Post Borders: Informal Bilingual Blogging and Iintercultural Ccommunication Competence

This paper describes an informal bilingual blogging environment that was created to develop intercultural communicative competence. After a consideration of ICC, the paper explores the opportunities for development of ICC that were created by three features of this blogging activity. A descriptive analysis shows that the design features of informality of topic, and intentional lack of strict language protocol, as well as attention to cultures of use of blogging\ud were associated with users’ display of ICC

Intercultural Challenges in Networked Learning

This paper gives an account of themes that emerged from a preliminary analysis of a large corpus of electronic communications in an online, mediated course for intercultural learners. The goals 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. We found that cyberspace itself has a culture(s), and is not culture-free. Cultural gaps can exist between individuals, as well as between individuals and the dominant cyberculture, increasing the chances of miscommunication. The lack of elements inherent in face-to-face communication further problematizes intercultural communications online by limiting opportunities to give and save face, and to intuit meaning from non-verbal cues. We conclude that electronic communication across cultures presents distinctive challenges, as well as opportunities to course planners

Negotiating cultures in cyberspace

In this paper we report findings of a multidisciplinary study of online participation by culturally diverse participants in a distance adult education course offered in Canada and examine in detail three of the study's findings. First, we explore both the historical and cultural origins of "cyberculture values" as manifested in our findings, using the notions of explicit and implicit enforcement of those values and challenging the assumption that cyberspace is a culture free zone. Second, we examine the notion of cultural gaps between participants in the course and the potential consequences for online communication successes and difficulties. Third, the analysis describes variations in participation frequency as a function of broad cultural groupings in our data. We identify the need for additional research, primarily in the form of larger scale comparisons across cultural groups of patterns of participation and interaction, but also in the form of case studies that can be submitted to microanalyses of the form as well as the content of communicator's participation and interaction online

E/Valuating new media in language development

This paper addresses the need for a new approach to the educational evaluation of software that falls under the rubric "new media" or "multimedia" as distinct from previous generations of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) software. The authors argue that present approaches to CALL software evaluation are not appropriate for a new genre of CALL software distinguished by its shared assumptions about language learning and teaching as well as by its technical design. The paper sketches a research-based program called "E/Valuation" that aims to assist language educators to answer questions about the educational effectiveness of recent multimedia language learning software. The authors suggest that such program needs to take into account not only the nature of the new media and its potential to promote language learning in novel ways, but also current professional knowledge about language learning and teaching

Carbon Fiber Strand Tensile Failure Dynamic Event Characterization

There are few if any clear, visual, and detailed images of carbon fiber strand failures under tension useful for determining mechanisms, sequences of events, different types of failure modes, etc. available to researchers. This makes discussion of physics of failure difficult. It was also desired to find out whether the test article-to-test rig interface (grip) played a part in some failures. These failures have nothing to do with stress rupture failure, thus representing a source of waste for the larger 13-00912 investigation into that specific failure type. Being able to identify or mitigate any competing failure modes would improve the value of the 13-00912 test data. The beginnings of the solution to these problems lay in obtaining images of strand failures useful for understanding physics of failure and the events leading up to failure. Necessary steps include identifying imaging techniques that result in useful data, using those techniques to home in on where in a strand and when in the sequence of events one should obtain imaging data

Falling through the (cultural) gaps?

In this paper we report findings of a study of online participation by culturally diverse participants in a distance adult education course offered in Canada, and examine two of the study’s early findings. First, we explore both the historical and cultural origins of “cyberculture values” as manifested in our findings, using the notions of explicit and implicit enforcement of those values. Second, we examine the notion of “cultural gaps” between participants in the course and the potential consequences for online communication successes and difficulties. We also discuss theoretical perspectives from Sociolinguistics, Applied Linguistics, Genre and Literacy Theory and Aboriginal Education that may shed further light on “cultural gaps” in online communications. Finally, we identify the need for additional research, primarily in the form of larger scale comparisons across cultural groups of patterns of participation and interaction, but also in the form of case studies that can be submitted to microanalyses of the form as well as the content of communicator’s participation and interaction online

Edubba: Multimedia software to support academic writing in English

Edubba is a CD-ROM based environment designed to support the development of academic writing and to a lesser extent, academic reading, for learners who are at an intermediate or higher level of English language development. It derives its title from the ancient Sumerian word for the tablets upon which cuneiform writings were inscribed, as well as the libraries in which those tablets were archived: in short, "a place to write." While Edubba was originally conceived of for use by Junior High school learners and beyond, it has been successfully tested both with slightly younger learners in senior elementary grades and with young adult learners in college labs in Canada