SHL Students Complete Cross-Cultural Leadership Project

Students gain intercultural competence and learn about leadership across cultures.

School of Hospitality Leadership students enrolled in the Global Understanding section of the Principles of Tourism class (HMGT 3200 ) communicated with students from the Universidad de Latina America (UNLA) through live video and chat links about a variety of topics related to hospitality and tourism and their own lives and completed small group projects about leadership. One ECU student was paired with one student (or in some cases two students) from UNLA to create and present a collaborative project about leadership, and communicated about their projects between live links through the use of email, Skype, Facebook, and other tools.  The project focused on comparing and contrasting leadership in Mexico with leadership in the U.S.

The cross-cultural, virtual teams of students explored the following: basic components of leadership in the two countries including definitions of leadership, similarities and differences regarding leadership in the U.S. and Mexico-paying particular attention to the issues of gender and culture; examples  of leadership in business in general and in hospitality and tourism in Mexico and the U.S.A.; leadership training and education in Mexico and the U.S.A.; and the future of leadership in the two countries. The end product of this collaboration was either a short, written paper or a PowerPoint presentation, and the partners selected the product to create. All groups presented their findings to the combined ECU-UNLA class via live “elevator stories” during a video link. The “elevator story” technique meant that each group consisting of at least one ECU student and one UNLA student, presented the findings of their completed project in a conversational manner without the use of support media.

This class project applied an innovative approach to the study of leadership in hospitality and tourism and it provided students from two countries at two different universities with two different instructors with one common tourism education experience. In this complex world, intercultural competence is increasingly indispensable and this class offered opportunities to develop these competencies further and to learn about leadership. This type of international class communication and the small group project have merit as tools for teaching for the experience was truly collaborative. It offers students and instructors access to an international experience without leaving home.

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