ATS2250 - Communications and cultures in the global era - 2017

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.

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 media.

Within semester assessment: 60% + Exam: 40%

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. A unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

See also Unit timetable information

Associate Professor Gil-Soo Han

Communications and media studies

Twelve credit points of first-year Arts units.

ATS3250