I Introduction
Cultura is a Web-based, intercultural project situated in a language class, that connects American students with other students in different countries. Designed and created in 1997 by a team from the French Section at MIT (Gilberte Furstenberg, Sabine Levet and Shoggy Waryn), and developed thanks to an initial grant from the Consortium for Foreign Language Teaching and Learning and a subsequent one from the National Endowment for the Humanities, it was originally created as an exchange between American and French students. Cultura has since been adapted to other schools and languages, connecting students in the US with students in Germany, Italy, Mexico, Russia and Spain.

Cultura is not the only Web-based intercultural project of its kind, but it is particularly well-known for its pedagogically sound design, approach and methodology, allowing students from different cultures to gradually construct together, via a common Website and a computer-mediated exchange, a deeper understanding of each other’s cultural attitudes, beliefs and values.

II Rationale
It has become commonplace to say that our world is now a global one, and that our students will increasingly find themselves working for transnational companies. This means that they will need to learn how to interact and communicate across cultures. In order for their interactions to be successful, our current students will need to know and understand the different cultural value systems that shape the thoughts and actions of people in other cultures. We, language teachers, are particularly well-positioned to play a key role in helping our students understand another culture since we teach both language and culture. However, more often than not we tend, in our language classes, to focus our attention on developing our students' linguistic skills and we spend rather limited time developing their understanding of the "foreign" culture. Cultura is an attempt to make culture the focus of the language class, so as to respond to the increasing needs of our students within our global world.

III Goals and approach
Goals
The objective of Cultura is to help our students develop understanding of the values, attitudes, beliefs and concepts inherent in another culture; to understand how people in the other culture interact, look at the world and frame their thoughts and ideas. Those goals are epitomized by a phrase from Marcel Proust, which serves as a beacon to our project:

"La seule véritable exploration, la seule vraie fontaine de Jouvence, ne serait pas de visiter des terres étrangères mais de posséder d'autres yeux, de regarder l'univers à travers les yeux des autres"
  (Translation: "The only true exploration, the only true fountain of youth would not be to visit foreign lands, but to possess other eyes, to look at the universe through the eyes of others").

That dimension of culture is a very difficult one to teach because it is very elusive, abstract, implicit and essentially invisible. The famous American anthropologist Edward Hall referred to it as “the silent language”, the “hidden dimension”.

Approach
One approach that seemed to us full of promise was to start with the idea of cultural comparisons. As is well-known, comparing and contrasting similar documents from two cultures - through the simple process of juxtaposition - makes it possible to see differences and similarities that would not otherwise be visible. It allows users to start "seeing", for instance, the different values given to words, the negative or positive connotations, the various attitudes toward events or situations, etc.. It constitutes the first step toward deciphering and understanding what these differences may reveal and signify.

What Cultura offers is a cross-cultural approach which has students taking, for instance, a French class in the US and students taking an English class in France: observe, compare and analyze similar materials from their respective cultures, make observations and draw preliminary hypotheses, then exchange viewpoints with each other, via on-line forums, so as to test their initial hypotheses and develop a more in-depth understanding of the nature and origin of the differences they have observed.

Cultura offers learners and teachers alike, on both sides of the Atlantic, a new concrete and dynamic methodology for learning about another culture. It is up to you to decide at what level you want to use it.

IV Content
Following a common calendar, students explore together a variety of materials that progressively broaden their scope of inquiry. They include (for the French version):

Three questionnaires: (Word Associations, Sentence completions and Reactions to hypothetical situations) that are designed to highlight cultural differences pertaining to concepts and modes of interactions between people in a variety of contexts. Once compiled, the students’ answers constitute the first material to be explored. The fact that these answers have been generated by the students themselves ensures their direct involvement and thus their allegiance to this intercultural adventure from the start.

Data: Access to such materials allows students to weigh and evaluate their initial findings against a national, therefore much broader socio-cultural context.

Films: The comparison of French films with their American remakes provides students with another medium with which to observe cultural differences, adding a visual and cinematic dimension to their domains of exploration.

Images: The content of this module is provided by the students themselves. Working in intercultural pairs, they upload on the site images or videos that illustrate topics of their choosing, which they then compare and analyze.

Newsstand: Access to a variety of French and American newspapers and magazines allows students to compare how one same international event, is portrayed, for instance, in Le Monde and The New York Times.

Library: This module provides students with a variety of seminal and founding texts from both countries as well as literary, historical, sociological and philosophical excerpts from works by American authors about France and French authors about the U.S.

Archives: These include the answers to the questionnaires as well as all the related forums from the MIT-based French exchanges that have taken place between 1997 and 2006. They also incorporate one exchange between Brown University and the Institut National des Communications and one between one French and one American high school.

Note: the content of the above modules is periodically updated.

Study of language
Cultura focuses on developing students’ cultural understanding. However, the study of language remains an intrinsic part of the course. Since the intercultural partners answer the questionnaires and communicate on the forums in their native language, students and teachers alike can access a rich source of authentic vocabulary, grammar and discourse. That work on language may take different forms, depending on the level (intermediate or advanced) at which Cultura is used.