The continuous growth of online learning and its movement towards cross-border and cross-culture education has recently taken a new turn with the epic hype that currently surrounds the development of massive open online courses (MOOCs) (Beattie-Moss, 2013). This development brings to focus the experiences of international students who take online courses designed and offered within the paradigm of Western pedagogy.

This article describes the anatomy and dynamics of an online professional development activity, the Moodle fishbowl. The fishbowl was designed as an opportunity for experienced EFL educators to witness and make sense of instructional conversation strategies that they might themselves use as they migrate their EFL courses to blended and eventually fully online venues, venues where the roles and dynamics of interaction are decidedly different than those in the live classroom. A major emphasis in this professional development sequence was to raise faculty awareness of the unique affordances on which they, as experienced language educators, might capitalize through observation of authentic examples of responsive online instructional strategies. To that end, three-week-long collaborations were established between participating faculty's EFL students and a ‘cultural expert’ in the US. The cultural experts were doctoral students in language technology who employed instructional conversation strategies with the EFL students as part of informal, authentic asynchronous threaded discourse topics. The role of the faculty in training was to observe these conversations by looking into the metaphorical fishbowl, reflect on the anatomy and impact of these online instructional conversations, and report back to the group as a whole. The following narrates the rationale, processes and outcomes of this Moodle fishbowl professional development sequence and suggests future considerations in supporting language educators as they move some or all of their instruction online.

The growing demand for higher education worldwide, along with global expansion of telecommunication technologies, give online distance education a potential world-wide reach for institutions in many countries. Given the persistent international digital divide and the potential for the host institutions and languages to be those of wealthy, industrialized countries, international online distance higher education (IODHE) has great potential for educational and cultural imperialism. Therefore institutions contemplating expansion into international distance education must accommodate a number of changes that would enable building the safe learning/teaching environment needed for the development of a successful course. Drawing on literature of domestic and international online teaching and learning, multicultural studies, as well as personal international teaching and learning experience, the authors examine four domains where these changes are of critical importance: 1) host institution, 2) technology, 3) learning models of students, and 4) teaching models of faculty. The paper discusses issues and practices in each of these domains and offers general recommendations for institutions participating or planning to participate in cross-border/cross-culture online education.

As more distance education courses broaden their reach across borders, the chances of online classes being multicultural are high. This means that more often students may find themselves in courses designed for and by a host culture that differs from their own regarding its approach to teaching and learning. Compounding the difficulties inherent in a novel cultural environment and its unfamiliar forms of academic discourse are challenges represented by the medium itself. This year-long case study examines the experiences and reflections of a Chinese graduate student and her U.S. instructor; specifically the accommodations both made to mediate differences and mitigate these challenges. Analyses suggest that when both parties take differences into account and exercise thoughtful accommodations relative to both the challenges of the online medium and language socialization, positive learning experiences can result.

At this moment, fully online language courses are being taught all around the globe. In addition, blended courses offer an integration of online and live instructional experiences. This study examines who is instructing online language courses and what they point to as additive and advantageous to their online language teaching development. We set out to survey higher education faculty as to how they developed their knowledge and practices. Through an online survey and follow-up synchronous interviews, we asked practicing online language educators about the sources of their expertise. The resulting dataset has much to inform professional development and instructional support generally, as well as broader research and educator communities regarding the ongoing, open-ended, peer-supported, and social nature of this kind of educator learning. As more language educators move their instruction online, the question of how to maximize the pedagogical potential of the new medium can best be addressed by those who have successfully made and embraced this move.