Developing Cultural Awareness through Online Collaboration: the Case of Global Understanding Project

Abstract

The present research work is devoted to examine how global understanding project, through online virtual exchange program would help students to develop their cultural awareness. It undertakes a virtual classroom investigation in the department of English at the University of Tlemcen. This study aims first to investigate students’ attitudes towards this virtual exchange program, and then, examine their performances to see whether they display are culturally aware when interacting with people from different cultural affiliatios. Accordingly, this dissertation is divided into two main chapters; the first one provides a theoretical framework about the related concepts to this research. The second chapter concretises the practical work. Data were collected by means of two main instruments which are classroom observation and semi-structured interview of twenty Algerian students. Findings and conclusions were drawn from the analysis of the data collected through these instruments. In this vein, the results confirmed what was hypothesized in which global understanding project help students to build cultural awareness and it has a positive impact on their attitudes. It also shows that it helps students to be interculturally competent that would help them to cope with different situations