John has raised this a few times and I think we are in danger of overlooking it - so I thought I'd open this page as an area where we can gather information concerning cultural issues.
Since CCK08 was an international and multi-cultural course (do we know how many countries were represented? Moodle participants came from 59 countries: United States 137, Canada 84, Australia 56, United Kingdom 47, Italy 20, Spain 18, Portugal 15, Germany 15, New Zealand 14, Brazil 14, Netherlands 10, Finland 9, Belgium 8, Colombia 8, India 7, Mexico 7, Israel 7, Argentina 6, Venezuela 5, Ireland 5, Iceland 5, Chile 4, Turkey 3, Japan 3, Hungary 3, Denmark 3, Sweden 3, China 3, France, Norway, Greece, Poland, Puerto Rico, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, Philippines, 2 each, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Croatia, Mauritius, Bolivia, Austria, Qatar, Uzbekistan, Uruguay, Ukraine, Sudan, Slovenia, Singapore, Luxembourg, Russian Federation, Indonesia, Peru, Palestinian Territory, Occupied, Nigeria, Viet Nam, Malta, Korea, Republic Of, Serbia, 1 each.), there may also be cultural issues related to whether people chose to communicate in blogs or forums. John - in the Skype chat that we had, you talked about the fact that in some cultures its not done to openly criticise the 'teachers'.
Language was also obviously a big issue for some and may have been a factor in whether they chose to communicate in blogs or forums. There will be other factors too and it might be worth trying to get some quotes from the blogs and forums. We could add them on this page.
I think John's point 1, 3, 4 were more severe than 2 was. And also the effect of the communication barrier was obviously not as severe as I would have expected (and as it was for me, regarding synchronous communication and length of moodle threads). There were quite a few German/ Dutch people on elluminate who obviously did not have such big problems as I did. Mathhias