| Connecting the Universal to the Specific: Towards the Global Grid | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1-16 | |
| Christiane Fellbaum; Piek Vossen | |||
| Despite their widespread use in Natural Language Processing applications, lexical databases and wordnets in particular do not yet contribute satisfactorily to the difficult problem of automatic word sense discrimination. Having built a number of lexical databases ourselves, we are keenly aware of still unresolved fundamental theoretical issues. In this paper we examine some of these questions and suggests preliminary answers concerning the nature of lexical elements and the conceptual-semantic and lexical relations that interconnect them. Our perspective is multilingual, and our goal is to formulate a proposal for a "Global Wordnet Grid" that will meet the challenge of mapping the lexicons of many languages in interesting and useful ways. | |||
| Towards a Conceptual Core for Multicultural Processing: A Multilingual Ontology Based on the Swadesh List | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 17-30 | |
| Chu-Ren Huang; Laurent Prévot; I-Li Su; Jia-Fei Hong | |||
| The work presented here is situated in the broader project of creating of
multilingual lexical resources with a focus on Asian languages.
In the paper, we describe the design of the upper-level we are creating for our multi-lingual lexical resources. Among the current efforts devoted to this issue our work put the focus on (i) the language diversity aiming at massively multi-lingual resource, and (ii) the attention devoted to the ontological design of the upper level. Keywords: ontology; lexical resource; multilinguality; Swadesh list | |||
| Conceptual Framework of an Upper Ontology for Describing Linguistic Services | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 31-45 | |
| Yoshihiko Hayashi | |||
| This paper presents a conceptual framework of an upper level ontology for
describing linguistic web services. Such an ontology is urgently required to
develop an efficient language infrastructure on which a tailored linguistic
service can be realized by combining existing general linguistic services
and/or recently developed community-based language resources. The ontology will
serve as a semantic foundation for the descriptions of the technical components
that are inevitably referred to in composite service composition. It will also
facilitate the wrapper generation processes that are unavoidable when a
linguistic service is incorporated into the language infrastructure. The
proposed ontology states that processing resources that may utilize associated
language resources, such as lexicons or corpora, are in themselves, a
linguistic service. This paper also proposes a taxonomy of processing resources
and static language resources and develops a sub-ontology for abstract
linguistic objects, such as meaning, expression, and description. Keywords: service ontology; linguistic service; language resource; processing
resource; NLP tool; language infrastructure | |||
| Formal Ontology of 'Cultures' and 'Ethnic Groups' Based on Type Theory and Functional Programming | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 46-60 | |
| Norihiro Ogata | |||
| This paper will propose formal ontology [7] of 'cultures' and 'ethnic
groups' by type theory with record types, which is implemented by functional
programming such as Objective Caml [12]. The structured entities are
represented by data structures called qualia, culture, and ethnicGroup, based
on fine-grained lexical semantics [16,19]. As a result, we can not only specify
the conceptualizations relating to each culture and ethnic group for knowledge
sharing, but also we can define functions treating and transforming qualia,
culture and ethnicGroup by using a type-theoretical framework including
implementation by functional programming. Keywords: Formal Cultural Ontology; Type Theory; Functional Programming; qualia;
culture; ethnic group | |||
| Capturing a Conceptual Model for Intercultural Collaboration in Copyright Management (A Domain Ontology of International Copyright Laws) | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 61-75 | |
| Wenhuan Lu; Mitsuru Ikeda | |||
| Getting intercultural collaborators to understand critically about the
commonalities and differences between local and foreign copyright legal
knowledge is important in order to facilitate cross-cultural interaction,
learning and appreciation for worldwide resource-sharing. However it is
difficult due to copyright knowledge representation nation-dependent. In this
paper, starting from intention theory, the intention behind law is modeled,
which can be used to reflect the essential meanings of copyright law articles
derived from different countries, as well as the approach in which we can
clarify the commonalities and differences of international copyright laws. A
conceptualization system has been developed to provide semantic level
representation for processing, modeling copyright knowledge and maintaining
consistency using ontological technology. Keywords: law article; intention model; intercultural collaboration | |||
| The Lextype DB: A Web-Based Framework for Supporting Collaborative Multilingual Grammar and Treebank Development | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 76-90 | |
| Chikara Hashimoto; Francis Bond; Dan Flickinger | |||
| We have constructed a web-based framework for collaborative multilingual
grammar and treebank development in which developers are distributed around the
world. It is important for developers of the world-wide collaboration to i)
grasp and share the big picture of the grammar and treebank of each language
and ii) understand commonalities of languages. Our framework, the Lextype DB,
describes lexical types of the grammar and treebank. Lexical types can be seen
as detailed parts-of-speech and are the essence for the two important points
just mentioned. Information about a lexical type that the Lextype DB provides
includes its linguistic characteristics; examples of usage from a treebank; the
way it is implemented in a grammar; and correspondences to major computational
dictionaries. It consists of a database management system and a web-based
interface, and is constructed semi-automatically. Currently, we have applied
the Lextype DB to grammars and treebanks of Japanese and English. Keywords: Multilingual Grammar; Multilingual Treebank; Collaborative Development;
Documentation; Web-based Technology | |||
| Collaborative Platform for Multilingual Resource Development and Intercultural Communication | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 91-102 | |
| Virach Sornlertlamvanich; Thatsanee Charoenporn; Kergrit Robkop; Hitoshi Isahara | |||
| In the present borderless information society, we need a lot of fundamental
linguistic tools as well as the standard reference resources to facilitate our
daily communications across the languages and cultures for better understanding
or smoothing the communications. Online collaborative works are efficiently
conducted among expert groups via many existing services such as Sourceforge,
Wiki or Weblog. However, in the process of multilingual resource development
and intercultural communication we still need to fulfill the requirements in
well-structured design of the database, and communication tools that provide
necessary linkages between records of intention to particular assertions, and
functions to realize selectional preference in case that there are more than
one assertion. In this paper, we propose a new platform, called Knowledge
Unifying Initiator (KUI). We conducted a study on multilingual medical text
collaborative translation and the initiative in Asian WordNet development to
evaluate our proposed platform. Keywords: multilingual resource; intercultural communication; collaborative
translation; WordNet | |||
| Exploiting Aligned Parallel Corpora in Multilingual Studies and Applications | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 103-117 | |
| Dan Tufis | |||
| Parallel corpora encode extremely valuable linguistic knowledge, the
revealing of which is facilitated by the recent advances in multilingual corpus
linguistics. The linguistic decisions made by the human translators in order to
faithfully convey the meaning of the source text can be traced and used as
evidence on linguistic facts which, in a monolingual context, might be
unavailable to (or overlooked by) a computer program. Multilingual
technologies, which to a large extent are language independent, provide a
powerful support for systematic and consistent cross-lingual studies and allow
for easier building of annotated linguistic resources for languages where such
resources are scarce or missing. In this paper we will briefly present some
underlying multilingual technologies and methodologies we developed for
exploiting parallel corpora and we will discuss their relevance for
cross-linguistic studies and applications. Keywords: alignment; annotations; collocations; cross-language studies; disambiguation
(POS and WSD); encoding; parallel corpora; multilingual technologies; tagging;
wordnets | |||
| Multilingual Communication Support Using the Language Grid | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 118-132 | |
| Rieko Inaba; Yohei Murakami; Akiyo Nadamoto; Toru Ishida | |||
| Our proposed "Language Grid" infrastructure supports multilingual
communication by combining in new way language resources, such as machine
translators, morphological analyzers, and dictionaries specific to user
communities. We developed the Language Grid as a language infrastructure on the
Internet. The Language Grid enables user communities to combine two or more
machine translators and their community dictionaries by workflows, and to
easily create new multilingual services specific to the communities. Because
the quality of language services is not often defined, however, we need to
confirm that the created multilingual service is really useful. We need to
extend the process of general usability testing to the multilingual
environment. For example, cooperation between user communities and language
grid providers can significantly improve the accuracy of machine translation:
it turns out that machine translations can be useful for interactive
communication in the field of inter-cultural collaboration. Keywords: Multilingual Communication; Collaboration Tools; Language Grid; Usability | |||
| Hanzi Grid | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 133-145 | |
| Ya-Min Chou; Shu-Kai Hsieh; Chu-Ren Huang | |||
| The long-term historical development and broad geographical variation of
Chinese character (Hanzi/Kanji) has made it a cross-cultural information
sharing platform in East Asia. In this paper, we propose a theoretical
framework for the knowledge representation of Hanzi in the cross-cultural
context. Our proposal is mainly based on two resources: Hantology and
Generative Lexicon Theory. Hantology is a comprehensive Chinese character-based
knowledge resource created to provide a solid foundation both for philological
surveys and language processing tasks, while Generative lexicon theory is
extended to catch the abundant knowledge information of Chinese characters
within its proposed qualia structure. We believe that the proposed theoretical
framework will have great influence on the current research paradigm of Hanzi
studies, and help to shape an emergent model of intercultural collaboration. Keywords: Chinese characters; ontological knowledge resource | |||
| Fostering Intercultural Collaboration: A Web Service Architecture for Cross-Fertilization of Distributed Wordnets | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 146-158 | |
| Francesca Bertagna; Monica Monachini; Claudia Soria; Nicoletta Calzolari; Chu-Ren Huang; Shu-Kai Hsieh; Andrea Marchetti; Maurizio Tesconi | |||
| Enhancing the development of multilingual lexicons is of foremost importance
for intercultural collaboration to take place, as multilingual lexicons are the
cornerstone of several multilingual applications. However, the development and
maintenance of large-scale, robust multilingual dictionaries is a tantalizing
task. In this paper we present a tool, based on a web service architecture,
enabling semi-automatic generation of bilingual lexicons through linking of
distributed monolingual lexical resources. In addition to lexicon development,
the architecture also allows enrichment of monolingual source lexicons through
exploitation of the semantic information encoded in corresponding entries. In
the paper we describe our case study applied to the Italian and Chinese
wordnets, and we illustrate how the architecture can be extended to access
distributed multilingual WordNets over the Internet, paving the way to
exploitation in a cross-lingual framework of the wealth of information built
over the last decade. Keywords: distributed language resources; interoperable lexical resources; integration
of WordNets | |||
| MCD: A Joint Semantic Project on East Asian Languages | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 159-169 | |
| Hong Zhu; Yang Liu | |||
| The Multilingual Concept Dictionary is a NSFC/KOSEF joint project for
natural language processing, now in its second year. The project's key feature
is to merge and align various ontologies and lexical resources of East Asian
languages into a compatible one, especially for Chinese, Korean and Japanese.
This paper as a progress report first introduces our new knowledge
representation method for ontology construction, which is called "Upper
Ontology Tree" plus "Lexical Semantics N-tuples", and then analyzes the design
of our dictionary framework especially the higher-level part, in which Korean
and Japanese ontologies are mapped to the shared semantic hierarchy by
semi-automatic methods. Keywords: Lexical resource; MCD; Multilingual; Ontology | |||
| Designing an Aural Comprehension Aid for Interlingual Communication | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 170-181 | |
| Hideyuki Nakanishi | |||
| This study presents an aural comprehension aid to help Japanese travelers
hear a counter clerk's questions at fast food restaurants in the US. The
prototype of the aid employed a speech recognition method in which a user
assists the speech recognizer of the mobile device. The user presses the
device's button as promptly as possible when missed words were spoken so that
the recognizer perceives the moment, which is utilized for improving
recognition accuracy. More than a hundred dialogs between a Japanese traveler
and fast-food clerks were recorded and used to evaluate the prototype. The
evaluation showed that the proposed method could improve recognition accuracy,
though the improvement was not sufficient for practical use. Keywords: Speech recognition; aural comprehension; mobile device; interlingual
communication | |||
| Parallel-Text Based Support System for Intercultural Communication at Medical Receptions | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 182-192 | |
| Mai Miyabe; Kunikazu Fujii; Tomohiro Shigenobu; Takashi Yoshino | |||
| Differences in languages have to be bridged in order for intercultural
communication to take place. Although the medical field requires highly
accurate translations for promoting intercultural communication, the present
level of support is insufficient. In this paper, we propose a system that uses
parallel texts to support intercultural communication at hospital reception
desks. Using parallel texts that have been translated accurately, the proposed
system can provide this level of intercultural medical communication. We
conducted an experiment to test the effectiveness of the system, which
confirmed that it is possible to provide accurate intercultural communication
using parallel texts. The experiment compared our system with the conventional
system, which uses a printed list of parallel texts, and showed that the
retrieval time of the proposed system is about the same as that of the
conventional system. Keywords: parallel text; intercultural communication; medical reception | |||
| Design and Development of a Pictogram Communication System for Children Around the World | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 193-206 | |
| Toshiyuki Takasaki; Yumiko Mori | |||
| Pangaea develops an intercultural collaboration environment using ICT
(Information and Communication Technology) called the Universal Playground
where children around the world can foster personal bonds regardless of their
location, language, and cultural background, through a playful activity called
"Pangaea Activity." Pangaea is a unique organization in that it has on-going
global fields for local children and has developed its own ICT system. This
case paper reports how the Communicator, the pictogram communication software,
was designed and developed. Development of the software and ICT system comes
together through the Pangaea Activity menu, facilitation know-how, and field
operation flow in order to bring the best performance toward its mission. As
human-resources, funding, and time are limited, internal qualitative
evaluations were conducted actively and quantitative evaluations were done in
cooperation with external research groups. Keywords: pictogram; intercultural communication; graphical user interface; usability;
development process | |||
| Cross-Cultural Study of Avatars' Facial Expressions and Design Considerations Within Asian Countries | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 207-220 | |
| Tomoko Koda | |||
| Avatars are increasingly used to express our emotions in our online
communications. Such avatars are used based on the assumption that avatar
expressions are interpreted universally among any cultures. However, our former
study showed there are cultural differences in interpreting avatar facial
expressions. This paper summarizes the results of cross cultural evaluations of
avatar expressions among five Asian countries. The goals of this study are: 1)
to investigate cultural differences in avatar expression evaluation and apply
findings from Psychological study in human facial expression recognition, 2) to
identify design features that cause cultural differences in avatar facial
expression interpretation. The results confirmed that 1) there are cultural
differences in interpreting avatars' facial expressions among Asian countries,
and the psychological theory that suggests physical proximity affects facial
expression recognition accuracy is also applicable to avatar facial
expressions, 2) use of gestures and gesture marks may sometimes cause
counter-effects in recognizing avatar facial expressions. Keywords: avatar; character; facial expression; cross-culture; network communication | |||
| Culturally-Situated Pictogram Retrieval | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 221-235 | |
| Heeryon Cho; Toru Ishida; Naomi Yamashita; Rieko Inaba; Yumiko Mori; Tomoko Koda | |||
| This paper studies the patterns of cultural differences observed in
pictogram interpretation. We conducted a 14-month online survey in the U.S. and
Japan to ask the meaning of 120 pictograms used in a pictogram communication
system. A total of 935 respondents in the U.S. and 543 respondents in Japan
participated in the survey to submit pictogram interpretations which added up
to compose an average of 147 English interpretations and 97 Japanese
interpretations per pictogram. Three human judges independently analyzed the
English-Japanese pictogram interpretation words, and as a result, 19 pictograms
were found to have culturally different interpretations by two or more judges.
The following patterns of cultural differences in pictogram interpretation were
observed: (1) two cultures share the same underlying concept, but have
different perspectives on the concept, (2) two cultures only partially share
the same underlying concept, and (3) two cultures do not share any common
underlying concept. Keywords: pictogram; interpretation; analysis; cultural difference | |||
| Emotion Eliciting Events in the Workplace: An Intercultural Comparison | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 236-248 | |
| Peter Schneider; Axel Mattenklott | |||
| Different emotional experiences at the work place are evaluated in respect
to their influence on job satisfaction. A sample of 75 Japanese employees and
169 German employees rated their emotional level following daily hassles in the
work place that were attributed on the two dimensions: locus of causality and
controllability. It was predicted that the same attribution pattern of daily
hassles leads to different emotional responses and different levels of job
satisfaction between employees with an interdependent and independent cultural
background. Results indicate that equal attribution patterns of job related
daily hassles lead to different emotional experiences between the two cultural
groups and different levels of job satisfaction. It is argued that while
emotions have a major influence on job satisfaction, this influence is
culturally dependent. One element hereby is the explanation of the work related
daily hassle. Keywords: Daily hassles; attributions; emotions; job satisfaction; German and Japanese
employees | |||
| Intra- and Inter-cultural Collaboration in Science and Engineering | | BIBA | Full-Text | 249-259 | |
| Gary M. Olson; Airong Luo | |||
| Collaboratories that support science and engineering have become more and more common. Unfortunately, many of them experience serious difficulties. Those that involve inter-cultural collaboration are especially problematic. We have identified more than 200 such projects, and have formulated a series of working hypotheses about what factors are associated with success and failure. In this article we review these factors, focusing in particular on those aspects that arise in inter-cultural collaborations. | |||
| Culture and Computers: A Review of the Concept of Culture and Implications for Intercultural Collaborative Online Learning | | BIBA | Full-Text | 260-275 | |
| Ravi Vatrapu; Dan Suthers | |||
| Our research is aimed at a systematic investigation of phenomena in the nexus of culture, technology and learning. The basic premise of our research is that social affordances of technologies might vary along cultural dimensions. In this paper we present a brief overview of the concept of culture. We then discuss empirical findings demonstrating cultural effects on social behavior, communication and cognition and draw implications to online collaborative learning. In the last part of this paper, we present a selective review of research in cross-cultural human computer interaction. | |||
| Adoption of Translation Support Technologies in a Multilingual Work Environment | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 276-290 | |
| Jahna Otterbacher | |||
| We study the adoption of translation support technologies by professors at a
multilingual university, using the framework of the Technology Adoption Model
(TAM). TAM states that a user's perceived usefulness and ease of use for the
technology ultimately determines her actual use of it. Through a survey and a
set of interviews with our subjects, we find that there is evidence for TAM in
the context of translation support tools. However, we also find that user
adoption of these tools is a bit more complicated. Users who are able to
successfully employ these tools have not only developed strategies to overcome
their inaccuracies (e.g. by post-editing machine translated text), they also
often compensate for the weaknesses of a given technology by combining the use
of multiple tools. Keywords: Technology Acceptance; Machine Translation; Electronic Dictionaries;
Multilingual Environments | |||
| Bayesian Belief Network Approach for Analysis of Intercultural Collaboration in Virtual Communities Using Social Capital Theory | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 291-305 | |
| Ben K. Daniel; Gordon I. McCalla; Richard A. Schwier | |||
| We present a Bayesian belief network approach using social capital theory as
a means for addressing issues that are critical to intercultural collaboration
learning in virtual communities. Our work has two contributions; first, we
present a computational approach that can be used for understanding social
capital and intercultural factors critical to the design of virtual
communities. Second, using evidence-based scenarios, we show how the Bayesian
model can be tuned over time as knowledge about the system grows. Keywords: virtual communities; social capital; Bayesian belief network; intercultural
collaboration; awareness; trust; social protocols; knowledge sharing | |||
| Social Conventions and Issues of Space for Distributed Collaboration | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 306-320 | |
| Hillevi Sundholm | |||
| We followed the work of an international research network that holds regular
meetings in technology-enhanced environments. The team is geographically
distributed and to support its collaborative work it uses a set of technical
artifacts, including audio- and videoconferencing systems and a media space. We
have been studying some of the techniques and social conventions the team
develops for its collaboration, and different aspects of what it mean to be
located in a shared but distributed workspace. Our approach has been to analyze
the initiatives and responses made by the team members. Over time the group
created conventions; e.g. the chair introduces team members participating only
by audio and members turn off their microphones when not talking. The latter
convention led to the side effect of faster decision making. We also identified
two characteristics, implicit excluding and explicit including, in a situation
where the majority of the team members were co-located. Keywords: Social conventions; Distributed Collaboration; Co-location; Shared
Workspace; Group-to-group collaboration | |||
| Board-Based Collaboration in Cross-Cultural Pairs | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 321-334 | |
| Gregorio Convertino; Yang Zhang; Brian Asti; Mary Beth Rosson; Susan Mohammed | |||
| This paper reports on an ongoing study of cross-cultural collaboration
mediated by board-based collaborative systems. Twenty-one pairs
(American-Chinese and American-American pairs) performed collaborative design
tasks either face-to-face or remotely. Survey data, video recording, and design
products were collected to examine the impact of Culture (American-American vs.
American-Chinese), Medium (Face-to-Face vs. Computer-Supported), and
Board-based System (Mimio™ vs. SMART Board™) on the process and
outcomes of collaboration. Results from the survey showed significant effects
of these variables on measures of common ground, cognitive consensus building,
perceived performance, and satisfaction. The effects on perceived performance
were robust. American-Chinese pairs reported a significantly lower level of
consensus when using a system that supports unidirectional (Mimio™)
rather than bi-directional (SMART Board™) interaction on the board. Keywords: Culture; Board-Based; Computer-Supported Cooperative Work | |||
| Atoms of Bonding: Communication Components Bridging Children Worldwide (Invited Talk) | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 335-343 | |
| Yumiko Mori | |||
| Connecting children around the world using ICT with the mind of respecting
various cultures and language, NPO Pangaea is challenging to create "universal
playground" where children can feel a bond regardless of their physical
locations, languages spoken, or economic circumstances. We develop Package
consisting contents, or activities, facilitator training program, and net
environment utilizing pictogram designed by adults and children. Two years of
conducting activities, over 100 occasions, to create bonds among children, four
major communication components became apparent. 1) Shared tasks, 2) Shared
personal information, 3) Enjoyable face to face meeting, 4) Attractive
communication method. Lacking any one of these four components, it is difficult
for participants, aged 9-17, to actively seek the opportunities to bond.
Pangaea activities now taking places in Tokyo, Kyoto, Seoul, Vienna, and Kenya,
what works for intercultural communication activities will be presented
focusing on four components. Keywords: Pictogram; intercultural communication; atoms of bonding; CMC; simultaneous
activity | |||
| Teaching HCI: A Challenging Intercultural, Interdisciplinary, Cross-Field Experience | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 344-354 | |
| Cristian Rusu; Virginia Rusu | |||
| The extraordinary development of the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is
still poorly reflected in South America, with the notable exception of Brazil.
Our interest in HCI came from practice, as we have an extensive experience in
software development. We are teaching HCI in a Chilean university (Pontificia
Universidad Católica de Valparaíso) since 2003. Teaching HCI was
a highly challenging intercultural, interdisciplinary, cross-field, but very
rewarding experience. It was an intercultural experience, as we were born,
raised, educated, with work experience both as professionals and professors in
an East-European ex-communist country (Romania), but we taught HCI in a
Latin-American country (Chile). Moreover, we did it in English, for Spanish
speaker students. It was an interdisciplinary experience as HCI is a highly
interdisciplinary science itself. It was a cross-field experience, as it
allowed us to build a bridge between theory and practice. Keywords: Human-Computer Interaction; Computer Science Curricula; Intercultural;
Interdisciplinary | |||
| Inclusive Design Workshop by Regional Cooperation Between an NPO and a University | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 355-367 | |
| Takayuki Shiose; Kentaro Toda; Hiroshi Kawakami; Osamu Katai | |||
| This is a case of running inclusive design workshops. Communication in an
inclusive design workshop is not intercultural collaboration itself. However,
as designers, engineers, and users who have individual needs, such as aged and
disabled people, gather in the workshop, participants may become aware of
differences in individual creation of meanings by communicating with other
participants. Because as individuals our imaginative power is sometimes quite
insufficient, it is not possible to sufficiently analyze such individual needs
without communicating directly. In the inclusive design workshop, participants
cooperate with each other during the design process, revealing differences in
individual creation of meanings. In this paper, we describe some activities of
social-academic cooperation, specifically cases of workshops that were run by
an nonprofit organization (NPO) and a laboratory at Kyoto University. The
former supports aged and disabled people's participation in society and the
latter researches communication by the system theory. Keywords: Inclusive Design; Case Study; Collaboration; University Social Contribution | |||
| How Intercultural Disaster Reduction Education Change Students: A Case Study of an Evening Course Senior High School in Hyogo, Japan | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 368-381 | |
| Yoshie Naya | |||
| The year 2005 was the 10th commemorative year of the Great Hanshin-Awaji
Earthquake. To commemorate the 10th anniversary, one of the evening senior high
schools in Hyogo, Japan tried an on-line intercultural project in the period of
integrated study. Students introduced their own experience of the earthquake on
the web so that those who read their experience may prepare for future
disasters. Six months study of disaster reduction and the participation in the
international conference, 'Natural Disaster Youth Summit' changed the students'
attitude to natural disasters and view to global problems. In this report, the
process of the project and the change of the students' attitude will be
described. Also, theoretical hypothesis of on-line international collaborative
learning will be considered. Keywords: On-line intercultural project; Disaster reduction education; Period of
integrated study; Natural Disaster Youth Summit | |||
| Intercultural Collaboration: Instrumentality of the GLOBE Study | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 382-393 | |
| Mikhail V. Grachev; Mariya A. Bobina | |||
| The paper focuses on and further develops the social attributes of
intercultural collaboration. It introduces the findings of the Russian
component of the GLOBE study (conducted in 62 countries) of manifestation of
culture and leadership in business settings. In reflecting on the findings, the
authors rely on interviewing managers of leading MNCs about cultural dimensions
of Russian business environment, and on reviewing the case of 3M Company that
demonstrates tactics to achieve successful intercultural collaboration. Keywords: Cross-cultural management; multinational companies; intercultural
collaboration; emerging markets; Russia | |||