was finally time for the long awaited workshops, namely “BiCiZen”, “Spanish and Catalan culture” and finally “CSI-COP Citizen Science”. The first and the last workshop centered around a citizen science project. Since in our course, we had to design a citizen science project, it was the perfect opportunity to see how these plans get implemented.

The workshops were interactive and therefore easy to learn from. The lessons represent the idea of this mobility week, fun and educational. Before the second workshop there was a particularly interesting aspect attached, namely the tour. This was not just any tour, but one packed with historical stories and true passion from the teacher. This enthusiasm quickly caught on to us and we could not wait until the workshop finally started.

All in all, it is safe to say that this mobility week was packed with information and new perspectives. For example, in the third workshop I learned how some apps gather information about menstruation to sell products to these customers. This was a take on GDPR and data safety that we had not even considered and truly opened our eyes.

During the second workshop, we learned how Europe functions and why culture is such an important part of it. This all comes back to the learning goals of the course ICSS, where we now learn how to implement many of these theoretical examples in practice.