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Thursday, 11 September 2014

India is a popular destination for students on holiday, immersing themselves in its pleasurable assault on all the senses, while being relatively inexpensive.

Teaching and learning is usually far from the minds of students on vacation but four third-year Communication and Media Studies students recently immersed themselves in just that on their visit to Kharagpur.

Ebony Back, Gabriella Marchant, Clinton Arnold and Simon Beaton recently returned from an overseas exchange trip to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Kharagpur.

The trip, funded by a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade grant, involved participation in an IIT Summer (our winter) School unit, Communication Strategies collaboratively taught by IIT's Professor Anjali Gera Roy and UWA's Associate Professor Rob Cover , with industry guests from India and the United States.

A/Professor Cover said the exercise, which builds on an ongoing Skype-based teaching collaboration between IIT and UWA Media/Communication staff, was an opportunity to think about intercultural communication and to explore learning and teaching in a different setting.

"Through exciting discussions between Indian and Australian students, as well as academics and professionals from a range of countries, we were able to come to a better understanding of how strategic communication is undertaken both similarly and differently between India and Australia," he said.

"We also had the opportunity of building powerful networks between future communication leaders in both countries, in the context of global media futures."

One of the students, Clinton Arnold, described the experience as "enlightening at many levels".

"Studying at Kharagpur presented countless lessons, not only academic, but cultural and personal too," he said.  "This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity really alters how you see communication and the communicative world beyond that."

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