Dealing with cultural differences in a 3D virtual classroom: a case study of constructing a virtual Tower of Babel

The collaboration project described in this paper involved students across three cooperating institutions, on three different continents in different time zones, building a virtual Tower of Babel in a 3D Collaborative Virtual Environment (3D CVE). Much Information and Communication Technology work today involves international collaboration. This requires cross-cultural understandings with one's co-collaborators, but there are few opportunities for this to occur in a pedagogical setting. Therefore, this paper outlines a pedagogically oriented case study of the use of a 3D CVE as a multicultural collaborative classroom.