Multicultural distant education: virtual communities as group models for a peaceful cohabitation

This paper presents a point of some learnings and reflections from the experience of a virtual classroom, within the GETT project, made of 20 Italian students, who worked cooperatively through videoconference and chat and email with some 20 students from your university, and 20 from Lebanon and 20 more from US. Moreover the research faces some critical issues starting from a flash on globalisation and its impact on educational systems; then moving to the knowledge society and presenting the cooperative learning as a model to build international and trans-cultural virtual communities. Focus of the study is the issue of group dynamics in virtual classes, which do play a crucial role in the effectiveness of the VCs themselves. Finally, mentioning some of the most recent studies on the impact hypothesis (Eller & Abrams, 2004; Molina, Wittig & Giang, 2004; Zagefka & Brown, 2002), it is discussed how the GETT project has highlighted similarities between real and virtual groups working to reduce mutual prejudices.