Documentation:Cultural Issues in Teaching Online/Intercultural Challenges in Learning Online

Intercultural Challenges in Learning Online

Culture and language are intimately interdependent. Singer (1998) describes language as:

...a manifestation – verbal or otherwise – of the perceptions which the group holds. Language, once established, further constrains the individual to perceive in certain ways; language is merely one of the ways in which groups maintain and reinforce similarity of perception.

What happens when culturally diverse learners encounter each other in virtual learning environments? The idealized expectation is that they will engage intellectually with their fellow learners, course materials and instructors/facilitators, through such intellectual performances as elaborating arguments or criticizing ideas. But this kind of intellectual performance presupposes a wealth of background understanding, and shared assumptions about concepts and methods of argument (Xin & Feenberg, 2006 ) that learners may not share if they do not arrive with a common cultural (and intellectual) heritage.

Culturally diverse individuals may hold widely different expectations of how to establish credibility, exchange information, motivate others, give and receive feedback, or critique or evaluate information. Worse, even if learners recognize that their culturally-influenced worldview may differ from their peers, the only communication channel available to them by which to negotiate new and shared understanding is very narrow: digital text. Most virtual learning environments are still overwhelmingly “discursive and rhetorical spaces” (Nakamura, 2002 ). In spite of some advances in the development of graphically represented virtual worlds such as Second Life, cyberspace is still primarily a “written world” (Feenberg, 1989 ). Intercultural communication is always a challenge, but even more so when it happens online in the absence of visual and oral cues or well-developed relationships. In the disembodied world of virtual learning environments, online learners have no access to important non-verbal tools and cues that face to face communicators can use to help clarify meaning: context perception, dynamic real-time repair mechanisms, a parallel visual channel, eye contact, gestural information, and in general the flexibility we normally expect to obtain or emerge between conversational partners. It is apparent, then, that one of the major pitfalls in networked learning programs for culturally diverse participant communities may be miscommunication. And if learners cannot establish effective communications and shared understanding, opportunities for creating cognitive presence and intellectual engagement are lost.

Nevertheless, it has been widely assumed that all that is needed for meaningful online learning is to deploy standardized technologies worldwide, and that ways of communicating will simply become standardized for cohorts of culturally diverse learners and teachers participating in local, national or international programs.

In Xin & Feenberg’s 1996 paper on “Pedagogy in Cyberspace”, the authors state that part of the task of online facilitators is “fixing communication problems” whenever there is a weak link in communication or any threat of breakdown due to misunderstanding. Together with learners, facilitators must manage difficult communications, repair challenging situations, clarify confusions, and correct glaring misunderstandings. These tasks demand that facilitators can anticipate problems before they get out of hand, and intervene strategically to smooth communications and promote better learning. Expanding our understanding of the process of intercultural communication in a virtual learning environment is therefore a critical step in facilitating exemplary online learning in international/intercultural situations.