Online Collaboration between Arab and Jewish Students: Fear and Anxiety

Abstract

This study examines students in an online, collaborative, yearlong intercollege course. Arab and Jewish students from five colleges of education in Israel worked in virtual teams. The data includes pre and post questionnaires as well as open ended questions and ongoing reflective journals. The results of the t-test indicated that the perception of other participants  in the group improved significantly among Jewish and Arab participants -4.38. This was backed up by the qualitative data.  Initially, the students expressed apprehension towards working with people from the other culture and fear of leaving their comfort zone.