Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Cultural Differences
Differential Factor
Impact on Learner-Learner Interactions
• Minimize uncertainty in interpersonal relationships.
• Enhance collaboration tasks.
• Better implementation of interaction techniques and feedback among the participants in a virtual
learning environment.
Values, beliefs, norms (when shared among the
participants)
• Support information sharing.
• Support real time spontaneous communication.
• Enhance mutual engagement between the participants (mutual engagement refers to participants' co-
creation and negotiation of actions or meanings).
• Heterogeneous groups, whose members are of different (national) cultural backgrounds, reveal a wider
variety of skills, information and experiences that could potentially improve the quality of collaborative
learning.
• Multiple concurrent conversations that a medium can support are expected to help learners of different
cultures to gain a more accurate understanding of each other, thus improving performance.
When they are developed
in a way that enhance
communication among the
participants.
Communication styles
• Communication distortion may appear because basic modes of communication differ among people
from different cultural backgrounds.
When they are not taken
under consideration.
• A learner's study behavior especially when he/she is a part of a heterogeneous group becomes more
positive in the case of his/hers participation in the cultural co-creation process.
• The cultural co-creation process includes the formation of a 'new culture' which arises from the
interactions in the educational setting between all the participating cultures. This new culture is accepted
by all members and helps in the development of any study behavior that affects positively the learning
procedure.
Study behaviors (when taken under consideration)
• Different level of adequate language knowledge for the participants results to limited participation.
• With a suficiently strong sense of community, learners with less experience on the language being used
would be able to overcome their fears.
Language
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