1. The Culture of Technology:
Differences in the Use of E-Learning
Technologies Among Cultures
Babu P George, PhD
Alaska Pacific University
Speaker at Lilly Arctic 2013. Link HERE.

2. What we Thought Technology would
do to Education

3. THE HYPERLINKED SOCIETY WE LIVE IN

4. Culture
Content
Cost
5C’s of E-learning Success
Capability
Client
Adapted from Lea, P. (2003). Understanding the culture of e-learning. Industrial and Commercial Training, 35(5), 217-219.
• Content, Cost, Cl
ient, and
Capability have
been relatively
well understood
• Culture still a
grey area

5. © Scientific American
Understanding the culture of technology assumes new dimensions in virtual global classrooms

6. 3. Cross-Cultural Comparisons
Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

7. 3. Cross-Cultural Comparisons
Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

8. Methodology
• Multi-stage design: Focus groups followed by
survey
• Three focus group interviews
– One only with international professors
– Two only with international students
– Three random sample of members from each
group
• No statistical generalization at this stage
• Survey yet to be commissioned

9. Power Distance
• Instructor-student participants from high Power
Distance cultures consider ‘democratizing technologies’
to be a threat
– Asynchronous interaction preferred
– Prefer to replicate traditional classroom culture
online, verbatim
– Social media based e-learning heavily resented
– Peer evaluation proscribed
– Prefer controlled environments for instruction
• Power distance correspond positively with the
insistence upon hierarchical labeling of e-content
(sections and subsections)
– Students from high PD cultures were willing to make more
mouse clicks to read the same content.

10. Individualism-Collectivism
• For students from highly individualistic cultures
– Student centered e-learning styles were appreciated
– Students loved customizable interfaces and content
– Students loved instructor free zones (blogs, journals, wikis, chat
windows, etc.)
• Individualism does not always mean seeking privacy; individualists
want to share how unique they are and collectivists want to share
how similar they are
– Students prefer to use third part service providers ‘not officially
supported’ by their school
– Successful completion of group assignments require much more
elaboration and explanation
• Students from highly collective cultures liked to see
extensive hyperlinks, interlinking as many ‘knowledge bits’
as possible
– They also loved the ‘peer evaluation’ option, as expected.
– Far less concerned about the ‘privacy and security’ features.

11. Uncertainty Avoidance
• Instructors and students from highly uncertainty
avoidant cultures prefer to use officially
supported and stable versions of instructional
technologies
• Students from uncertainty tolerant cultures do
not demand detailed and pre-packaged e-content
or syllabus at the beginning of the semester;
rather, they liked ‘emergent’ content as the
course progresses.
• They also show a higher level of interest in action
learning and project based curriculum

12. Masculinity-Femininity
• Instructors and students from highly feminine
cultures give significantly more attention to
aspects of knowledge interface design
– Their masculine counterparts care far more about
the ‘content’ aspects
– Femininity is also positively related to the use of
images (diagrams, pictures, videos, etc)
• Live classrooms were more important for
feminine cultures
– May be due to the opportunity to mix with one
another better

13. Time Orientation
• Instructors and students from long term oriented
cultures want to know the course content in
entirely and how that meet the objectives stated
in the syllabus
– There short term oriented counterparts were more or
less happy about knowing the “assignments next
week”.
• According to this group, an email or tweet announcing a
change in the course schedule was destabilizing
• However, long term orientation related positively
with ‘difficulty to judge’ the quality of e-learning

14. The Critical Question • How to make the ‘universal design’ of e-learning
work in multi-cultural classrooms?
– Tons of studies suggest that culture and technology
engage with each other in complex ways
– Faculty and students from diverse cultural
backgrounds
• Almost impossible to design culture neutral technological
systems
– Adapt to which culture?
» Of faculty, of the majority of students, …, …,
» Or, flexible solutions that accommodate everyone?

15. ?
Thank you!