The CMS280-3 splits into five instalments. It starts from the history, aims and basic concepts of the discipline and move towards deploying conceptual tools for analyzing intercultural interactions, its limits and opportunities. Please find below a brief summary of each of the course's phases:

Part 1- What is Intercultural Communication? - A quick overview of ICC as a discipline, its focus, and the purpose of generating positive, productive intercultural encounters. Students will get to know the main situations in which one engages with ICC nowadays, its leading researchers, and five steps to forge common grounds with other cultures.

Part 2 - Concepts of Intercultural Communication - A few concepts of ICC are presented and discussed at length: low and high context, space, and time applied to ICC; verbal/nonverbal communication. The tradition of Eurocentric research is contrasted with a more recent trend in taking ICC to Asia and other continents. The lecture ends by exploring the potential and limitations of ICC in a globalized, networked world.

Part 3 - Drawing cross-cultural comparisons - This lecture presents the theory of Social Identity to guide multiple analyses in ICC. A variety of case studies are presented, such as that of fans, motorbike lovers, and ethnic groups in multicultural countries. The student also learns that cultural membership can exist at individual and collective levels, to which communication strategies and the construction of communicative repertoire vary.

Part 4 - The Intercultural Encounter - The intercultural encounter is seen as a crucial event for ICC. The lecture goes past romanticized accounts revived in Western literature to problematize the persistence of racism in contemporary media and communication. The purpose of the discussion is to develop the students' awareness of both phenomena, contextualizing it with research in ICC.

Part 5 - Interaction and Exchange - After reviewing vital concepts for the understanding of ICC as a discipline, this final lecture focuses on the advent of technology as a way forward to enabling cultural awareness and cooperation, while battling stereotypes. The student settles in the subject with an agenda for continuous learning, in which new opportunities arise from collaborative platforms and inclusive business models. 

The main learning outcomes lie in creating and demonstrating conditions that make intercultural communications (ICC) possible, as well as strategies to remove the obstacles that lead to misunderstanding, conflict, and exclusion. Classes will approach issues of race, nation, class, gender, religion, immigration, and sexual orientation, and many others, to the extent that they constrain our ability to communicate across various cultures and groups.

Some learning outcomes are:

1. To be able to understand the role of Intercultural Communication in modern life; 2. To practice main approaches to ICC as a field of research;
3. To show grasp of the definitions of culture and how to map them;
4. To know how to differentiate ICC as a practice and as a discipline;

 5. To identify the paths that serve to create commonalities with other cultures. 

This course uses an engaged research-led teaching approach. Projects will be structured in a “real-life” problem or question that involves social issues of public interest. The idea behind “learning by doing” is to undertake group projects with guidance from the module leader or guest speakers. These group projects constitute the assessment for this module. Students start working on these projects from the first weeks and continue to develop them through the end of the course, with the input from convenors and ample opportunities for formative feedback and entrepreneurship.