Students' appreciation for diversity through culture-inspired project activities

Some studies have shown that social integration between international and domestic freshman university students can both enhance international students' well-being while concurrently benefitting domestic students' cultural awareness and respect for diversity. The three basic psychological needs autonomy, competence, and relatedness suggested by self-determination theory can be fulfilled through socio-cultural inspired learning activities in classroom environment to facilitate students' intrinsic motivation, sense-of-belonging and quality of performance. This paper presents various curriculum interventions and student interactions through culture-inspired product design activities in freshman engineering design course. Pre-activity surveys and post-activity reflection instruments are currently being developed and will be presented for the assessment of students' appreciation for diversity, improved intrinsic motivation and quality of performance.