C-shock

Ever since I heard about the Culture Shock game about a year and a half ago I have been curious about it. C-shock has been developed to help foreign students coming to Portsmouth University settle in more quickly than they might otherwise. It is meant to act as an introduction to British life with some details specific to the university thrown in.

I tried it out with my daughter for the latest Absolutely Intercultural show though my daughter was rather microphone shy so it is mainly me you can hear as we go round parts of the game. The game is online at the University of Portsmouth site and can also be played on your mobile phone. The game is made up of several sub-games as you go round the campus and the town. These sub-games are either shoot’em up or quiz type games. The range of topics covered is quite wide from student jobs, to appropriate dress and norms in student accommodation. As you attempt the different sub-games you decrease your level of culture shock.

I must say that I found some of the sections brutally honest such as the drinking culture and what it might lead to. My daughter wandered into a sub-game on anti-social behaviour during which it was made quite clear that while in Britain you are liable to experience a great deal of bad language and that it’s not worth calling the police if you see drugs being consumed though it might be worth calling them out if you witness drug-dealing. The scores are given in terms of the British university scoring system from a third to a first so that part of British university life is absorbed almost sub-conciously.

In the end the question is what this game achieves. It is certainly an innovative gimmick for the University of Portsmouth as the first HE institution in the UK to feature such a game on their website and it does convey a great deal of information about the British way of life, not all of it flattering. I am sure that it will be played by visitors to the site. I don’t know whether someone would make a decision about whether to go to Portsmouth or even to the UK or not on the basis of this.

I also featured an interview about virtual mobility in this show speaking with Eva Abramuszkinová from Newton College in the Czech Republic. A great deal of effort is being made to promote physical mobility of university students but sometimes it is appropriate to give students the opportunity to study courses at other institutions without leaving their home institution. In the project Ready for Virtual Mobility consideration is given to all aspects for ensuring the success of such schemes including preparing students for intercultural differences when studying online. Another aspect which Eva discussed with me was the type of person who would be good at organising virtual mobility and it turns out that this requires quite an impressive set of skills including a belief in the value of virtual mobility and experience of being an online student yourself. The intercultural survival kit for the Ready for Virtual Mobility project can be found here.