Current and Emerging Trends in Transcultural Blended Learning and Teaching

This chapter serves as the conclusion of the book and outlines some challenges and current and emerging trends related to blended learning and teaching in postsecondary education. The current and emerging trends include, but are not limited to: accelerated blended learning programs for non-traditional adult students, adaptability of blended learning and teaching to diverse disciplines, quality assurance, transnational extent, possible transition to blended learning orienting postsecondary institutions, and the development of self-pace blended courses in postsecondary programs.

Blended Learning

The evolving student expectancy on the quality and accessibility of education has resulted in a new landscape of delivery modes of educational programs. This chapter presents two case studies that demonstrate the blended learning models as a mean to enable students in distributed locations to gain access to programs not otherwise available. The first case is about a mixed-mode course for Aboriginal students in British Columbia where the course format was tailored to be culturally sensitive to the Aboriginal ways of knowing. The second case is about a French Master’s program delivered in a hybrid mode to offer educators in remote parts of Canada access to this specialized degree. By applying the blended learning model, instructional designers assisted in establishing a learner-centered approach rather than an institution-centered approach, which made the programs more inclusive and meaningful for learners.

Facilitating Learning with Adult Students in the Transcultural Classroom

This chapter discusses the “new” college classroom, looking at the profile of an adult student, what is meant by transculturalism, and the implications of the combination of the two. A series of guidelines are offered for facilitating learning for this diverse group of students. While offering a review of some previous empirical research on the issues of adult students, multiculturalism, and transculturalism, this chapter primarily reflects the author’s experiences in working with this population. Also offered are recommendations for future research.

Innovative Approaches in Project Management Blended Education

In recent years, many business education programs have focused on the development of competences, instead of knowledge transfer. For this reason, various innovative training approaches were adopted, including educational simulations. The increasing availability of the simulation resources also contributes to the proliferation of simulation in business education curricula. The chapter presents how the simulations were introduced in a Master degree program on Project Management, in project planning and controlling module. The Master program has a blended-learning approach, which nicely fits to the simulation requirements. The simulations are based on an agent-based model of the project resource leveling process, part of the project planning and scheduling topic. The authors made several evaluations of the students’ results before and after the simulations. The main conclusion of the experiment is that the educational simulations improve the competence development process, only if they are properly designed and performed.

Transformative Learning and Educational Technology Integration in a Post-Totalitarian Context

This study focuses on the professional development experiences of teachers in the Altai Republic, Russian Federation. The Russian educational system is undergoing computerization, and teachers are learning to integrate educational technology into classroom practice. This qualitative study explored the potential perspective transformation experienced by teachers, using multiple sources of evidence (interviews with program and school administrators, school teachers, observation). Findings indicated that teachers are beginning to think and act in new ways based on their experiences with educational technology. Teachers are also collaborating in this learning process, which provides an important support for continued learning and growth. Findings also indicate transformative learning theory (TLT) is a useful framework for exploring transformative learning in this non-Western setting and helped to uncover elements of transformative learning which may be culturally determined.

How Cultural and Learning Style Differences Impact Students’ Learning Preferences in Blended Learning

In teaching introductory statistics to first year students, the Maastricht University uses a blended learning environment that allows them to attune available learning tools to personal preferences and needs, in order to address large diversity in students. That diversity is a direct consequence of a heterogeneous inflow of primarily international students, transferring from different secondary school systems with large differences in prior knowledge, and transferring from very different cultural backgrounds. In this empirical contribution, the authors focus on the role an adaptive online tutorial as component of the blend can play in bridging the consequences of a broad range of differences such as prior mastery of the subject, cultural background, and learning approaches. They do so by investigating the relationships between the intensity of the use of the e-tutorial and students’ characteristics related to nationality, cultural background, learning styles, goal-setting behavior, achievement motivations, self-concept constructs, and subject attitudes.

Transculturality

Students make meaning of the information and knowledge they receive based on their worldviews, prior life experiences, learning styles, personality, values, beliefs, as well their interactions with their academic and non-academic environments. Most of these factors are cultural and can be subject to broad assumptions about what the instructor perceives regarding the profile of any given student. However, making assumptions is not necessarily the smartest way to engage in meaningful interactions. This chapter argues that leaders, administrators, and faculty must not rely on assumptions, but should conceive, plan, and design culture-specific and customizable blended learning and teaching programs or courses, which will enable them to obtain quality learning outcomes and foster student’s transformational experiences. This chapter provides a conceptual framework that will enable to that end.

Exploring Hofstede’s Cultural Dimension Using Hollins’ Structured Dialogue to Attain a Conduit for Effective Intercultural Experiences

The need for better intercultural relations among majority and minority students on university campuses persists largely because of the inability of both groups to understand one another culturally. The surge of hate crimes in 2008-2009, at universities such as Columbia University, University of Maryland, and the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, reawakened attention to the latent existing majority-minority campus tension. In addition, the impetus for increase in the number of diverse students at universities fails to take into account the need for adequate dialogue on diverse cultures necessary for enhanced civil co-existence (at the very least) of majority and minority students on university campuses. Consequently, a six-month study was conducted on a university campus, involving majority and minority students in structured dialogue discussing cultural theory in relation to their life experiences. The qualitative study sought to determine whether increased knowledge of a cultural theory through structured dialogue among diverse students affected college students’ perceptions of intercultural interactions. This chapter reports about the findings and implications for colleges and universities.

Quality Matters in Transcultural Blended Learning and Teaching in Postsecondary Education

Quality matters in transcultural blended learning and teaching in postsecondary education. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce a framework for quality assurance in transcultural blended learning and teaching in postsecondary education. The framework includes a transcultural blend of institutional fitness, teaching effectiveness, and learning outcomes. The institutional outcomes encompass factors such as institutional leadership, administrative and logistic supports, and the accreditation standards. Teaching effectiveness includes the overall curriculum design and the delivery of courses. The learning outcomes concern the knowledge, skills, and behaviors that stakeholders expect students to exhibit after attending a blended learning program or course.

A Critical Perspective on the Challenges for Blended Learning and Teaching in Africa’s Higher Education

This chapter challenges the readers’ thinking forward in some essential areas of educational change driven by the international imperative for Information and Communication technologies (ICT). It grapples realistically but also hopefully and creatively with many of the seemingly intractable difficulties that people involved in African change encounter, especially during this ICT age: Government policy makers and their usually politically handpicked higher-education administrators who see education reform as a national security priority, but, nevertheless, cede the responsibility of not only financing, but also implementing reform to international donors, who seldom serve Africa’s interests, but push their own agendas disguised as global development “aid.” These international “development” agencies inadvertently subvert equity oriented change efforts and substitute them with those of a comprador team of global and local state elite gainers, who push the responsibility of development through the state’s means of coercion down to the local, scarcely funded entities, such as the African higher education institutions (HEI). This wanton, undemocratic devolution or “structural adjustment,” results in the African HEIs, and governments’ extensive and deep-seated failings that make any hope of improvement appear to be far beyond reach. This chapter illustrates how and why that happens and makes suggestions for solutions.