跨文化沟通
Eye on the World
The problem
Two hundred engineering students from many countries, in one faculty, not mixing. Telling people to integrate does not work. You have to give them a reason to turn up that has nothing to do with integration.
In short
A photography competition built to get engineering students from different cultures into the same room. Participation rose 30%.
- 200+
- Engineering students engaged
- +30%
- Participation in intercultural projects
- 150+
- Students and faculty at the research presentation
The brief was intercultural engagement, which is the kind of phrase that produces events nobody attends. The competition worked because it asked for something students already had (photographs from home, or from anywhere they had been) and made the reward social rather than educational: cash prizes, and your picture on the wall at the World Unite Festival.
Voting ran online and in the room. That mattered more than it sounds: it gave people a reason to stay at the exhibition and argue about the entries, which is the actual mixing the programme existed to produce.
The research ran alongside it, on how cross-cultural teams work in practice within the faculty, and was presented to 150+ students and staff.