Abstract:

One of the biggest challenges in current education and team management in South Eastern Europe is developing intercultural sensitivity. The region has become more and more open to foreign employees from neighbouring countries. Even though intercultural contacts have been extensive because of our common history, there is still more to work on in terms of intercultural sensitivity.

The proposed paper presents a description and analysis of preparing and executing an intercultural training seminar for citizens from the following countries: Croatia, Germany, Romania and Serbia. The goal of the seminar was to create a team-like experience for each of the participants and help to learn how to predict social norms and behaviours in the participating countries. The trainer provided necessary information from virtually based intercultural analysis tools.

The seminar showed that this type of intercultural training has promising results in raising awareness of the other and giving practical tools to predict and adapt behaviours. Some aspects of the training need improvement but the approach generally has a lot of potential for future development. Significant strength of the approach is the potential for applicability in various educational situations, both at school, university, work or when learning on one's own.

We believe that there is potential to develop intercultural training courses and increase intercultural sensitivity with the help of various virtual information sources.

Keywords:

Intercultural communication, virtual learning, intercultural training, cultural diversity, multicultural teams.