Culturally Sensitive Instructional Design Principles for Online Learning Environments

Distance education and e-learning practices are preferred by increasing number of people and institutions in the recent years all around the globe. It's clear that there are different interests, expectations, needs, characteristics, and backgrounds of participants in these learning environments. In this connection, it is important that courses are designed, taking cultural diversity into account, optimizing self-learning in such environments. The instructional designs that support multiculturalism in learning environments, lead to more efficient learning. Based on the awareness about cultural diversity, this chapter focuses on culturally sensitive instructional design principles for online learning environments. Firstly, “culture” as a concept and its components, based on various prominent definitions in literature are given. Then, the design principles are discussed with a critical look on online learning environments, with an eye to different theories and studies of leading researchers in the field.

Interaction in Distance Education

Education is a product of the objects and actors in the process of interaction. Interaction is, therefore, an important factor that affects the quality and sustainability of education. For this reason, this section will focus on interaction and its theories and approaches which are a popular and versatile concept in distance education. In the first part of the chapter, the concept of interaction will be discussed with different dimensions and components. Interaction in the following section will be examined within the framework of Moore's Theory of Transactional Distance, Anderson's Interaction Equivalency Theorem, and Gorsky and Caspi's Theory of Instructional Dialogue. At the end of the chapter, the nature of the interaction in distance learning will be discussed in the context of the studies on instructional dialogue and the cross-cultural comparisons will be addressed to the issue of the role of interaction in distance settings.

Evaluating Trends and Issues in Distance Learning

Today's learners are intrinsically motivated in that they are apt to analyze, synthesize, internalize, rebuild, share, and disseminate knowledge not only with their instructors, but also their peers, and the greater community, including a plethora of learning communities from across the world. Web-based technologies play a key role in this learning process. Particularly online social media networks and mobile technologies, the two selected technology trends evaluated in this paper, are thriving in online learning/teaching settings, immensely helping students acquire valid learning gains. These technologies are not a fad, a myth, or talk-of-the-day in learning and teaching environments in any given discipline. With that said, there are also certain issues and challenges that accompany these media and technologies for learning and teaching practices, which will also be addressed in this paper. Finally, future implications on these trends and issues in DL will be further discussed with the hope that educational leaders can draw on them for further inquiry and development in the field.

A Futurist Approach for Open and Distance 21st Century Learners

The future of education is being shaped today. The learners of 21st Century have many options to reach information. Accessing information is not that difficult as that of the past. Today's individuals can readily access meaningful information even from their wearable technologies like smart watches or glasses. A redefinition for education is inevitable in this age of technology and at this point open and distance education is one spearhead compared to face-to-face education. Open and distance learning gives the learners of 21st Century the chance to make use of the technologies of today as well. This chapter aims to draw an outline about the learners of the 21st century, their innate skills, the learning environment they are in and how to benefit from open and distance education in 21st Century.

Towards a Transcultural Approach in Online Learning

The term culture is used in many different contexts, such as corporate culture, sports culture, food culture, institutional culture, learning culture and so on. However, it is usually considered to be associated with national or ethnic identity of people. As there have recently been enormous shifts in the technological and social fronts, new cultural competences are needed so as to overcome the challenges and make use of the opportunities that came up as a result of these advancements. This chapter, thus, presents the changes the concept of culture has gone through in time and focuses on some cultural meta-models along with highlighting Seven Dimensions of Culture Model. Transculturalism is explained in detail based on the current literature and introduced as an alternative to former models of culture, interculturalism and multiculturalism, for better understanding of cultural diversity in online learning and embracing the intermixing and hybrid nature of it for more effective learning experiences.

Culture, Technology, and Education in the Digital Age

The accumulation of information formed by the scientific studies whose foundation stones were put during the Enlightenment period, caused the Industrial Revolution. The most important feature of the modern era was to have a deterministic science approach. The period we are in is called the Postmodern Era. General and Special Relativity Theories, new findings in Quantum Physics and the advances in communication technology caused deep and rooted social, cultural, political and economic change and transformation, and ultimately led to a significant paradigm change. The most important feature of this period is that it has a Relative science approach. While change and transformation are continuing, it is not enough to simply feel and be aware of the rapid change and transformation of culture, education and training. In this study, changes and transformations during the Renaissance up to the present has been tried to be indicated by the results of scientific studies.

Cultural Lessons Learned During the Development and Implementation of an International Distance Learning Program

With the increase of global online and distance education programs, it is inevitable that cultural challenges will emerge. These cultural conflicts can be overcome by investigating obstacles with the technical aspects of building a cross-cultural program and by designing and delivering culturally appropriate and sensitive courses. This chapter explores how cultural variables and perspectives might influence student learning in cross-national distance education program collaborations. Specific cultural lessons learned during the development, formation, and administration of an international distance learning Master's program in Instructional Technology are presented. Strategies that were utilized to sustain the program are also discussed. These challenges, lessons, and strategies are framed by current theoretical models that highlight the need for stronger cultural awareness and understanding in this type of collaboration.

Cultural Diversity and Accreditation

The expansion of distance education in higher education world-wide has brought forth the issue of quality assurance and evaluation processes for institutions and programmes. Though quality is a perception about the performance in products and services offered, it is expected to be shaped through mutual consent in the eyes of internal and external stakeholders of the institutions. Despite the different needs, social contexts and cultures of higher education institutions, general standards have been developed to guide distance education providers in their quest. This paper concentrates on external evaluation pillar of quality assurance that is accreditation according to American, European and Asian perspectives and tries to explain the shared understanding about quality in higher education in the face of cultural diversity. A case-study, the quality journey of Anadolu University, Open Education System is described as an example of different ways leading to the same target.

Educational Computer Games in Math Teaching

In this study, the effect of educational computer games on students' academic success and their attitudes towards mathematics were investigated. The study was designed as a mixed method. The results revealed that after the implementation, no significant variation was observed between both groups in terms of academic test scores and attitude points. However, qualitative findings indicated that students in the experimental group got more pleasure from the lessons and their attitudes towards mathematics were positively affected. Also, educational computer games are effective learning tools and create a positive affirmation on students. Although this study was conducted in the face to face classrooms, the findings would be transferred to other learning settings such as distance and online education. Therefore, the experience obtained from such technologically enriched learning environments is discussed in the context of distance and online learning.

Designing Culturally Sensitive Massive Open Online Courses

Since cultural characteristics of the learners is among the factors that affect the quality of learning experiences, designing the online learning environment sensitive to the cultural characteristics of learners is a must for ensuring an effective and engaging learning experience. The MOOCs movement has helped administrators, designers, educators, learners and all the other stakeholders re-consider our current instructional, assessment and administrative processes, especially in higher education. The goal of this manuscript has three folds: first, it briefs development of the philosophy of openness in higher education globally; then, based-on available literature it draws a picture about the effects of culture on open and distance learning; later, the manuscript provides an insight about the general cultural characteristics of Turkish society and the learning culture shaped by the past and present implementations; finally, it lists a number of recommendations for those who are designing MOOCs for Turkish audience.