Moving the goal post: How the pandemic changed communication barriers in online course delivery in higher education for culturally diverse settings

When the COVID-19 pandemic mandated the swift shift to fully online learning, it triggered not only large-scale resistance but also upskilling and experimentation in order to meet the urgent demands of the crisis. This paper chronologically and thematically examines literature from 2000 to the present regarding barriers to communication in culturally diverse online delivered classes. Two empirical surveys yielded data which generically correlate with literature findings. However, some of the results fall outside this trend, specifically, the inverse anticipated level of comfort among faculty and students in fully online settings and the dominance of personality over cultural differences hindering communication. We found that pre-pandemic communication barriers have changed in the in-pandemic fully online setting and that some barriers, particular to digital settings, have emerged which were not observed in in-person learning, specifically, the degree to which a camera-on policy for online classes negatively impacted student attendance and participation.