Nittaya Campbell

Abstract

As organizations become increasingly globalized and workforces increasingly culturally diverse, the use of "global virtual teams" is becoming more and more common. To be prepared to work in such a team, students need to develop skills in both intercultural communication and the use of modern computer technologies. This paper reports on a project that involved intercultural communication students in the U.S.A. and New Zealand corresponding through email. The aim was to enhance their intercultural communication learning with an experience of actually crossing cultural borders and of handling a popular computer technology to communicate in a virtual environment. Results and implications of the study are discussed.

Keywords: global virtual teams, email correspondence, intercultural communication project, experiential learning