The rationale
The decision to produce an online option for learning to work cross-culturally resulted from limitations of a classroom-based course. The course was a 3-hour introduction to the topic held for staff in a tertiary institution and the facilitator was dissatisfied with the course for several reasons, mainly because the participants had different needs and because the content most frequently requested (i.e. information about a range of specific cultures) was not available. Resource constraints made it impossible to offer all the different courses people asked for, though the commitment to supporting staff remained.
This online learning option is the first version of the concept. It is widely applicable and we have plans for at least two more stages, depending on feedback and availability of development resources.

Design Principles
Some ideas that informed the design:

• The focus should be on both 'dominant' and ‘other’ groups
• The site should be accessible to all
• The site should involve multimedia elements
• There should be activities as well as information
• The site should move beyond simple transfer of classroom-based content onto the internet
• The site should experiment with the educational potential of interactive and internet technologies

It has been a long and difficult journey to reach this point. We hope the effort was worthwhile.