ABSTRACT
A multidisciplinary 12-credit point course, Culture and Context in Vietnam, has been developed at a transnational Australian university with campus locations in the developing nation of Vietnam. The course serves undergraduate international students undertaking studies in various disciplines and is taken prior to commencement of programme-specific studies at the university. An intercultural competence framework was deemed appropriate to frame the purposes, outcomes, and delivery of the proposed course. The goal of intercultural competence development informs how students are presented with the broadly scoped course content and how they are asked to interact with and respond to that content. Within the assessment structure, emphasis is placed on the process of developing intercultural competence and the analytical and reflective capabilities that are considered enablers. Students are largely assessed on their capacity to apply critical reflection and analysis to their experience. Assessment does not entail attempts to measure levels of intercultural competence through any psychometric inventories.
