Gail Morong & Donna DesBiens (2016) Culturally responsive online design: learning at intercultural intersections, Intercultural Education, 27:5, 474-492, DOI: 10.1080/14675986.2016.1240901

This article presents evidence-based guidelines to inform culturally responsive online learning design in higher education. The guidelines present a base for online design methodology to support intercultural learning and enable formative evaluation of pedagogy, learning activity and assessment applications.

This chapter addresses the question, “How can we overcome potential cultural discontinuities in online collaborative project-based learning environments?” The authors first identified differing worldviews, communication practices, and technological issues that can present barriers that frequently arise in intercultural online courses. Then they identified constructivist project-based teaching strategies that reduce these intercultural barriers. Differing worldviews can be reconciled by fostering collaboration, grouping, relevance, and metacognition. 

Walker, U. & vom Brocke, C (2009) Integrating content-based language learning and intercultural learning online: An international eGroups collaboration. A. Brown (Ed.)(2009) Proceedings of CLESOL 2008

This paper reports on a didactic concept which integrates subject-based language learning with intercultural experience through online collaboration in an international eGroups set-up. Data from student interactions will help illustrate to what extent the eGroups model promoted interactive, communicative and intercultural competence through content-related bilingual collaboration.

Lee, L., & Markey, A. (2014). A study of learners’ perceptions of online intercultural exchange through Web 2.0 technologies. ReCALL, 26(3), 281-297.

This paper reports a Spanish-American telecollaborative project through which students used Twitter, blogs and podcasts for intercultural exchange over the course of one semester. The paper outlines the methodology for the project including pedagogical objectives, task design, selection of web tools and implementation. Using qualitative and quantitative data collection, the study explored how the application of Web 2.0 facilitated cross-cultural communication. How the use of digital technology affected the way in which the students viewed intercultural learning and peer feedback was examined.

This chapter describes the development and implementation of a fully online intercultural communication course that aims to propel students to a higher level of intercultural competence and engagement while they are participating in an international exchange program.