Film and Media Blog

The Telecollaboration

I was not expecting the group work to be as successful as it was. I thought that we might have more conflicts or misunderstandings because of being an intercultural group, but we had almost none. Everyone was sympathetic and willing to discuss any concerns.

Kristofer Nicolas Ild

The first semester of the master’s programme of Communication Management in Tallinn University started with a course ‘Basics of Intercultural Communication’. The practical work of the class was a telecollaboration project together with the University of Louisiana at Monroe students studying communication. The work consisted of four assignments that we worked in groups for about a three-month period. The assignments were about studying different aspects about the intercultural profile of our group.
I was the only Estonian in the group I was working in. There were three other people that were from the University of Louisiana at Monroe - Americans Brandon and Hannah and Tram, a girl from Vietnam who studies at their university. We first contacted each other via email, but moved from there to Whatsapp, which was for a more casual chat. Eventually we ended up chatting at GroupMe. For meetings we tried different platforms at first, but later stayed on Google Meet, although it was not perfect, because of having a time limit of 60 minutes for meetings.
 

How we made it work
The first challenge of the group work was to find a meeting time that would fit everyone, because the others were in the Central time zone and I in the Eastern Europe time zone. We found that 10 or 11 a.m. for them and 6/7 p.m. for me works best for all of us and all the meetings took place at that time. I personally used “Time Zone Converter” from www.timeanddate.com to calculate the time zone difference of the two locations and get additional information (for example the page informs about the working hours or holidays of the certain places et cetera).
In the beginning, we tended to finish our assignments at the last moment, but ultimately developed a certain working schedule from experience: we had a meeting at the start of an assignment where we discussed how and what we were going to do. Then we set up another meeting and had individual working and researching time between. On the second meeting which was longer and needed multiple Google Meet meetings, we worked together with what we had prepared individually. In the end we put the information together as a presentable assignment and sent it away.
 

What we learned
As we worked, we learned about different aspects of each of our countries and cultures, as well as talking about our own. We learned a bit about each other - our similarities and differences from each other. For example, although Hannah and Brandon were both from the United States of America, their background was different. Brandon talked about how it was different and how it shaped him where he grew up and Hannah has often mentioned her Mexican relationship and how it has influenced Christmas traditions in the family. Tram on the other hand was totally from another part of the world for all of us, but at the same time studying in the United States. One of the first things I remember that someone asked from her was how she would describe the differences between Vietnam and the USA and how she adapted to the new place.
Besides that, the work also showed how all of us are in a way or another shaped by our cultural background that we learned from the course. For example, I think that what Hofstede described with his cultural dimensions about the USA, Vietnam or Estonia were very similar to what we analyzed about ourselves. I think that we all personally agreed with the results and explained further.
It's melancholy to think that we developed friendships without ever meeting in real life, and after class we'll probably never meet or talk again. I think that we were enjoying spending time together. That was illustrated by how we started to talk about other things besides our assignment as well. I would even say that it was the most successful teamwork experience I have ever had. I am very thankful to my group members and professors for the good experience.