People who have to insert and adapt themselves to a different culture than the
one where they grew up usually experience feelings related to anxiety and
uncertainty. This is exactly the situation of the students who decide to go
abroad to continue their education or make an internship in a foreign country.
The number of these students has been constantly increasing during the last
years. In order to better adapt themselves to the new culture they are
confronted with the Anxiety/Uncertainty Model, states that they have to manage
the levels of anxiety and uncertainty in order to communicate effectively with
local stu- dents and teachers. According to the literature, an effective
communication and intercultural adjustment of the foreign students has a direct
impact on their academic performance. Therefore, it is a relevant task to
support them in this process. This work introduces a geo-collaborative
application called EMHC (for Exploring My Host Country) which run son mobile
devices and allows exchange students to access contextual information as well
as information about cultural behavior which could help them to manage their
anxiety and uncertainty levels, thus improving their ability to adapt
themselves to the new cultural environment. A preliminary evaluation of the
EMHC was performed with a small number of exchange students of a Business
School, obtaining encouraging results.