Film and Media Blog

Andrea Montanaro: Intercultural Communication in action

Doing a group project with people you know and like is already hard enough; imagine meeting total strangers over Zoom and having to go from there.

communication MA

Tere everyone! My name is Andrea Montanaro and I am from Asunción, Paraguay. I a currently studying

"Doing a group project with people you know and like is already hard enough; imagine meeting total strangers over Zoom and having to go from there. This was something new – and scary – to everyone."

Communication Management at BFM. Throughout the course of our first semester, one of our most important assignments was a telecollaboration with students from ULM – University of Louisiana Monroe – in the US. This was part of our Basics of Intercultural Communication course.

When Professor Anastassia Zabrodskaja shared the news with the class, I was equally excited and intimidated, as I did not know how the situation would unfold itself. I was thinking this could either go outstandingly good, or incredibly bad. No middle ground. We had four assignments to deliver, with a specific topic to cover, and four different deadlines, of course. The crucial thing to do was actually to work together, in both Tallinn and Monroe. How could we get this done when we had so many things working against us? Time zones, majors, attitudes, cultures, personal opinions, levels of commitment, and so on. Doing a group project with people you know and like is already hard enough; imagine meeting total strangers over Zoom and having to go from there. This was something new – and scary – to everyone.

My group had five members. Cynthia from Nigeria – and my fellow classmate here at BFM, Carly from the US, Kamrunnahar from Bangladesh and Calum, originally from Scotland but settled in the US for years now. What a diverse crew! We first sent emails to each other and then went on creating a WhatsApp group to chat from there. We named it “Intercultural Comm”. There, with the utmost politeness, we shortly introduced ourselves and set a time for our first Zoom meeting.

"We were able to cope and solve all problems that came our way, and find means of supporting each other through the whole process, without losing respect or objectivity in our tasks."

Sunday, 9pm Tallinn, 1pm Monroe. We saw our faces for the first time. We all started rather timid and awkward, until we kicked off talking about each other. With every single statement, came an honest and curious question. With very personal detail, came another one in return. Without realising we were building trust, and a somewhat special bond. We spent around 2 hours on the call, also without realising. By the end of it, we were already following each other on Social Media, and had formal invitations to visit our respective cities whenever we wanted. This was honestly the best, super unexpected and completely natural.

We divided responsibilities and set our next meeting. Everything went smooth this first time around. I was on cloud nine; I could not believe it had been that easy. As the semester evolved, so did our anxiety towards other courses and work accumulated. Things started shaking our initially perfect telecollaboration group. Carly went full on MIA – missing in action, Kamrunnahar was pregnant and at some point experienced some difficulties, and Calum was on and off with his responsibilities within the soccer team at his university. Cynthia and I were working extra hard to keep everything together, juggling our different commitments. We were shaking, and the assignments became harder and more time consuming. Stress ruled.

Overall, we managed to overcome the presented adversities and made use of the challenges as opportunities. I must add the course material was not only relevant to our understanding of theories and concepts, but also for applying them into real life situations, just like this one. “Intercultural Communication in action” – Professor Anastassia would say to us. Moreover, she was right. We were able to cope and solve all problems that came our way, and find means of supporting each other through the whole process, without losing respect or objectivity in our tasks. After submitting all assignments, Cynthia and I became the proud aunties of a beautiful baby boy that was born more than 8 thousand kilometers away from us.