Training material on designing online collaborative learning activities

As we all known culture pervades every aspect of people’s lives: their way of thinking, their ideals and expectations, their behavior and attitude, their motivation, relationships, and last but not least, their way of assimilating knowledge and skills.

In the modern world educators are finding their classrooms (in e-learning as well) filled with students from different cultures. Many observe that these cultural differences have a significant impact on the learning process. For example, students from higt power distance cultures often seem uncomfortable with professors who want to be called by his first name and Asian students appear guiet and reflective in the extroverted, hight participation American classroom.[1] 

This situation raise the question of adequacy between learners’ expectations and preferences on one hand, and learning methods on the other. Joy, Simy, Kolb, David A. in the article Are There Cultural Differences in Learning Style presented that researches examining how individuals  born and currently living in diferent cultures vary in their approaches to learning. Using the frame work  for categorizing cultural differences from the Global Leadership and Organization  Effectiveness (GLOBE) study (House et. Al 2004), cultures are examined by regional clusters, national characteristics and individual cultural dimensions. And the scholars have come a ground with respect defining culture. Culture can be conceptualized as “shared motives, values, beliefs, identities, and interpretations or meanings of significant events that result from common experiences of members of collectives that are transmitted across generations" (House et al 2004).