Sharing Pedagogical Decision-making Online:
Challenge #2

Although it took nearly two years to identify, we did come to see that Americans and South Africans do/did not share a common understanding of digital space. We share some agreement about what digital space makes possible and that the Internet enables faculty and student idea exchanges. But in two different cultures, we actually may “see” the options differently. We consider organizational structures through at least two different worldviews.

This point became particularly visible during the third year of the project when we said we would all post digital photos of our students on the Blackboard site. In the U.S., we simply assumed that the South African group would post to the same places and in the same ways that we would. For weeks, the Americans were asking the South Africans to post their photos, and they had – just not where we had assumed that they would. It took an amazingly long time to realize that we differed in our interpretation of the technology and assignments. Laurel and Hardy style, we often conducted "Who’s on first" e-mail exchanges regarding where, when, and how we would post student work or how often and what students would post online.