Cross-Cultural Comparison of Student Perceptions and Performance in a Multicultural, Interdisciplinary and Bilingual Online Educational Project

Theoretical Framework

An increasingly number of European universities is offering courses taught in foreign languages, exposing students to teaching of several contents through the medium of a foreign language (Wilkinson, 2004). This approach has been named Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and is considered as a suitable way to improve students’ command of foreign languages without devoting too much time to their teaching. In addition to the benefits related to language skills, the CLIL is believed to help prepare students for internationalization, and to enhance students’ intercultural communicative competence (Coyle, 2008; Marsh, 2008).

In order to develop students’ communication skills it is crucial to create a classroom environment that enables students’ interactions. In this regard, peer-to-peer e-learning activities have proved to be more efficient, effective and satisfactory for students in comparison to alternative activities and/or environments (e.g. Rada, 1998; Chiu, 2007). In particular, it has been considered as an excellent vehicle for culture learning (Griffith, 2007; Müllering and Ritter, 2008) and cultural interchanges (O’Dowd, 2007).