Sharing culture shock through a collection of experiences

Abstract

Culture shock and cultural adaptation are phenomena that international students experience, while crossing boundaries. On their arrival to the U.S., displaced students from the Third World often feel isolated, afraid, inferior, and insecure. Digital collections can serve as a medium for sharing sensations and experiences. They can help overcome the sense of isolation and culture shock, by illustrating to an individual how others have similar experiences. We are building a digital collection to support this exchange of experiences. In collecting experiences, we found that first person ethnographic interviews are more effective as a method for data collection, when they are conducted with a sense of informality. Woezor, a prototype system, was developed to structure and present these collections, using the Greenstone digital libraries software.