Eight cross-cultural groups of four or five students were formed. The groups were formed by the students; the only requirement was that the groups should be composed of students from as different universities as possible. As a result most of the groups formed had one student from each site with a total of four students and a few had one student from three sites and two from the fourth with a total of five students. The collaborative task given to the groups was to develop a questionnaire (i.e. artifact) with reference to the key concepts “cross-cultural comparisons” and “e-learning”. Given the heterogeneous backgrounds of the students and the objective of promoting self-directed learning, it was considered important to give students freedom to specify the exact scope and title of the questionnaire.