A STRATEGY TO TEACH CROSS-CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING: A SOUTH AFRICAN CASE STUDY.

The outsider/insider assignment is a teaching strategy to simultaneously teach facts about cultural difference and skills for managing cross-cultural encounters in communication. A lecturer at a mainly monocultural university in South Africa developed an adapted outsider/insider assignment for a first year Business Communication course. The aim of this paper is to firstly report on the application of the adapted assignment applied in the Economic and Management field. Secondly, the researcher will report on the effect hereof on student learning. The findings indicate the value of both the outsider/insider assignment and the use of a reflection component based on the ORID-method. This effective teaching strategy can contribute to assessment practices of an educator in communication at higher education institutions and provide an example of a strategy with evidence of student learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]