Sharing Pedagogical Decision-making Online:
Challenge #3

Blackboard discussions regarding topics such as HIV/AIDS and voting make clear that American students do not share with South Africans the same global awareness or perspective. Neither do the faculty always share the same perspective regarding the purpose and point of online exchange. Naïve and uninformed comments by Americans about HIV/AIDS and Africa (some so egregious they were summarily deleted by an instructor), countered by some particularly conservative comments from South Africans regarding drinking and gay marriage, make clear that each group has a great deal to learn from the other. We also know that, despite these differences, interest and knowledge of music has tended to bridge many of these gaps in worldview.

However, though there were some interesting and even hostile moments, the activity – the generative rhetoric of the exchange – made clear that the discussion board should be the center of the class. The South African focus on email pen pal exchange receded as instructors there came to see how the energy and life of the discussion board was a more fruitful pursuit in this specific context. Likewise, American instructors became more aware of how to introduce politics in their classes as the South African students used the discussion board to make clear their own connections with politics. In other words, each cohort of teachers – the South Africans and the Americans – has been able to use the Sharing Cultures Project to process how they think about and teach with technology. In each of the cases above, it is the student behavior in the larger context of the technology that allows the instructors to shift and adapt their pedagogy. I am of the strong belief that without this sort of cross-cultural interaction, without the discussion board mirroring for us what we do and how we might do things differently, we would not have been able to realize the Sharing Cultures Project as a project that, though relevant to students, is even more crucial to faculty development.