The Sheffield and BNU project teams had different but complementary motivations for collaboration:

BNU were interested in using social constructivist methodologies, which they saw as relevant to the Chinese context, in the design of the online course, in which the University of Sheffield had particular expertise. Social constructivism and group learning in e-learning was new to them.

The University of Sheffield were particularly interested in learning more about how e-learning is being developed in China, and the Chinese approach to learning design. There were a number of aspects of e-learning in China that were new to the Sheffield team such as the separation of academic expertise from production expertise in the design and development of e-learning, consideration of educational technology as a subject in its own right, the scalability required and the local context for e-learning.

The success of the collaboration depended to a large extent on the acknowledgement of mutual benefit – that the teams would learn from each other and that there would be an inter-cultural exchange of beliefs, theories and practices.

Our different beliefs about e-learning were the focus of our joint project meetings and were examined and adapted through the process of developing and producing joint e-learning materials.