How to Make Online Courses and MOOCs Culture Neutral ?
Culture is an integral part of our life, whatever we say or do is determined by our understanding of culture. Our lifestyle, our values, and ethics, our belief system, the way of thinking, behavioral patterns, sense of expression, aesthetics, and beauty everything deals with our cultural identity. Hence, it is difficult to create a culturally-neutral course structure and learning environment. It gets even harder when it comes to the online educational world, where the audience is not defined. So the course developers, teachers, and instructional designers have to extra careful to create prejudice-free course content.
IMPORTANCE OF CULTURAL NEUTRAL ENVIRONMENT:
In a classroom learning environment, teacher deals with the local audience which is area specific gathered together at one place but the online world is different. Massive Open Online Courses(MOOCs) caters to an audience all over the world, on a global platform. Here educational institutions and training have to more sensitive while quoting examples, towards the gestures and also towards the real-life examples they employ to explain a concept.
Major challenges that come across the instructional designers are as follows:
• To come up with the correct references for applied learning which free from cultural notions
• To choose a perfect instructional design model for multicultural learning environment
• To remain immune to one’s culture and learners culture while designing the course content
ALTERNATIVES:
Culture impacts our thinking process, behavior and learning process, therefore learning strategies and teaching tactics are important and are works most effectively when they are relevant to one’s culture. In an inclusive learning setting, it is imperative to be sensitive towards the values, beliefs, and styles of learning of the global audience.A great alternative for being culture neutral is the model proposed by Henderson in 1996.
The model states that rather than designing unbiased learning intervention programmes, one should make an effort to incorporate different cultural realities, learning styles and teaching styles in courses for a global audience.
In MOOCs, Culturally sensitive and culturally adaptive courses are the to student active performance making them virtually present and engaged.
CULTURAL DIMENSIONS OF LEARNING:
The cultural dimensions of learning delineated by Hofstede and Hofstede in 2005.
1. Power Distance
2. Indulgence v/s Restraint
3. Long term or short term
4. Masculinity or femininity
5. Individuality
6. Tolerance of uncertainty
WAYS TO CULTURALLY AWARE:
Awareness of cultural differences can create a better understand learning styles and preferences of learners and one’s own cultural biases. Here are the four things you need to keep in mind:
Student and Teacher Relationship:
In some cultures like China, India, and Turkey, Teacher has whole-sole responsibility and authority in a learning environment. Students are expected to accept and honor teacher’s saying as He or she is the primary communicator in the class.On the other hand, in countries like the US, Canada or Denmark, The principle of equality is operated, the dialogues and discussions between students and teachers are considered to be a critical activity. Students are considered to be responsible for their own learning.
Individuality level:
Some cultures focus on boosting up the social growth. Generally, these type of environments are more challenging and the students are motivated to work hard to be able to maximize their individual gains. The more the culture focus on cognitive skills and individualistic growth of the learners, the more it is nurturing in nature.
Nurturance level:
In some places, Students are praised and encouraged to collaborate with each other and pedagogies are designed to deal with the average student in a class. While at other places, best student is seen as the perfect role-model for other students, hence promoting a sense of Competition, here Failure is unacceptable.
Rigid Course Structure:
Some cultures follow closed-ended and highly-structured learning activities, while others are more open-ended in nature and involve a lot of debates, projects and discussions sharpening the cognitive skills of learners. Here students opinions are weighed more upon the teacher’s answers.in this case, teachers act as facilitators in class and students along with teachers employs multiple resources to find answers.
4 CRITICAL STRATEGIES TO CREATE GLOBALLY-RELEVANT COURSES:
1) Low-Context Language: Use plain global English. Avoid Slangs, colloquialisms, symbols, idioms and culture-specific expressions because they might not resonate with certain students.also avoid culture-specific Metaphors, puns, and proverbs .this avoidance makes one avoid humor and references to local sports, fairy tales, movies, and folklores indirectly.
2) Ambiguity should be avoided: Language should be kept in mind while creating content.Some other language tips are:
• Using a single term for a single concept. Using different terminology for the same thing or concept can lead to confusion for students from other parts of the world.
• Use the metric system for measurements as it is a standard measuring system in most countries.
• The correct method of writing date mentions the month in words (for example, say June 13, 2017, than 13/6/2017).
• 24-hour clock format is considered best for mentioning time. Hence, you may say 14:00 hours rather than 2 pm to be more precise.
• Keep specific and explicit instructions. Instead of ‘move the lever’, it is better to write ‘pull down the lever’. The examples chosen should be carefully employed to suit different cultures
3) Usage of Visuals:
By including more graphics, images, representations, diagrams, and texts an e-learning course of 60 minutes can easily be reduced to 30 minutes of audio.Visual content is easy to read or see, understand and remember, as it is hard to decipher some of the words in the recorded speech. To enhance student engagement, Neutral non-human images should be used, Cultural or religious symbols, images or photos should be avoided. For photographs, try to have a mix of ethnicities, gender and age groups to connect with as many types of students as possible. Avoid writing anything on the images as it may reduce the impact of both your image and your content. Accent-free speech and a professional tone can make the online courses easily understandable for all types of students.
4) Flexible and Modular Course Layout:
Modular courses with flexible layouts allow students to follow a proposed structure (if they prefer to structured learning more) or choose what to study and when to study according to their individual preferences.There are highly customizable and user-friendly Authoring tools like Lectora, Articulate, Captivate and Adobe Presenter allows you to create courses. They also come in handy in translating your courses into multiple languages later on.