It's one of the greatest advantages of living in the information age - immediate, world-wide communication. Professor Sebasian Dubreil's French 432 class is using communication technology to collaborate with an Engineering class in Bordeaux, France.

Both classes are divided into groups of three or four to communicate through video chat to learn more about each other's culture, develop better language skills and to complete a project due at the end of the semester.

Dubreil's French 432 class is studying contemporary French culture and they are collaborating with an English class in a graduate engineering school in Bordeaux, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Electronique, Informatique et Radiocommunications de Bordeaux, or ENSEIRB.

Each Tuesday, Dubreil's class meets in the Language Resource Center in the Humanities Building. The students are divided into groups of 2, and these groups connect to a video chat with the students in Bordeaux.

The students spend the period talking about their different cultures and their upcoming project. It is up to them which language to speak and how to split up the conversation. First-year graduate student in French, Audrey Alston, likes to divide the time between speaking French and English to help everyone's language skills.

"The best way to learn a language is to hear a native speaker," Alston said. "You get to hear everyday talk, and every once in a while we'll correct each other and laugh at each others' accents."

The assignment is very open-ended for the project they must complete. Each group must choose a topic related to the differences in their cultures. Their research must have a clear objective, as they will be using surveys and questionnaires to add to their other research. The groups must also create a web site to display their findings during the semester.

But the most fun comes simply from befriending people from a different country over the Internet.

"We usually end up babbling about random stuff or going off on a tangent," Alston said. "Its exciting to have a chance to do this every week."