Education without frontiers? International participation in an online astronomy program

Online programs that include international students among their cohort are becoming commonplace. As the leading international online astronomy program, Swinburne Astronomy Online (SAO) is distinctive in that students from the program’s country of origin are in the minority among a cohort located in over 30 countries, taught by instructors who are also located around the world. We discuss factors that have helped make SAO successful internationally, plus issues that arise when teaching astronomy in an international context. This international approach is not as general as it might seem: English is the SAO language of instruction and many of its far flung international students are expatriate English speakers, so non-native English speakers (NNES) are actually in a very small minority. SAO features primarily student lead discussion in asynchronous discussion forums with emphasis on assessment tasks that reward communication skills - design features that may not always be appropriate outside native English speaking cultures. We present results of a survey of NNES participants, plus analysis of their forum contribution rates and performance in assessment tasks. We conclude by briefly raising issues likely to be faced when offering online programs like SAO to international cohorts that include more linguistically and culturally diverse populations of participants.