Online discussion is a powerful tool for the development of critical thinking, collaboration, and reflection. However, the effective instructional use of online discussions places new requirements on instructors for skilful facilitation. When the construct of cross-cultural participants is added, the facilitation requirements increase. The purpose of this research was to determine and address the issues and challenges experienced by facilitators who are facilitating crosscultural group discussion activities in an online environment, and to provide strategies facilitators might employ when in this environment. Utilising action research methods of data collection and analysis, this study found that in a cross-cultural online environment, the challenges of the facilitator expand beyond the currently identified range of problems of facilitation. Challenges such as questioning, participation, interpersonal and group dynamics, facilitator expectations and anxieties have surfaced as issues when facilitating in a cross-cultural online environment.

No abstract

Web-based teaching and learning are changing the face of higher education and rapidly becoming commonplace in institutions of higher learning. Web-based courses are being developed at a rapid pace, and faculty are working at a frenzied pace to develop the skills needed to instruct in an on-line environment. These new demands are creating instructional challenges for faculty. In the Faculty Guidefor Moving Teaching and Learning to the Web, Boettcher and Conrad provide a comprehensive guide for faculty on concepts related to moving teaching and learning to an interactive and collaborative Web-based environment. Instead of presenting a "how-to" book on Web-based instruction, the authors focus on integrating technological concepts with teaching and learning. In addition, the authors introduce issues and perspectives for the future surrounding teaching and learning via the Web.Boettcher, the executive director of the Corporation for Research and Educational Networking, and Conrad, an on-line instructor at Florida State University, have assembled a comprehensive monograph about Webbased teaching and learning. These authors have developed the eleven chapters of this monograph so that it can be divided into three parts: theory, practice, and implications for higher education. The first three chapters offer the framework for the monograph by exploring the theoretical principles behind teaching and learning in a Web-based environment. Chapters 4 through 9 offer practical methods and processes for moving teaching and learning to the Web. The concluding two chapters explore implications and the future for higher education by discussing the issues of teaching and learning in a Web environment.Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the Web by presenting a brief history of the Intemet. This chapter also focuses on how the Internet works and how the Web developed. The purpose of this chapter is to help the reader build a "conceptual understanding of the Internet and the Web infrastructure and it clarifies their usefulness for teaching and learning"