The goal of this activity is to share information about how to behave well in a culture different from your own. Mini-reports (main posts) can draw on either/both personal experience and research. 

Please see our course calendar for due dates and our grading rubric for criteria for success.

Here are four steps you may find useful:

• Choose a country or region
• Choose a mini-report option
• Structure your mini-report for easy reading
• Respond to other mini-reports

Step 1: Choose a country or region

To prepare, think about a country or a region of the world that you might like to visit for business or pleasure. Perhaps you’ve even imagined living there.

What should you know about the customs of this country before you arrive there? What are differences between how people interact in this country and in your home country?

Here are some questions you might consider:

• How does the culture you’ve chosen regard time–must you be punctual? Or could you be a half hour late?
• To what degree does the culture you’ve chosen value personal relationships when doing business? (Is it a high context culture or a low context culture?)
• How does the culture you’ve chosen regard gender?

Step 2: Choose a mini-report option

Please choose one of the following options for your main post:

• A report based on research, with informal identification and framing of sources, as in this sample.
  • Take care to mention your source of information before you share it with us–identify and frame all quotes and paraphrase from your sources. Turnitin, an originality service Champlain subscribes to, will check every report for documentation of sources and correct use of quote marks around short quotes and blocking and indentation of long quotes. 
  • Please italicize the names of books or websites in your mini-report and use quotation marks around the titles of articles. Use italics as well for non-English words you might use in your report.
• A report based on personal experience, with supporting examples

Step 3: Structure your mini-report for easy reading

Here’s what we’ll look for in your mini-report:

• document length of about a page, with a memo heading 
• a visually inviting layout featuring an introductory list of the main section headings that organize the sections in the body of your report
• your main point expressed both at the beginning of your report and reinforced at the end
• application of advice from The Center for Plain Language
• frequent use of specific examples to support general ideas