About

Internationalising The Curriculum (ITC)

Developing students’ intercultural competences
This web resource presents the findings and outcomes of a particular ITC project called ‘Developing students’ intercultural competences', which ran from October 2016 to May 2017 and was led by educational consultants Donna Hurford and Anne Skov Jensen. The project was supported and co-funded by SDU’s ITC project ‘Developing International Degree Programmes’ led by special consultant Hjørdis Albrektsen. On the right side of the page you can listen to Hjørdis introducing SDU’s ITC project and access current SDU strategy documents on ITC. The project is also supported by Stefan Knudsen, Director of SDU’s International Department. Find out more about the International Department by listening to Stefan’s talking head’s video.

Who was involved in the project?
Study leaders, teachers, student services and students responded to the ‘Developing students’ intercultural competences project’ proposal, which in turn led to seven self-initiated project ideas. Through collaborations with the project partners and a customised consultancy approach, we co-developed seven diverse ITC project activities and outcomes. You can access the two-page project report here, which includes key information about each of the seven projects.

Below you can read how the project’s goals and rationale align with SDU’s strategy for internationalising the curriculum, what you can find on itc.sdu.dk and contact us information.

Three overall project goals:

  1. Equip students with intercultural competences, which will better prepare them for the complexities of changing, globalised professional and social environments 
  2. Develop student and staff awareness of the relevance of intercultural competences 
  3. Contribute to student engagement and retention by developing their intercultural competences during their academic studies

These goals correspond to SDU’s 2020 internationalisation strategy
SDU is committed to increasing numbers of international staff and students but this does not of itself elicit intercultural skills and competences, which are integral to team-work and collaborative learning (Killick, 2015; Leask, 2009). Therefore, this project’s goals were aligned with the skills’ need identified in SDU’s 2020 Strategy: as ‘the university aims to attract more students and researchers from abroad…it is important that all the university’s staff and students have the skills necessary to handle cultural and linguistic diversity’ (p.14).

What you can find on itc.sdu.dk
The Projects’ page includes eight talking heads' videos where the project partners explain their motivation for developing students’ intercultural competences and the different ways they took their ideas forward. Each video is accompanied by an action plan, providing a summary of project actions and checklists for your own ITC projects.

The Resources’ page includes four categories and ITC Events:

  1. Enabling intercultural group-work
  2. Designing authentic ITC tasks
  3. Graduates need intercultural competences
  4. ITC References and Publications

Contact Us
We hope you find this website inspiring and practically resourceful. If you are interested in accessing further support when developing ITC in your courses or programmes, you are welcome to contact Donna Hurford dhu@sdu.dk. Anne Skov Jensen is on sabbatical from SDU until December 2017.

Thanks to Christian Hatting Voss (IT student helper) for the video production and to Pernille Stenkil Hansen (Senior e-learning advisor) for the website design and production.