Globally Responsible Educational Environment - Essay Example

DESIGN FOR А GLOBALLY RЕSРОNSIVЕ EDUСАTIОNАL ENVIRONMENT {Insert student’s name} {Insert instructor’s name} November 21, 2013. DESIGN FOR А GLOBALLY RЕSРОNSIVЕ EDUСАTIОNАL ENVIRONMENT Currently, the use of information technology particularly by indigenous Australians is not explored culturally diverse students in higher education. This design is to support the use of communication technologies in cultural diverse learning environments. The online learning environment is intended to enhance indigenous learners’ participation in the technology based learning approaches, and improve their academic success through increased awareness and proficiency of computer technology (Spring, 2008). A tertiary education system aimed at providing culturally sensitive education environment. The goal is mainly to raise the achievement of culturally diverse students in the higher levels by providing them with academic and pastoral support. Therefore, the curriculum will adapt teaching practices that are culturally sensitive to students. Because of globalization, it is important for tertiary courses to focus on up-skilling teachers, and they need to appreciate the existing privilege, ethnicity and power. At the same time, the teachers need to be intrinsically motivational and active (Perry & Southwell, 2011). This design is of a summer school course for practicing school leaders and teachers but relevant to educators who are willing to engage in responsive manner with cultural diversity in a global environment. The design will maintain a buffer between the learners in addition to the potential influences of instructional practices. It also aims at increasing emphasis on the affective learning domain. Moreover, the design aims to ensure that the instruction is personally relevant to the learners and further assist them to develop attitudes, skills and beliefs that support self-regulation of the whole learning process (Wang, 2008). The advert of technology has caused a paradigm shift in education and learning. Information at the swipe of a screen, touch of a button or click of a mouse is because of technology. This is attributed to the concept of globalization (Spring, 2008). Shifting from the decades of traditional teaching methods, this unit will harness the potential of new technologies in reaching cultural diverse students in a globalized learning environment. This enables students from different parts of the world to go online and access what is available. The unit will have well planned and structured voice modulations, simulations, lectures and ambience. This will ensure that the course is rich, fruitful and one touch experience for the learners. Additionally, the programs will be culturally sensitive to the needs of every student. Some of the best practices that will be incorporated into the program unit to ensure successful teaching of the culturally diverse students in an online environment will entail providing information on how to access the online. This will be done through a letter or email. It will be outside the online environment. Additionally, the design will be for one learning community and not multiple cultural cohorts. In order to lower cultural assumptions, there will be use of nicknames or anonymity. The unit will ensure that there is sufficient time for the learners to understand and reflect on the learning materials. Hence there will be breaks from one unit to another (Wang, 2008). What the students should expect from the online course Coursework and learning objective: the weekly course assignments will clearly indicate the weekly learning objectives, case studies, interactive activities as well as video lectures. Lecture capture software: the website will have presentations and lectures, which will reinforce the learners’ weekly learning materials. Interactive multimedia activities: interactive activities will be designed so that learners are provided with a hand on approach. This will ensure that their understanding of the course materials is strengthened. Facilitated discussion boards: these will include forums facilitated by the experts of the subjects and are designed with an aim of promoting discussion with other students. Quizzes and assessments: checkpoint questions and online quizzes will be integrated to assist in determining the learners understanding of the course material. The unit will ensure that learners drawn from cultural diverse group are in a position to learn at their own convenience. Hence, the system will require that the students’ computers have the following features: Enabled pop-ups Active-X Silverlight Streaming video bandwidth of not less than 500 KB The bandwidth should be 128KB or higher Internet explorer 9 is not recommendable The students will desire the course materials and assignments that are applicable to their interests and goals. The course should be vigorous enough to give them a clear understanding of the subject or topic. Additionally, the course should relate to other classes,or what the learners had previously learned. In order for the instructor to ensure learners success, he/she should exhibit enthusiasm and passion for not only teaching but also helping the students. It is also important for the teachers to practice interactive teaching style and meet the needs of the culturally diverse learners. The tutor should be available online to answer the learners’ questions. The teacher will be accessible to students, including responding to emails and phone call in timely manners, and having sufficient online hours for interactive sessions. Globalization needs thinkers who are capable of surviving in different and competitive environment. Therefore, the students and teachers will have to undergo a dramatic attitude adjustment in order to cope in the environment where there will be no right answer to regurgitated and memorized during exams. The learners will be required to engage in conflict resolution, meaning negotiation, critical thinking and justification of their findings to their peers and teachers. The design aims to change the attitude of the culturally diverse students such as the Asian students who are used to teachers providing the right answers to the question and not used to challenging teachers’ wisdom (Wang, 2008). Conversation and collaboration tools In the online education environment, tools such as bulletin boards, chat groups, emails and chat groups will be available. The use of the mentioned tools will be more effective in dealing with culturally diverse groups compared to face-to-face communication. This is because online educational barrier eliminates barriers such as race, appearance, gender. This educational design will be more beneficial to students from non-English speaking nations. This is because in most cases, they can read and write in English with ease compared to speaking, thus eliminating the problem of understanding different accents. The online discussion will also be made easier for the moderator/facilitator to ensure that all students are given sufficient attention. Overseas students who are usually overdrawn during face to face to discussion are encouraged to take part in the online discussion forums. Information sources Relevant information banks as well as repositories will be linked to the learning environment. The learning environment will include sound resources, animations, text documents, and graphics, which are appropriate for assisting the students to comprehend the problems as well as their principles. The primary medium will be World Wide Web. The information on the provided links will be critically evaluated for its relevance to the needs of the learners. The WEB will be easily organized so the learners can easily access the links in a manner that will support the kind of thinking that learners desire to develop. The design takes into consideration that learners lack sophisticated literary skills for filtering and evaluating the quality of the provided information. However, it encourages the students to be more information literate so that they can not only find and evaluate but also retrieve own information on their own instead of relying on those filtered and provided by the teachers. This is done so as not to impose cultural perspective on the information resources via the filtering and selection process (Ziguras, 1999). The links encourages the learners to be aware of the cultural diversity in the global environment and appreciate one another. Learners through classroom assignments will be encouraged to not only find but also introduce information that support their cultural views. Problem context in the learning environment, there are students from diverse cultural contexts. i.e containing both Australia and other international students. Therefore, it is important to frame the problems, cases and questions used in the curriculum to reflect cultural diversity (Perry & Southwell, 2011). In exploring the students’ cultural diversity, the questions, problems and cases, which are consistent with the diverse cultures of the students will be incorporated. The student will own the problem, hence the problems will be highlighted in authentic contexts. Hence, the approach that will be developed in this case, will be to create a bank of problems/case/questions which addresses the issues/concepts but on the basis of distinct cultural contexts relying on the learners. The students will then be grouped into based on their cultural backgrounds and then consider relevant problem/case/question. The multiple views would later emerge when the groups presents their solutions/recommendation/findings to other students of different cultural backgrounds (Ngeow & Kong, 2002). Related cases The learning environment will also use related cases and they will be linked to the diverse learning environment. Each of the findings/solutions will match the cultural perspective present in the global world. Hence, the students will be grouped in order to ensure a mixture of students from distinct cultural backgrounds. They will represent problems, questions and cases from a various contexts. The aim of the related cases are twofold. First they are prepared to assist in scaffolding student memory. Secondly, the by assist in enhancing cognitive flexibility. This is because they provide multiple perspective, interpretations or themes on the issues or problems that learners examine (Christie, 2008). Cognitive tools In designing the program, certain cognitive tools will be put into consideration. This will be generalizable computer tools, which are intended to engage and facilitate certain kinds of learners cognitive processing. Task/problem representation tools like graphical user interfaces will be used to represent applications and files that need to be manipulated. There will be dynamic and static knowledge modeling tools such as semantic networks, databases, expert systems, spreadsheets, and hypermedia construction. Performance tools such as database shells or calculators will be embedded to assist the learners to effectively organize the information, which they have collected. There will be also information gathering tools on the WWW for example search engines. The potential effects of the student diversity on not only selection but also use of cognitive tool would need further investigation and would rely on a particular tool selected. In the context of designing an online unit on tertiary literacy for cultural diverse learners, a pragmatic approach for a design that is culturally responsive will be used. Hence, the unit will draw on the factors that influence communication and learning, and collaborate with the indigenous communities in designing the unit to minimize cultural misunderstanding, while promoting contextualized, constructivist and culturally responsive learning environment (Hannon & D'Netto, 2007). The design will adopt an epistemology that is not only consistent but also supportive to multiple perspectives and constructivist learning. In the globalized world, bicultural forms part of adaptation to learning in tertiary study. Adoption of community of practice model will make learners to not only aces community knowledge but also shared interests and support structures. This kind of emancipatory pedagogy will ensure that there is recognition of the capacity of students to bring prior experience, construct their own knowledge and incorporate various ways on knowing the task as well as developing a sense of pride and ownership in their own knowledge (Kenway, 2011). It will create a flexible tasks and tools that enable language sharing. This design will ensure that learners have the capability of sharing what they have constructed with others. This will reinforce the social of learning that is required in globalized learning environment and hence creates an online community. For cultural diverse learners, sharing as well as communication reinforces a sense of relatedness and community (Campbell, Goold & Goward, 2004). The unit will ensure that there are distinct forms of support both within and outside the community. The unit will be designed in such a way that there will be scaffolding for novices and ensure they develop competences. In this online community, the structures will be provided for all the learners via the web-based tools. The instructors will engage with the learners in dialogue via forums and provided examples on the processes and structures required in the tasks (Coulby, 2006). In conclusion, online learners require excellent interaction, active learning, real life examples, interesting assignments, though provoking comments and a variety of thought questions, which is a reflection of globalized world and features dynamic culture. This design will put the mentioned into consideration. References Campbell, M., Goold, A. & Goward, P. (2004). Using online technologies: Does culture matter? In G. Richards (Ed.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education, Chesapeake, VA: AACE. pp.2300- 2307. Coulby, D. (2006) ‘Intercultural education: Theory and practice’, Intercultural Education, 17 (3) pp. 245-257. Christie, P. (2008) ‘Globalisation, the “knowledge economy” and education’. In Opening the Doors of Learning, Johannesburg: Heinemann, pp.41-71. Hannon, J. & D'Netto, B. (2007). Cultural diversity online: Student engagement with learning technologies. International Journal of Educational Management, 21(5), 418-432. Kenway, J. (2011). ‘Beyond conventional curriculum cartography via a global sense of place’ in M. Somerville, K. Power and P. de Carteret (Eds) Landscapes and Learning: Place Studies for a Global World, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, pp.195-206. Ngeow, K. & Kong, K. (2002). Designing culturally sensitive learning environments. In Winds of change in the sea of learning: Proceedings ASCILITE 2002, Auckland. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/auckland02/proceedings/papers/055.pdf Perry, L. B & Southwell, L. (2011). ‘Developing intercultural understanding and skills: models and approaches’, Intercultural Education, 22 (6): 453-466. Spring, J. (2008) ‘Globalization of education’ in Globalization of Education: An Introduction, New York & Oxon: Routledge, pp.1-28. Wang, T. (2008) ‘Intercultural dialogue and understanding: implications for teachers’. In M. Wallace and L. Dunn (eds.)Teaching in transnational education: Enhancing learning for offshore and international students, London: Routledge, pp. 57-66. Ziguras, C. (1999). Cultural diversity and transnational flexible delivery. In Responding to diversity: Proceedings ASCILITE 1999, Brisbane, 5-8 December. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/brisbane99/papers/ziguras.pdf Read More