Page 111 - Cyberculture and New Media

102 The Challenge of Intercultural Electronic Learning
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faculty, and institutions to participate in transatlantic dialogue and
collaboration.
The concept was based on the learning by doing approach: the
students collaborated in groups and reflected the pros and cons of cross-
cultural collaborative online learning - thus, the content was identical with
the method.
Initially, 175 students from 28 countries were registered in the
course: Westerners were very well represented by Germany (34%), Sweden
(15%), Austria (12%), the Netherlands (2%), the USA (4%) and Canada
(4%); Easterners by: Greece (12%), Malaysia (4%), Egypt (1.5%), Taiwan,
Columbia (each - 0.8%), etc.
Thus, 71% of the participants represented Western, 29% - Eastern
cultures.
Average age: 32 years; males - 42%, females - 58%.
Students represented 48% of the participants, university lecturers
and scientific workers - 34%, postgraduate students - 6%, Ph.D. candidates -
12%, people interested in distance learning - 6%.
The level of English language proficiency: 12% - native speakers,
32% - advanced/good level, 56% - standard level (enough to be enrolled).
The study reported here has been centred around the correlation
between some dimensions of culture and ELF:
1. cross-cultural dimension of online learning
2. cultural context, East/West dichotomy
3. limitations of virtual learning: the ways to compensate
missing visual, auditory and kinesthetic signals
4. the quality of communication in its relation to ELF issues

Note that for the purpose of this research, the terms e-learning,
online learning, distance learning, distance education and virtual learning,
denoting the process of learning at a distance on the Internet setting without
face-to-face communication between learning participants, have been used
interchangeably.

4. Key Findings
In the following, we provide the analysis of the online asynchronous
discussion (forum inputs) with particular attention paid to the cultural aspects
of transnational global e-learning as correlated with ELF.
First, the discussion focuses on the issues of cultural barriers in
virtual settings, in particular, on the differences in time orientation in cultures
of various contexts (all citations below are reproduced with original spelling
and punctuation - R.Z.):