When Cultures Meet in Blended Learning

Author(s):  
Chun Hu

This chapter presents a literature review of the blended learning projects that involved learners from different cultures. The studies reviewed essentially addressed two issues: the feasibility of cross-cultural blended learning and leaner differences in such a learning environment. While the studies overwhelmingly reported the benefits of using the Internet to create opportunities for students to learn with peers from other cultures, they also highlighted issues of cultural impact on learner behaviors. Learner differences reported included approaches to asking questions, collaborating with others and preferences in the way they made use of technologies. Patterns emerged from the review, implying some design considerations for planning cross-cultural blended learning. It seems that successful cross-cultural blended learning programs need committed teaching teams who make decisions on curriculum choices, learning tasks and assessments, and which technology tools to use; and who skillfully handle issues of language barriers, project management, and preparation of learners.

Author(s):  
Nargis - ◽  
Imtihan - Hanim

The different cultures, power distance could be the obstacle in intercultural communication. The aim of this research to identify the types of Cross-Cultural Communication Style Choice between British and American in the Leap Year movie. The researchers attempt to reveal kinds of Cross-Cultural Communication Style Choice between Declan as British and Anna as American for three days. This Qualitative research method analyses data of utterances and are classified into four types of Cross-Cultural Communication Style Choice. The result shows that there are 356 utterances of Anna and Declan. for three days. Anna has 204 utterances with 44,3 % direct style and indirect 5,8 %.. Declan uses 155 utterance with 37 % and 12 % indirect style. British tend to use more indirect styles in expressing their intention to save the interlocutor’s face.Meanwhile, American use direct styles to reveal their intentions as they belong to the high culture communication.Key words: across culture communication,direct style, indirectstyle


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Mohamed ◽  
Tobin Porterfield ◽  
Joyram Chakraborty

Purpose This study aims to examine the impact of cultural familiarity with images on the memorability of recognition-based graphical password (RBG-P). Design/methodology/approach The researchers used a between-group design with two groups of 50 participants from China and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, using a webtool and two questionnaires to test two hypotheses in a four-week long study. Findings The results showed that culture has significant effects on RBG-P memorability, including both recognition and recall of images. It was also found that the login success rate depreciated quickly as time progressed, which indicates the memory decay and its effects on the visual memory. Research limitations/implications Collectively, these results can be used to design universal RBG-Ps with maximal password deflection points. For better cross-cultural designs, designers must allow users from different cultures to personalize their image selections based on their own cultures. Practical implications The RBG-P interfaces developed without consideration for users’ cultures may lead to the construction of passwords that are difficult to memorize and easy to attack. Thus, the incorporation of cultural images is indispensable for improving the authentication posture. Social implications The development of RBG-P with cultural considerations will make it easy for the user population to remember the password and make it more expensive for the intruder to attack. Originality/value This study provides an insight for RBG-P developers to produce a graphical password platform that increases the memorability factor.


1975 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-506 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Teague Ashton

Over the last twenty-five years children around the world have observed and responded to researchers who pour water from beaker to beaker, roll plasticene into snake-like figures, and arrange matchsticks into a potpourri of shapes. These cross-cultural experiments have been undertaken to test Piaget's theory of genetic epistemology, which posits a hierarchical, universal, and invariant sequence of stages of cognitive development. Piagetian research in varying cultures has revealed both striking similarities and marked differences in performance on cognitive tasks, some in apparent conflict with the basic assumptions of Piagetian stage theory. In this article Professor Ashton reviews a range of cross-cultural Piagetian research, analyzes the sometimes divergent findings from this research, and suggests methodological improvements which may help to resolve past dilemmas and to further future understanding of cognitive growth in different cultures.


Robotics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Trovato ◽  
Cesar Lucho ◽  
Renato Paredes

The assignment of gender to robots is a debatable topic. Subtle aspects related to gender, in a robot’s appearance, may create biased expectations of the robot’s abilities and influence user acceptance. The present research is a cross-cultural study involving more than 150 participants to investigate the perception of gender in robot design by manipulating body proportions. We are focusing specifically on the contrast between two extremely different cultures: Peruvian and Japanese. From the survey based on stimuli varying in the proportion between chest, waist, and hips, the results indicate the importance of chest-to-hip ratio and waist-to-hip ratio in the attribution of gender to robots.


2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 207-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Keisling

Purpose Because many colleges and universities have growing numbers of students in online and blended programs, libraries should adapt their services and adjust their organizational structures to support them. Students have adopted blended learning programs whether or not the programs are officially designed as blended programs. Libraries need to change their service orientation in response and learn to scale services using available technologies. Scaling services and personnel resources also requires developing a scalable organizational learning culture. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach Using a change in support for online/distance students and organizational restructuring in Ekstrom Library at the University of Louisville as a case study, this paper examines the review process, organizational restructuring, and focus on scaling services that resulted in a new service model. Findings This study found that scaling services as applied to IT and business organizations is also valuable as an approach in enhancing library services to online students. Changing user needs must be correlated with available organizational resources and technological solutions to deliver appropriate services. Modifying and building services with a goal of scaling them to appropriate levels will enhance library outcomes. Research limitations/implications Other case studies concerned with responding to changing student expectations and scaling services and organizational resources would be useful to add to these findings. Originality/value The perspectives and approach described in this case study will be instructive for adapting library services to changing user environments.


2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Annalie Botha

From “How was your day?” to “Remember the time we …”, we use stories as a way to share our experiences, understandings and concerns with others. Stories extend our knowledge and understanding of other people and situations, other culturesand languages by including the emotional expressions of factual information. When so much of family and community life in South Africa remains insular and disconnected from other cultures, other languages and other belief systems, storiescan extend boundaries beyond our single perspectives and experiences to the varying perspectives of others. This becomes particularly important for teachers of young children who may have very different life experiences from those of the children they teach. In this project, we examined storytelling as a way to cross-cultural boundaries and of harnessing the diverse worlds of South African citizens pedagogically. We asked fourth year students in a Foundation Phase teacher education programme to identify a person from a different cultural and linguistic group; and to have that person share a story with them to discover how the experience of listening to stories from different cultures, languages, and belief systems might influence their attitudes towards teaching children with those characteristic differences.


Author(s):  
Piyaporn Nurarak ◽  
Shiori Sasaki ◽  
Irene Erlyn Wina Rachmawan ◽  
Yasushi Kiyoki

Cross-cultural religious tourism is computational to promote cross-cultural communication and understanding according to impression distance. Our motivation to implement semantic search with an emotion-oriented context into the proposed system is to realize global tourism recommendations expressed in different cultures. The objectives of this paper are (1) to find the religious places by using the tourist’s emotional distance, (2) to find similar religious places not only in the same culture but also in the different cultures with the tourist’s emotional distance calculations. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and applicability of this method.


Author(s):  
В.И. Казаренков ◽  
М.М. Карнелович

Проблема межкультурного взаимодействия приобретает особую актуальность в связи с процессом интернационализации высшего образования. В ситуации межличностного взаимодействия студенты — представители разных культур являются субъектами самопрезентации их этнической идентичности. В связи с высокой прикладной значимостью проблемы эффективного и толерантного взаимодействия студентов в условиях поликультурной образовательной среды была выдвинута и подвергнута эмпирической проверке гипотеза о связи этнической идентичности и самопрезентации студентов, являющихся представителями разных культурных групп — русской, белорусской, туркменской и индийской. Цель работы — эмпирически выявить специфические особенности взаимосвязи типа этнической идентичности и тактик самопрезентации у студентов разных культурных групп в межличностном взаимодействии. В исследовании определены содержание и направленность связи между типами этнической идентичности — позитивной, нигилистичной, индифферентной, фанатичной, эгоистичной — с защитными и ассертивными стратегиями самопредъявления студентов. Предлагается обзор программы тренинга самопрезентации, направленного на коррекцию неадаптивных способов самопредъявления и формирование эффективных стратегий самопрезентации студентов в межличностном взаимодействии с представителями иных культурных групп. Результаты исследования представляют интерес для специалистов в области кросс-культурной коммуникации, этнической психологии и психологии личности. The issue of intercultural communication is gaining relevance because of the process of higher education internationalization. In situations of interpersonal communication, students, representatives of different cultures, define themselves and their ethnic identity. The investigation of students’ efficient and tolerant interaction in the conditions of multicultural learning environments enables the authors of the research to put forward a hypothesis that students’ ethnic identity is closely related to their self-presentation in multicultural groups (Russian, Belorussian, Turkmen, and Indian). The aim of the research is to empirically single out some specific peculiarities of students’ ethnic identity and self-presentation strategies in interpersonal communication. The research defines the content and the interconnection between ethnic identity — positive, nihilist, indifferent, fanatical, selfish — and protective and assertive strategies of students’ self-presentation. The article presents an overview of a self-presentation training course aimed at the correction of nonadaptive means of self-presentation and the formation of efficient strategies of self-presentation in interpersonal communication with representatives of other cultural groups. The results of the research may be useful for specialists in the sphere of cross-cultural communication, ethnic psychology and personal psychology.


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