Enabling a cross-cultural collaborative community: networking technologies to form meaningful environments for higher education

We discuss how using multimedia Internet communication tools, including a high-quality video conferencing system, a text-based discussion system, and a network-based display-sharing system, promoted the establishment of an effective learning environment. We found that students studying a second language by using these systems became more motivated not only to acquire communicative language skills for cross-cultural interaction in the classroom, but also to actively implement their acquired skills in relation to their future academic and career choices. Our results also showed that the combination of these tools made the distance between graduate students and their supervising professor almost nonexistent. The main objectives of our project are to implement high-quality, high-fidelity environments for long-distance learning over broadband networks, and to evaluate the impact of such environments on students´ attitudes toward language learning and the effectiveness of distance supervision.