Metacognition and the Development of Intercultural Competence

We argue that metacognition is a critical component in the development of intercultural competence by highlighting the importance of supporting a learner’s self-assessment, self-monitoring, predictive, planning, and reflection skills. We also survey several modern immersive cultural learning environments and discuss the role intelligent tutoring and experience management techniques can play to support these metacognitive demands. Techniques for adapting the behaviors of virtual humans to promote cultural learning are discussed, as well as explicit approaches to feedback. We conclude with several suggestions for future research, including the use of existing intercultural development metrics for evaluating learning in immersive environments and to conduct more studies of the use of implicit and explicit feedback to guide learning and establish optimal conditions for acquiring intercultural competence.

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