Cultural Understanding and Global World

Overview
When you listen to others and accept feedback openly, you gain deeper insights into your own thoughts and behaviors and, in turn, strengthen your relationship-building and self- and social-awareness skills. As you consider and embrace different perspectives, you'll continue to improve your problem-solving skills. You'll make more informed and objective decisions and look at different sides of a problem or situation before making a decision.

You will also learn more about how cultural artifacts influence the behavior and thinking of both yourself and others and consider what this reveals about our shared humanity. Doing so will make you a better relationship builder when you encounter people from cultures different from your own.

Finally, you will be able to apply the collaborative approaches you've learned to better engage with others in your personal, academic, and professional life. Developing your relationship-building skills can help you move conversations forward, collaborate more effectively with others, and help build an inclusive culture at your work-making a positive impact on your work and family life for both you and others around you!

Your goal for this assignment is to practice your relationship-building skills as you use collaborative approaches to explore how culture and artistic expression represent and influence our thinking and behavior as humans. Then, reflect on your collaborative experience as you explore lessons learned and consider how the collaborative approaches used benefitted your group work and experience.

This assignment gives you the opportunity to practice your problem-solving and self- and social-awareness skills as you reflect on the nature of the creative process. In this final assignment, you will:

Explore how your Week 8 group discussion approached the task of choosing a cultural artifact. How did you balance the individual preferences with the group task? This gives you the opportunity to think critically about how our perspectives are shaped by cultural context and how we collaborate with others.
Examine the creative process then use the information to analyze your group's selected artifact. Do you think there are fundamental differences in the creative process when it is a collaborative process rather than a solitary one? Also apply what you've learned from your research into the life of the artist, or the artists working together, who created the artifact.
Explain the ways in which the artist's cultural and personal experiences can be detected in the cultural artifact. No matter what profession you work in, creative thinking is a path to success. Reflecting on the creative process and learning about what inspires others will help you better access your own creative potential.
Expand your interpretive skills and deepen your understanding of the practice of interpreting the achievements of human creativity. Exploring similarities between the creative and the interpretive processes will give you new insights into both, and thereby improve your competence in creative problem-solving.
Preparation
In preparation for this assignment:

Review the Week 8 discussion notes you completed as preparation for your group discussion.
Use your group work experience and observation on how your group collaborated to produce the group output as part of this assignment. Remember that the important thing is your collaboration, and not the actual group output.
Instructions
In the Week 8 group discussion, your group collaborated to write a short summary about your group's chosen artifact. You will also reflect on your own perspective and what you have learned during your group discussion to complete this assignment. Unlike the previous assignments, you will not have a div for this assignment; however, you may choose to organize your paper in this way:

Introduction.
Section 1: Culture and Artistic Expression.
Section 2: Collaboration and Individual Efforts.
Section 3: The Creative Process.
Section 4: The Interpretive Process.
Section 5: Working Collaboratively.
Conclusion.
References.
Remember to use your notes and observations from your Week 8 group discussion to support your responses.

Step 1: Reflect on how culture and artistic expressions influence human thought and behavior.
Provide insights on how this artifact might influence people's thinking and behavior in the future.
Consider the contextual articles you explored about the artifact in Chapter 8 of Exploring Cultures and the details your group shared about what they learned about this artifact to support your response.
Step 2: Explain how the artifact reflects both collaborative and individual efforts.
Describe the path, journey, or process the artist used to create the artifact and discuss the collaboration or influences that happened between the artist and others.
Describe the ways the artist put their interpretation and creativity to shape and craft the final artifact.
Explain the ways in which their cultural and personal experiences can be detected in the cultural artifact.
Provide specific examples to support your response.
Step 3: Relate how the creative process uses problem-solving, relationship-building, and self- and social-awareness skills.
Describe the creative process the artist used and provide examples of how the artist used problem-solving, relationship-building, and self- and social-awareness skills to help them complete the artifact.
Provide an example of how you can use the artist's process and methods to support your own endeavors. If you have had a similar experience, you may use your experience to illustrate the connection between these concepts and skills.
Provide specific examples to support your descriptions.
Step 4: Explain how the interpretive process can be a collaborative process.
What's your reflection on your own thinking and/or perspective on this cultural artifact? As you read comments and responses of your group members and examined the artifact more closely, did your thinking and/or perspective change or evolve?
If so, how did it change? Provide specific details.
If not, why do you think this is?
What did you enjoy or not enjoy about the conversation?
Did your group members point out something you didn't notice? What was it?
Did you connect with others by finding some shared experience through your discussion about the artist or artifact?
Did this also uncover something new you learned about yourself or the other people in your group?
Provide specific examples to support your response.
Step 5: Explain the use and impact of collaborative approaches in a group discussion.
Discuss the collaborative approaches you observed the group using. Provide at least one specific example.
Identify any obstacles to the group's collaboration. What was the situation and what action did you take or could have taken to address the obstacle?
Explain how you can apply the collaborative approaches and lessons learned from this group discussion to enhance or support your personal, academic, or professional life. Provide at least one specific example.
Additional Requirements
Your assignment should also meet the following requirements:

Written communication: Write in complete sentences free from errors that detract from the overall message.
Font and font size: Arial, 12 point.
Citations: Include complete citations of your sources. Review Evidence and APALinks to an external site. section of the Writing Center for more information on how to cite your sources.
Review the Collaborative Process of Creating and Interpreting Cultural Artifacts rubric for details on how your assignment will be graded.

Competencies Measured
By successfully completing this assignment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and scoring guide criteria:

Competency 2: Examine how diversity influences decision making and collaboration.
Explain how the artifact reflects both collaborative and individual efforts.
Relate how the creative process uses problem-solving, relationship-building, and self- and social-awareness skills.
Explain how the interpretive process can be a collaborative process.
Explain the use and impact of collaborative approaches in a group discussion.
Competency 4: Analyze the role of culture and artistic expression in human thought and behavior.
Reflect on how culture and artistic expressions influence human thought and behavior.
Competency 5: Address assignment purpose in a well-organized text, incorporating appropriate evidence and tone in grammatically sound sentences
Write in a well-organized and concise manner that adheres to the rules of grammar, usage, and mechanics.