Enhancing academics capability to engage multicultural classes and internationalize at home

This paper reports the rationale, design, implementation, and outcomes of a strategic diversity course for developing the intercultural capability of academic staff at an Australian university. The interactive workshop called “Engaging and Building Alliance across Cultures” aims at developing awareness of and practical skills in facilitating the inclusion of culturally and linguistically diverse students in the classroom, while also engaging local students in internationalization at their home university. This paper reports the participating academics’ workshop ratings, as well as their learning reflections regarding curriculum development, strategies that they intended to apply to engage their culturally diverse classes, and the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the workshop. Implications for the potential use of cultural diversity training to internationalize learning and teaching in a higher education environment are discussed, along with suggestions for future research.