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Today, on May 18^th, Anne Uukkivi will defend her PhD thesis at the Tallinn University Institute of Information Studies. The thesis will look into which factors support intercultural communication in the e-courses of information studies.

Internationalisation and the fast development of HCI have created the need to modernise the programmes of information studies. “Working in information studies encompasses contacts with people from various cultural backgrounds, creating manuals for them, answering their queries creating new e- and information systems, as well as giving courses to various cultural groups. Therefore, knowing cultural differences can help better understand the customers and offer them a better service,” Anne Uukkivi explains.

To find out the factors supporting intercultural communication in the e-courses of information studies, Uukkivi conducted a qualitative research with students from two international information studies master’s programmes. The research shows that students found the main factors to be literacy and cooperation skills, cultural literacy, computer literacy and the pedagogical skills of the lecturers. Knowledge about cultures was deemed the most important. Therefore, we should promote learning about culture, specialised language skills, specific instruments, virtual cooperation and in intercultural communication, managing contacts and creating cooperative bonds.

Anne Uukkivi’s doctoral thesis “Modernization of Library and Information Science Education through the Intercultural Communication / Infoteaduse eriala koolituse kaasajastamine kultuuridevahelise kommunikatsiooni kaudu” was supervised by prof. Sirje Virkus of Tallinn University. Her opponents are senior researcher Hille Pajupuu from the Institute of the Estonian Language and senior researcher Kai Pata from Tallinn University.

The thesis can be read at the TU Academic Librabry repository .

Public defense will take place on May 16^th at 14:00 at M-213 (Uus-Sadama 5).