Building cross cultural understandings through e-chatter

The aim of the e-Chatter project was to facilitate the opportunity for Australian teacher education students to be involved in an authentic learning environment with international participants from culturally diverse settings, and for the international students to have the opportunity to be involved in an interactive English language program with first language English speakers. In the 2007 pilot project, participants were engaged in an online discussion on the topic of Australian Culture/Pakistani Culture/Iranian Culture respectively. Discussion was conducted in English and led by Deakin based students on an online learning environment which was a website dedicated to this project. The teacher education students were required to focus their attention on ‘Creating Effective Learning Environments’. They were required to develop and articulate their personal and professional perspectives on creating and managing learning environments with specific reference to online learning environments. This paper represents work in progress in the e-Chatter case study particularly from intercultural and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) perspectives.