The Role of Democratic Dialogue in Collaborative International Distance Education

Collaborative on-line international learning in higher education offers unique opportunities for faculty to realize the oft-stated university mission of preparing students to understand other cultures in an increasingly interdependent global political economy. An assumed benefit of the international on-line classroom is its potential as an effective forum for democratic dialogue in a globally networked learning (GNL) environment. Democratic dialogue in this context has several meanings. First, for professors, it is a mode of teaching in an international distance-learning class where constant interaction of students is a condition of student success and one of the explicit objectives of the class. Second, for students, it is a method of learning about the topics presented in the course and other societies through learner-centered participation in Student-Led Discussions (SLDs). Third, it employs technology to enhance intercultural learning that is both broadly spontaneous and topically focused in the service of increasing cross-cultural learning and sensitivity. This article describes dialogic pedagogy in an on-line course where students from Australia, Belarus, and the United States came together in an asynchronous distance-learning classroom to study the sociological topic of social control. Content-analyzed data are presented describing how students used the opportunity for open-ended, democratic dialogue with their international classmates to question and inform one another. We conclude from these results that free-form, democratic dialogue in a collaborative on-line international learning environment can successfully promote the instructional goals of international distance education by enhancing cross-cultural sharing of knowledge and opinions among students.