Documentation:Cultural Issues in Teaching Online/What Happens When Culturally Diverse Learners Communicate Online

What Happens When Culturally Diverse Learners Communicate Online?

Despite rapid advances in information and communications technology (ICT) approaches to online learning, relatively little is known about actual experience in the field using these technologies to facilitate communications between individuals and groups from different cultural backgrounds. In 2002, Chase and colleagues began their investigation into ‘what happens’ when culturally diverse learners communicate online, by examining communications in an online, facilitated course for intercultural learners. The goals of this study were to test assumptions that electronic communication is internationally standardized, to identify any problematic aspects of such communications, and to construct a framework for the analysis of electronic communications using constructs from intercultural communications theory.