Abstract:

At Undergraduate/Graduate levels, lectures for transferring practical skills normally include theoretical models explained in the class as power point presentations as well as exercises to practice the theories. As a lecturer for Intercultural Communication Management at Master’s Level at the University of Applied Sciences Vienna, in addition to the conventional teaching tools, I decided to introduce the movie ‘Outsourced’ in the lecture to illustrate examples of various existing models (Hofstede, Trompenaars, Hall, Gesteland) in Intercultural Communication. At the end of every lecture block, 15 minutes of the movie is shown, analysed and discussed.
The protagonist, Todd Anderson, from the US, is forced to travel to India to train the outsourced call centre there. Starting with his initial discussion with his boss – which illustrates the low power distance (Hofstede) in the US, the movie inculcates a variety of scenes which illustrate very well the essence of the various dimensions of the above-mentioned models. Although the film contains many faux pas, these are projected in a hilarious and not negative manner so that a substantial discussion of the dimensions is possible without creating any negative atmosphere in the class.
The idea of introducing films, especially for lectures in Intercultural Communication, is not completely new. The University of Hildesheim, Germany, has prepared an Intercultural film database with numerous films which incorporate scenes depicting some of the dimensions. However, in the paper, and in the lecture, I focus on the film ‘Outsourced’ because it contains, as a single movie, most of the dimensions of the intercultural models mentioned before. The paper analyses and discusses various scenes of the movie and their corresponding (intercultural) dimension. Further, it includes the feedback received from the students on the introduction of this method of teaching.
The introduction of the movie ‘Outsourced’ in the lecture, as an additional resource, has been very helpful in deepening the understanding for the theory. The movie is very suitable and appropriate for lectures in Intercultural Communication.

Keywords:

Intercultural Communication, Movie, Best practice, Educational Trend, Skills Transfer, Outsourced.