Lending a helping hand? The global reach of student support in culturally diverse online learning environments

Hello and welcome to this week’s Joe Bloggs blog post in which I am attempting to tentatively explore the somewhat sensitive and potential controversial issue of (gulp) cultural diversity when supporting students in BOE! Certainly the worldwide reach of technology in the digital age has fundamentally globalised many industries and proverbially thrown off the geographical shackles of their potential markets. But how has this affected educational support for students who can now access blended and online learning courses from any part of the world (or at least those that provide Internet access and the freedom to study)?

Penny provided a student perspective in her online blog post “Long and Winding Road” from 25^th February (https://blendedpennyblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/25/long-and-winding-road/) in which she talked of the benefits of using social media tools to “learn from a socially and culturally diverse set of online peers” regarding her own professional development. The question arises as to what extent culturally diverse student peers are able to learn, find support and generally benefit from the same educational opportunities as those from the host country of the TEL course. Fry and Bryant (2006) strongly believe that culturally diverse students do indeed derive benefits from today’s ever-growing list of online tools when utilised for addressing their educational needs of customisation, networking and collaboration. Below are just some of the tools which represent this non-exhaustive list, and the authors who have cited them:

• Blogs
• Wikis
• Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds
• Podcasting
• Social Network websites
• Tag-based folksonomies
• Peer-to-peer (P2P) media sharing tools

(Alexander, 2006; Allen, 2004; McLoughlin and Lee, 2007)

However, despite the insistence above of how international students can invariably benefit from these educational tools, the reality of the situation may actually prove to be significantly different. For instance, with social media channels such as Facebook being proscribed in Communist countries such as China, this would suggest that the social media aspects of online learning, which Penny refers to, may actually represent a hindrance – as opposed to an advantage – to certain overseas students.  However, these political/technological limitations can, to a certain degree, be anticipated and factored into the course design in order to mitigate the risks of disadvantages and unfairness to international students. Indeed, Lamas et al. (2013) suggest that innovative teaching strategies now mean that “new pedagogical models and methods increasingly aim to address students’ different styles and needs” (p. 510).

So how specifically can teachers develop these new models in order to support the increasingly diverse cultures and needs represented by the modern BOE student cohort? Well I believe that the key is to promote cultural sensitivity and understanding and to be able to adapt learning course structures and materials to suit their needs. In my own teaching experience I encountered linguistic student barriers when I gave a guest lecture to a class of undergraduate international students at Edinburgh Napier University. I anticipated this situation and modified the learning content to reflect the limited English language skills of the students, and integrated international examples into the delivery of the material in order to reflect the multi-cultural aspect of the class. In the online learning environment I feel that these qualities can certainly be transferred in order to maintain the personal and inclusionary facets which appeal to a more culturally diverse student population.

This post has raised some questions about not only how we, as educational providers, can support the different needs of culturally diverse students, but also about the legitimacy of online tools in supporting students from different backgrounds. Next week’s blog post will address this issue in more detail by examining what are most effective online tools for supporting students in TEL. Stay tuned.

 

References

Alexander, B. (2006). Web 2.0: A new wave of innovation for teaching and learning? EDUCAUSE Review, 41(2), 32–44. http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0621.pdf [viewed 18^th March 2016].

Allen, C. (2004). Tracing the evolution of social software. http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/10/tracing_the_evo.html [viewed 18^th March 2016].

Fry, S. W., & Bryant, C. (2006). Using distance technology to sustain teacher education for student teachers in isolated areas: The technology supported induction network. Journal of Computing in Teacher Education,23(2), 63-69.

McLoughlin, C., & Lee, M. J. (2007) Social software and participatory learning: Pedagogical choices with technology affordances in the Web 2.0 era. In ICT: Providing choices for learners and learning. Proceedings Ascilite Singapore 2007 (pp. 664-675).

Lamas, D., Välyataga, T., Laanpere, M., Rogalevich, V., Arakelyan, A., Sousa, S., & Shmorgun, I. (2013) Foundations for the Reconceptualization of the e-Textbook. In International Conference on e-Learning (p. 510). Academic Conferences International Limited.