In today’s increasingly globalised and diverse world, more and more dynamic opportunities exist for students to explore different cultures, engage in different cultural experiences, and access different perspectives. New communication technologies facilitate interaction between people from different backgrounds, transcending national and geographic boundaries. In addition, the web itself is a highly complex and multifaceted cultural domain in which diverse ‘subcultures’ of interaction continually emerge and evolve.
Powerful learning and cross-cultural engagement can occur online via live chat, video, multimedia story-telling and blogging, online social gaming, and participation in e-communities. Accompanying discussion should address the varying levels of comfort and familiarity that you and your students encounter while navigating different online spaces of cultural expression.