Brett et al. (2006) discussed the multicultural challenges in the article, which can also applicable to student’s written interaction in an online university. As a student of a the University of the People (UoPeople), I have faced those challenges as well, especially in group activity where we have to reach common goals.
UoPeople students heavily depend on online interaction between people with different cultural background from different countries. However, students interaction usually does not require intense communication and the task usually is simple enough to be discussed briefly. Since I became a student a year ago, I never find a considerable problem related to the multicultural teams that I was a member of.
Smaller issues can arise and they can be observed as one of the four challenges category. Brett et al. (2006) categorized challenges on multicultural teams to four categories: direct or indirect communication, issues in accents and fluency, differing attitudes toward hierarchy and authority; and conflicting norms for decision making. In group activity, I have found minor issues related to communication type, english fluency, and norms for decision making, but none of the issue is a major one that hinder my group in finishing the task.
For instance, I once started the initiative of a group activity meeting meant for my group to observe the task and discuss our approach to solve the task. A group member wanted to directly divide the task and work separately. Since the task is simple enough, every member agreed. The approach to directly divide the task and work separately is perhaps the norm of addressing group activity. Even though we usually set up WhatsApp groups, normally, the communication is not intense and group members prefer to work separately and coordinate the end result at the end.
Using the Four Strategies to Address the Multicultural Challenges and Enhance Group Activities in UoPeople Courses
Brett et al. (2006) proposed four strategies to address the multicultural challenges in a teams: adaptation, structural intervention, managerial intervention, and exit. Adaptation means that the challenge is addressed by openly accepting the cultural gaps and work around those gaps. Structural intervention is to change the shape of the team, while managerial intervention is to set the norms early or to bring in a higher-level manager to address the challenge. When the previous options failed, the last resort strategy is exit, which is to remove a team member.
I think these four strategies can also be applied in our group activities. I can even argue that we usually use these strategies to address issues in our group activity. In my experience of working in a group activity, group members usually start openly and directly to address the task. When multicultural issues arise, we usually tries the adaptation strategy first, that is to acknowledge the cultural gaps and try to work around them.
Group members usually can not use structural intervention strategy since the group is small, the task is simple, and the project usually have short time schedule. However, if an issue escalate, we usually resort to the instructor to deal with it. The last resort usually is to remove a member from the team, especially if the member failed to contribute to the team.
References Brett, J., Behfar, K., & Kern, M.C. (2006, November). Managing multicultural teams. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2006/11/managing-multicultural-teams
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