Core Components of Communication and Collaboration:

Introducing a Digital Resource for Supporting Multicultural Student Teams

The ability to work collaboratively in multicultural teams is essential for today’s global workplace. University provides space to develop teamwork skills, but students often experience group work as frustrating and stressful. Such negative experiences often lead to the intended learning objectives not being realised. The workshop introduces a digital learning resource to support group interaction that builds on current research expertise in intercultural communication combined with three years of collaborative cross-disciplinary experience of teaching intercultural communication and teamwork to students in STEM subjects (Engineering, Mathematics & Statistics, MORSE).

The resource is grounded in the principle that students benefit from support on top of prior training to enable them to engage in group work effectively and maximize their learning from the experience. In place of a teacher-centred intervention our approach is student-centred in that students can use the resource together to discover for themselves why some widely-held assumptions about effective communication can negatively affect participation and engagement, as well how to manage the core components of communicating in multicultural teams. Further, it guides them through practical activities and reflection that help get the most benefit from the interactional challenges of working in multicultural teams.
This workshop is designed as an experiential learning opportunity. Participants will be given the opportunity to engage in some of the activities of the digital resource and experience how these can:

• help students to experience group work as a valuable learning opportunity;
• enable students to become aware and articulate issues and concerns about working in teams;
• facilitate students in acknowledging, addressing and resolving conflict, using it as a driver for innovation rather than a destructive force;
• enhance students’ learning from working in diverse teams by encouraging students to reflect critically on their learning from working together;
• provide an international/multicultural dimension to their learning.

Room: OC0.01

Mainstreaming Employability Skills Through Communities of Praxis:

Policy Pitching for Global Sustainable Development

This workshop actively deconstructs boundaries between teaching by Student Careers and Skills and the mainstream academic curriculum. We do this by reporting on a concrete example of integrated teaching and directly facilitating others to develop similar communities of professional teaching practice. Our case Study example highlights how the academic convenor of a first year core module, Environmental Principles for Global Sustainable Development, worked with members of the Student Careers and Skills team, to integrate vocational skills, directly relevant to the academic subject. We illustrate how skills training was used to inform seminar activates and how a culminating skills workshop, focused on Policy Pitching (elevator pitching), directly upskilled student for innovative assessment. Following our 10 minute presentation, we will actively facilitate consideration of employability skills relevant to other disciplinary curriculums. Moreover, the workshop offers an opportunity to actively plan integrated teaching of subject relevant skills, and therefore further reduces silos between these complimentary pedagogical functions.

Room: OC0.02

Community Engagement in Troubled Times:

Learning and Teaching at a 'Remain' University in a 'Leave' City

This session explores the role of Higher Education in community engagement in an era in which ‘people in this country have had enough of experts’ (Gove, 2016). The session will explore the relationship between educational attainment and voting preference highlighted by the Brexit vote and reflect on the experience of teaching a ‘Politics of Brexit’ course amongst members of the public in a ‘Leave’ city. In doing so, issues that will be explored include making HE more inclusive, sharing knowledge beyond traditional HE communities, facilitating spaces for social mixing, and encouraging dialogue between different social groups. The audience will be invited to discuss the extent to which universities have a role in increasing political understanding amongst the general public in complex times and, if so, how to do so in the context of Brexit Britain.

Room: OC0.04