Program Overview

Intercultural Development Programme (ICD)

Overview

The Intercultural Development Programme (ICD) is a non-credit bearing programme designed to develop postgraduate students' intercultural competence and other key 21st-century skills. The programme is automatically available to all 1200+ postgraduate students at the Smurfit school, including full-time and part-time students.

Background

The Irish higher education landscape has changed significantly in the past 20 years, with the number of international students studying in Irish higher education institutions more than doubling since 2007. Despite this diversity, domestic students often miss out on the value of intercultural learning, while international students seek more opportunities for integration.

Goals

The ICD programme aims to:

• Develop postgraduate students' 12 sets of key 21st-century skills, including intercultural competence, communication, adaptability, global mindset, critical thinking, creativity, conflict management, listening and observing, problem-solving, decision-making, emotional intelligence, and teamwork.
• Help students maximize their intercultural learning inside and outside of the classroom in a multicultural setting.
• Enhance integration among international and domestic students inside and outside of the classroom.
• Prepare students to be employment-ready for the global job market.

The Innovative Approach

The ICD programme is driven by research in Internationalisation at Home, which integrates international and intercultural dimensions into formal and informal curricula for students within domestic learning environments. The programme adopts a blended approach, combining online delivery and in-person delivery, to ensure all students have equal opportunities for intercultural learning.

The programme structure consists of two levels:

• Level 1 Fundamentals ICD: Provides essential knowledge and skills for effective learning in a multicultural context, requiring 6 hours of self-paced online learning.
• Level 2 Advanced ICD: Offers a deep dive into key 21st-century skills, requiring students to complete Level 1 and attend at least three Level 2 workshops, totaling a minimum of 12 learning hours.

Results

The ICD programme has been in high demand since its establishment in 2018, with growing numbers of students participating each year. Feedback from students has shown that participating in ICD has had a significant impact on their overall student experience, with 80% of students believing that ICD helped them with working in groups, 92% indicating that ICD met their expectations, and 100% of students recommending ICD to future students. The top five areas where ICD has helped students are:

• Teamworking (95%)
• Communication skills (91%)
• Intercultural experience and competence (90%)
• Adaptation (88%)
• Meeting other students (86%)