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Olga K. Basharina

University of New Mexico

NOTES

(1.) Telecollaboration is defined by Belz as "internationally-dispersed learners in parallel language classes using Internet communication tools such as e-mail, synchronous chat, threaded discussion and MOOs ... in order to support social interaction, dialogue, debate and intercultural exchange" (2003, p. 1).

(2.) WebCT courseware was first developed at the University of British Columbia and is now commercially available to public and private schools and universities throughout the world. The courseware has a variety of components including web-based resources and links, an assessment grid, a calendar, private chat-rooms, and an electronic bulletin board. The different components can be put together by the instructor to provide materials and information that are specific to each course.

(3.) On a WebCT bulletin board students' entries can be organized chronologically or in threads that follow a particular theme or topic. Students can see who wrote the latest posting, follow the line of an argument among a group of students, and interject at any point. Each posting includes a student's name, a date a message was posted, and a subject of the message. The instructor and students can use a quote function to incorporate the text from a previous posting in order to comment on it in a new posting. Students can post their academic essays and pictures onto the electronic bulletin board by using an attachment, or by copying and pasting their document onto a message.

(4.) This paper is a part of the broader unpublished dissertation research by Basharina (2005).

(5.) Among the Russian students there were some who came from a rural area and who represented low socioeconomic status. Many Japanese students reported in the interview that they had to work part-time to save money for the trip to Canada. In comparison, the Mexican university brochure described local students as representing the wealthiest socio-economic class.

(6.) The university in Mexico was a modern upper economic status institution for privileged students. The university in Russia was the major university in that region and the Russian students were enrolled in one of the most prestigious departments. The 8-month exchange program at the Canadian university hosted 100 Japanese students and was geared toward development of their English proficiency and intercultural awareness. Only those Japanese students who had high TOEFL scores were allowed to take one or two regular courses with Canadian students; otherwise, they were in "Japanese only" classes. The Japanese students participating in this telecollaboration were from such homogenous classes.

(7.) WebQuest is a research activity, first invented in 1995 at San Diego State University, in which students collect and analyze information using the Internet.

8. Whereas students were evaluated for participation in the project, their participation in the research was volunteer-based and had no bearing on their final grades. Students' and instructors' names were changed and individually identifying information about participants was removed. Within each electronic message all the original formatting, spelling, use of alternate characters, emoticons etc. were left as written by the participants.

(9.) The interviews lasted 40 minutes on average. I interviewed the Japanese students right after the project ended. Most of the Mexican students preferred chat interviews in the private Web-CT chat-room or using MSN software. The remaining Mexican students were interviewed by their instructor face-to-face after the project ended, based on the questions I sent her. I interviewed the Russian students face-to-face upon my arrival in Russia a month after the project ended. The Russian students chose to be interviewed in the Russian language; therefore, all recordings after being transcribed have been translated into English.

(10.) Several Mexican students confirmed that the anti-plagiarism policy was enforced by instructors who came from the US and Canada and by their university policy oriented toward Western standards.

Olga Basharina is an adjunct faculty at the department of Language, Literacy and Socio-Cultural Studies at the University of New Mexico. The interdisciplinary areas of her research interests include language and literacy development in a socio-cultural context, instructional technology, and theory and practice in teacher education.

E-mail: okb@unm.edu Table 1. Types of Data Collected for the Study

# of students

interviewed/surveyed Timeline of the Project Type of Data Japanese Mexican Russian Beginning Language learning &

technology use survey 47 37 39 Middle L-mail & face-to-face

focus interviews 28 31 36 End Intercultural awareness

post-survey 26 37 35

Individual & group