Online cultural exchanges between students of different nationalities may be quite common in this digital age
but expanding and adjusting them to include new and more specialized participants can be a challenging task.
The Online Cultural Exchange Program (OCEP), currently hosted by the University of Miyazaki (Japan) has
been functioning successfully since 2007 (see Araki, Shirasaka, and Larson, 2008), gradually expanding its
scope from nursing students alone to include engineering and agriculture majors, consisting largely of online
written personal introductions and light-hearted cultural exchanges. However, recent planned expansions of the
program into the Faculty of Medicine between the host university in Japan and a new participant in Vietnam
has demanded a re-evaluation of what is expected from the program with regard to its utility for medical
students. In order to develop a focus suited to the academic and professional needs of medical students in both
the hosting university (Miyazaki, Japan) and the new Vietnamese participant (Haiphong University of Medicine
and Pharmacy) a pre-program survey was designed by the authors in order to gauge medical students’
expectations, specific interests, preferences, anxieties, and abilities to fruitfully participate in such a program.
In this paper, some salient results of these surveys are presented, along with the implications of moving the
program towards a more professional and academic focus, and cultural factors that may affect participant
expectations and potential outcomes. We expect that the data generated from these surveys may inform and
influence similar international online exchange and learning programs being established elsewhere
