Culinary Culture diversophy® Basic

Description

Designed to support tourism students in developing intercultural awareness through culinary culture, discussion, reflection, and real-life scenario learning. The card game encourages players to understand different cultural perspectives, communicate respectfully, and apply practical intercultural skills in tourism-related situations.

This project was developed as part of two connected bachelor’s theses at JAMK University of Applied Sciences in 2026. The first thesis, completed by Sachinika Dissanayaka and Dilukshi Subasinghe Arachchige, focused on analyzing culinary culture and intercultural awareness through interview-based research. Their findings identified important intercultural themes, cultural experiences, and communication challenges related to tourism and food culture.

Building on this foundation, Nathali Silva and Thilini Pannilage developed and tested the Culinary Culture diversophy® card game as a practical learning tool for tourism students. The second thesis focused on transforming the identified themes into interactive card-based learning activities and evaluating their effectiveness through classroom testing and student feedback.

The card game was inspired by the diversophy® intercultural learning framework, which uses discussion-based cards to encourage reflection, empathy, and communication. The present version adapts these ideas into culinary and tourism-related intercultural learning scenarios suitable for tourism education.

The card materials are organized into five categories: Choice, Guide, Risk, Share, and Smart. Each category focuses on different aspects of intercultural learning, communication, reflection, and decision-making. The cards are also divided into Basic and Advanced levels to support different learning stages and varying levels of intercultural understanding among students.