Multicultural lessons
Thoughts after reading eTechCollab101’s messages
Your comments are welcome to: Paco Cerezo
area2@a2net.net, June 2.004Accepting that e-learning is customised learning and is not mass-delivering, we could accept also that when e-tutor and e-author knows multicultural differences the e-learning process could be more customised and efficient.
Reading all the messages sent on the forum eTechCollab101, especially from Anne F. Message, I could detect some main variables.
Some variables are "individual variables" but other are consequence of Social Styles (culture); moreover, I have in mind that also other variables have influence on the multicultural e-learning: environment and technology at least.
Here a first list
From Anne F. message:
I hope that I am not beginning to sound hectoring but I really do think that we (as a Brit I include myself in the US sphere for this discussion) are expecting the rest of the world to adapt to us. And I don't think that is necessarily a good idea.
Yes, probably, everybody has ethnic attitudes. Thinking on e-learning focused on the trainee, the management of the learning resources should be oriented to the ethnic attitude of trainee
If a group of individuals stay together within one place or within a certain amount of time where they can share certain common features of thinking, way of living, interests, dreams, philosophies, etc.. Then they are a community with a common culture, what ever their thoughts and concepts are.
Online communication and technology revolutions made it a prominent challenge and a crucial need for individuals and communities to understand themselves from the point of view of others and to understand others from a different new point of view. It is easy for an individual to attend a virtual class, a chat gathering, or an online conference with a group of individuals representing the whole world and representing all possible DIFFERENT culture. Keeping that in mind, we can say that it became a fact these online multiculturalism. By Ismail F (Egypte)
E-trainers should have in mind multicultural differences and should manage the learning resources to facilitate the individual learning process. In practice, e-tutor has limits; in the same group of trainees, how many differences could manage the single e-trainer? One, two, three?