Undergraduate - UnitATS2250 - Communications and cultures in the global era

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Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Offered	Caulfield Second semester 2012 (Day) Clayton Second semester 2012 (Day)
Coordinator(s)	Associate Professor Gil-Soo Han

Synopsis

The unit covers how people from different cultural backgrounds communicate or miscommunicate and how they can overcome any difficulties, resulting from cultural diversities.

Today, intercultural interactions are part of everyday encounters in most work places. It is essential for future workforces to be equipped with knowledge and skills for cross-cultural communications. These are part of 'global competence' of the workforce.

For effective learning outcomes, the unit employs interdisciplinary insights from communications, anthropology, cultural studies and psychology (e.g., E. Hall, W. Gudykunst). The unit also touches upon how ethnic groups utilise the media to express their identities, with reference to migrants in Australia, e.g., Chinese, Korean, Southeast Asian migrants.

Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, students will:

1. Have been exposed to, and have a competent understanding of contemporary scholarship on the relationships between communications and culture;
2. Have acquired an informed understanding of how different worldviews impact on communications;
3. Have come to understand the processes of immigrants' economic and cultural adaptations as part of their development of effective intercultural communications;
4. Have obtained in-depth understanding of nonverbal communications;
5. Have developed greater capacities to deal with inter-ethnic tension for effective communications;
6. Have come to understand a range of theories on intercultural communications, e.g., cultural convergence theory, identity management theory, identity negotiation theory, communication accommodation theory, and cultural schema theory;
7. Have acquired an informed understanding of how ethnic identities and immigrant life are represented through a range of the media.

Additionally, 3rd year students will

8. Have a more profound understanding of the above-mentioned theories and their sophisticated applications to empirical cases.

Assessment

Formative essay on diverse perspectives of intercultural communications (1000 words): 20%
Empirical research essay on intercultural communications (2000 words): 40%

Chief examiner(s)

Associate Professor Gil-Soo Han

Contact hours

One 2-hour seminar per week (first hour is a conventional lecture and second is an interactive seminar)

This unit applies to the following area(s) of study

Communications

Prerequisites

First year sequence in Communications

Prohibitions

ATS3250