Research Aim: This PhD thesis is focused on investigating whether culture can pose
conflicts to the communication, collaboration and/or cooperation of multicultural groups
comprised by students coming from South East Europe (SEE) and studying in Greece,
by using synchronous text-based chat. Thus, this PhD attempts to answer the following
research question: "Are there problems of communication, collaboration and
cooperation in multicultural groups engaged in eLearning activities by using
synchronous text-based communication?"
Methodology: In order to investigate the existence of cultural conflicts, the research
design for the study adopted logical positivism as an epistemology through the use of
quasi-experiments. More specifically the research is based on two components:
questionnaires to re-evaluate Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Theory and provide an
initial expectation of the interaction behavior between the students from the cultures
participating; and quasi-experiments to explore multicultural communication conflicts
in the context of a meaningful learning activity. The students, who participated on this
research, were undergraduate students from Computer Science and Business
Administration and Economics departments of CITY Liberal Studies. The students
who volunteered to participate were fourteen Greeks, fourteen FYROMs (Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), four Serbians, four Albanians, and four Bulgarians
were selected. Students were allocated to four monocultural (control) or to four
multicultural groups (experimental). In particular, the students were split into four
control groups (two groups with five (5) students each from FYROM and two groups
with five (5) students each from Greece) and four (4) multicultural groups (having one
student from each nationality).
At the first stage, Hofstede's questionnaires were used in order to provide a better
understanding of the cultural backgrounds of each participant. The dramatic changes
that SEE region faced during the recent years have made the replication of Hofstede's
questionnaires and the re-calculation of new values for each dimension a necessity. At
the second stage, quasi-experiments were performed in order to explore areas of
multicultural communication conflicts. After the identification of the conflicting
multicultural communication areas, through the analysis of logs of communication
during a purposely-designed activity, one-to-one interviews were employed in order to
clarify and further explain the identified communication conflicts that resulted from the
log analysis and their relation to culture.
Research Findings: The outcome of the analysis process showed that although group
communication was interrupted due to cultural misperception, misinterpretation and
misunderstanding it never broke down and the groups were all able to fulfil the goals of
the activity more or less. A summary of the behaviours identified in this PhD thesis (see
section 7.3.3) is described in the next two paragraphs.
Control groups, for instance, groups consisted from students from the same culture, tend
to face less communication problems and develop mechanisms in order to trigger the
involvement of silent members and control the structure of the conversation. Moreover,
control groups showed the tendency to develop the "joyful mood" behaviour that led the
discussion to become informal, causing the disturbance of the group and the failure of
reaching the goal on the given time.
Multicultural groups made the discussion more open in order to include all the different
opinions presented in the discussion formulating a general answer. This behaviour of
"generalizing the answer" exhibited in the multicultural groups led to the development
of communication conflicts by students that were not satisfied by the generalized
answers triggering behaviours like "vitiation of different opinion" having as a result the
disturbance of the group communication for some turns or behaviours like "abrupt end"
having as a result an immediate and coercive agreement of the group members.
Conclusions: By examining the interaction of students in a synchronous eLearning
activity, this PhD concludes that culture influences communication, collaboration and/or
cooperation, even if the cultures of the participants are close. The initial expectations of
the potentially conflicting areas provided from the questionnaire analysis were
confirmed in the group interaction of the participants. Although, communication of the
participants in the activity never broke down, multicultural conflicting areas were
identified, in which the participants demonstrated a delay in providing an answer. These
identified rnulticultural conflicting areas can provide the basis for an analytic tool for
assessing and analysing cross-cultural communication conflicts. The communication
experience, and the collaboration/cooperation of the users of eLearning environments
can be enhanced, by tackling the identified conflicting areas.
Research Limitations: The research was limited in terms of resources and time, which
are the typical characteristics of a PhD study. Limitations in time did not allow the
researcher to test potential solutions on re-runs of the experiments and replicate the
experiment on different institutions and/or different cultures, allowing the results to be
used outside this country's context. Moreover, the small numbers of the participants
used in this research can add further to the problem of generalizing outside the study's
context. Finally, the results could potentially be different if students were participating
in actual eLearning courses from different places such as their home.
Originality and contribution to current research: This PhD study is one of the few
that examines cultural communication problems between students coming from close
cultures with common history and background. On this premise, the findings that
although cannot be generalised can contribute to current research by adding the
consideration of students' cultural backgrounds into the communication elements
offered in e-Learning environments. This PhD provided a first attempt into highlighting
the importance of this consideration even from close/similar cultures. Moreover, the
identified multicultural communication conflicts can be used to identify, prevent and
manage miscommunication in multicultural group discussion. Finally, educational
vendors in their existing e-Learning environments can use the identified conflicting
areas in order to minimise the occurrence of cross-cultural conflicts.