Part I: Instructor Collaboration

As we e-mailed one another in the summer of 2000 to plan the first discussion, we agreed on a number of practical matters fairly quickly. To form a discussion group, we agreed to combine one class from each instructor. This gave us two groups each fall and one in the spring. The total number of students in a discussion group was generally about thirty, balanced as evenly as possible between AUC and Rockhurst students. In the first two semesters of our discussion (fall 2000 and spring 2001), we set up simple e-mail distribution lists to which students would click "reply all" to enter the discussion. In our third semester (fall 2001), we were able to set up a threaded discussion on Web Board, run on a server at Rockhurst University.

Although we agreed to make the exchange a valuable and academically oriented one, we were unaware of the toilsome task of selecting culturally acceptable prompts, of the challenge in promoting student awareness in their responses to a live and varied audience, and of the anxiety of following our students through a maze of obvious and not so obvious tensions that ordinarily stem from cultural, intellectual, and political background differences. And in the process of implementing this asynchronous discussion within our respective semester syllabi, we ended up questioning many of the pedagogical ideas we had each taken for granted: our respective academic goals; our expectations of students' responses; and above all the underestimation of a teacher's learning experience in such experiments. We found we had to cope with many factors we hardly began to envisage.

We both agreed that we could unify our discussion with either the theme of journeys (to encourage a cultural exchange) or the topic of cross-cultural communication and dialogue, where they would learn to develop a certain listening ability to the "other" and detect the dangers of poor rhetoric. Dan believed that addressing communication would allow our students to focus on the importance of "speech, argument and the writing process" that forms the basis (the goals) of the courses we teach. However, we had different perspectives on what is "valuable" in the process of achieving our goals. Although Dan’s initial concern was on setting an informal tone for our discussion while focusing on "ideas about language, communication, and writing," Safia's main apprehension was to avert our students' "involvement and preoccupation with the self" were they to be left without a context of reading materials.

Finally a compromise was struck, and we agreed to write prompts for discussion that would begin with brief passages from serious writers such as Constantine Cavafy, Chinua Achebe, and Gregory Bateson. We hoped that these prompts would both elicit thoughtful discussion and allow some personal communications that would reveal a richer exchange in the discovery of each other’s culture.  In the first two semesters, we collaborated on prompts, but for the third and most recent semester, we agreed to go on an alternating schedule for issuing these prompts in order to avoid the time consuming process of collaboration and the ensuing revision. After two semesters, we both perhaps became more sensitive to the goals of the other and were willing to relinquish some control over the individual prompts. The evolution of our process suggests a deepening of understanding and trust that may well be a common pattern in any intercultural relationship that survives its early struggles.

We did not realize once the discussion was launched that we would be so cautious on treading on sensitivities whether religious, political or otherwise, nor did we know the extent of our responsibilities in monitoring those discussion threads.  At one point in our discussion an anonymous writer sent a hate mail to our American students (leaving instructors and Egyptians out of the distribution). One Rockhurst student, who had already sent back a response, forwarded the message to Dan, and he forwarded it to Safia right away. Thanks to the different time zones, we were able to deal with the anonymous e-mail before potentially angry responses fueled themselves into a flaming thread of misunderstanding.

Dan's suggestion was for his students not to respond, especially considering the complete uncertainty of the source. Anyone in the world could have sent it. In no way did Safia wish to ignore the situation, but saw it as a great learning opportunity for our students. While America was asleep, Safia had the chance to meet her students in class and reflect on what had happened. After a fruitful class discussion, the AUC students (who were disturbed by the hate mail) decided to send warm apologetic messages to their Rockhurst classmates before the next sunrise in the Kansas City. Upon waking up all the Rockhurst classmates responded by friendly exchanges of good feelings and a consensus on how no one is ever spared the madness that exists in our world today. After the hate mail, Rockhurst students seemed to understand more poignantly the intensity of feeling regarding Israeli/Palestinian issues, and the Cairo students demonstrated in their responses that reasonable and calm voices can prevail over those of hatred.

There were other minor responsibilities we had to contend to like coaxing some shy or struggling student to join the discussion threads, taking students who dropped out of the course off the list, looking after undeliverable e-mail accounts and other technical problems.

In support of our international discussion, Rockhurst University provided a server and acquired discussion software called Web Board, which we decided to use in our third semester (fall 2001). Though we expected (and did experience) some technical challenges on both ends, we hoped Web Board would be a good fit for our project. It would give the discussion an Internet "location" that students could visit using a standard web browser. Students would be able to see a graphical representation of their discussion threads, and they would have ready access to earlier posts. A central location and a shared history we hoped would give our discussion project a greater sense of community than e-mail.