As many higher education institutions strive to internationalize and develop graduates as global citizens, new technologies are supposed to be creating opportunities for geographically dispersed students to meet and develop intercultural skills. We argue, however, that there is scant evidence that these opportunities are being fully exploited. In this article, we explore some of the reasons for this by using the lens of “third space” theories to interpret data from a preliminary study of an international virtual exchange project. We found that although the project afforded some scope for critical intercultural learning, this was limited by two key factors related to the second space of the traditional classroom: the skills and attitudes of the lecturers and asymmetries in project goals. We conclude by arguing that unless higher education institutions provide more fertile conditions for projects like these, further opportunities for intercultural learning will be missed.

随着许多高等教育机构努力使毕业生国际化和发展，使其成为全球公民，新技术应该为地理位置分散的学生创造机会，以了解和发展跨文化技能。但是，我们认为，几乎没有证据表明这些机会已得到充分利用。在本文中，我们通过使用“第三空间”理论的镜头来解释国际虚拟交换项目的初步研究中的数据，从而探究了某些原因。我们发现，尽管该项目为跨文化的学习提供了一定的空间，但这受到与传统课堂第二空间有关的两个关键因素的限制：讲师的技能和态度以及项目目标中的不对称。