Using the Cultura Archives enables students to investigate whether cultural attitudes on certain topics have evolved over time and to compare how students in different courses have responded to the same topics.
Archived Cultura exchanges consist of students' answers to questionnaires and discussion forums. Many of the earlier exchanges are between French and American students, but exchanges in other languages are also available.
Using Cultura Without a Partner
If you use Cultura without an exchange partner, you can approximate an intercultural exchange by using the content of similar language or culture pairings in the archives. To do so:
select one or more archived exchanges to use as a basis for comparison.
create a set of questionnaires for your students using the same prompts as in the archived exchanges.
ask your students answer the questionnaires.
Once your students have answered the questionnaires, have them compare their responses with those in the archives. How are they similar? How do they differ?
Have students look at the archived discussions for each answer. Did they make similar observations or have the same questions as past students?
The content of the archives can be used in many activities. For example, you can ask students to:
- compare their own answers to the questionnaires with some from other classes.
- check whether the answers tend to be similar from year to year or not.
- discuss whether attitudes on either side have changed over the years.
- read forum comments from several semesters and see what questions were posed, how they were answered, and what the students from each culture wrote.