Culturally Inclusive Instructional Design

A Framework and Guide to Building Online Wisdom Communities

Charlotte Gunawardena, Casey Frechette, Ludmila Layne

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138217850
• eBook ISBN: 9781315439181
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

WINNER OF THE 2019 OUTSTANDING BOOK AWARD FROM AECT'S DIVISION OF DISTANCE EDUCATION! As online courses and digital learning enable more people from more places to learn together, it is crucial for instructional design to incorporate diverse cultural perspectives. Culturally Inclusive Instructional Design provides a framework for thinking about culture in digital learning, offering insight into how to build inclusive online communities that encourage reflection and growth, regardless of content domain. Chapters cover the foundation, components, and implementation of the authors' Wisdom Communities (WisCom) framework, which enables learners from global backgrounds to experience long-lasting, transformative learning through real-world problem-solving. This book is a timely, resourceful guide to building truly collaborative, inquiry-based online learning experiences.

1
Designing for Culture, Learning, and Community

We live in a single constricted space resonant with tribal drums.

—Marshall McLuhan (2011, p. 36)

Time and space no longer limit how we interact with one another. Technologies, particularly the Internet, have connected humanity across countries and cultures with profound implications on how we think, communicate, and learn. The impact on education is unmistakable. People around the world are coming together in virtual communities to exchange ideas, learn new skills, and solve some of society’s most pressing problems. They’re joining MOOCs—massive open online courses—and participating in small group seminars. They’re enrolling in fully online graduate degrees and enlisting in professional communities of practice. Along the way, they’re learning with peers who might be across town or on the other side of the world. Education, formal or otherwise, has never been so accessible.

Those who stand to benefit from online education and training represent a more diverse group than those designing the technologies, content, and pedagogies that compose digital learning. Effective learning communities must be designed, and efforts to capitalize on the strengths of diverse groups must be planned. Without proper deliberation, online learning experiences in both formal and informal settings will unduly reflect the cultural biases and limitations of their architects. Careful planning also leads to meaningful collaboration among members of a learning community.

This book will show you how to create culturally inclusive online learning communities. It’s written for instructional designers, teachers, trainers, teaching assistants, graduate students, and others interested in helping learners from diverse backgrounds work together to solve real-world problems in a variety of disciplines. The methods we’ll present apply to science, education, business, communication, and many other fields. We’ll also cover concepts that work in different formats. Whether you’re preparing a one-day workshop or a semester-long course, you’ll discover new ways to facilitate interactions, encourage critical thinking, and build community.

The methods we’ll explore draw on proven teaching and learning principles. We base our ideas mainly on the pioneering work of Lev Vygotsky, the Russian educator and philosopher whose sociocultural theory underpins our work. Vygotsky’s theory holds that learning transpires in three realms: via the cultural frameworks in which we live, through interactions in our homes and communities, and within our minds (Karpov, 2014). The instructional design framework we’ll introduce, Wisdom Communities, provides guidance for encouraging learning experiences across these domains.

Vygotsky (1978) observed that people make sense of the world by absorbing ideas conveyed through both direct communication and indirect cultural influences. Connections between outward social interactions and inward thought processes form the basis of learning, according to sociocultural theory. Several qualities define such learning. First, it’s distributed. Learning can happen in a number of venues and time periods. Second, it’s interactive. Learners grow by engaging with one another through reflective dialogue, both one-on-one and in small and large groups. Third, it’s contextual. The learning that happens depends on who’s part of the experience, when it happens, and what transpires before and after.

Accounting for Culture

Much has been written about the value of sociocultural theory and how to put it into practice (e.g., Haakedal, 2012; Kung, 2017; Sun, 2011). Our goal is to extend these ideas into a new but increasingly important realm: online classes and other virtual learning communities comprised of students from diverse backgrounds. We’re particularly concerned with differences rooted in culture because of its unique role in how people think and communicate. Our cultural groups influence what we believe and value. They shape our behaviors and, as Vygotsky found, represent one of the main conduits to learning. The challenge for instructional designers is to create inclusive experiences that benefit all learners, regardless of beliefs, values, and backgrounds. That’s a formidable task, especially in cases where the cultural makeup of a learning cohort is multifaceted or difficult to predict.

The solution begins with tackling several misconceptions about culture. First, symbols and rituals matter, to be sure, but not nearly as much as the values and preferences that govern how we think and communicate. For example, many cultures ascribe particular meanings to colors, resulting in associations that are, at times, at odds. Black represents death and mourning in many cultures. But, in some Eastern cultures, white also carries these connotations. Focusing on these symbols distracts from deeper differences and underestimates the ways globalization has deemphasized the significance of overt cues, such as color, hand gestures, and shapes. Second, cultural sensitivity isn’t enough. Discussions about culture sometimes revolve around how not to offend. Respect is important, but awareness and understanding matter more than accommodation in the instructional design process. In practice, that sometimes means challenging culturally rooted beliefs. Third, culture is about more than country or region. Geography plays an important role in our cultural makeup, but each of us belongs to many overlapping cultures based on a wide range of affiliations and demographics. In some societies, colonialism and neocolonialism have resulted in complex layers of beliefs and customs. Reducing culture to someone’s place of origin oversimplifies their perceptions and motivations.

In addressing these assumptions, we find that culture is neither static nor simple. Some cultural beliefs are beneficial; others are harmful. Though most ideas rooted in culture endure, some change over time. Since culture can affect how we learn, sometimes in surprising ways, educators must embrace this complexity. That’s why it’s vital to reflect on cultural values throughout the design process. Instructional designers can’t help but be influenced by their own culturally derived values and beliefs. With increasing awareness of those influences, however, they can take steps to ensure that learners with different preferences have the best possible experience. Doing so requires communicating expectations clearly and shifting some control of both the instruction and its design to the participants.

Defining Culture

We define culture as a collection of shared perceptions of the world and our place in it. These values and beliefs affect both identity formation and societal roles. Each of us belongs to many tribes, and these memberships overlap, sometimes in unexpected ways. Cultural affiliation can be narrow or broad. National cultures can include hundreds of millions of people. But cultures can also exist at regional, communal, organizational, and familial levels. At times, the values and beliefs at the heart of these cohorts complement one another. Other times, they’re at odds.

The widespread adoption of the Internet—a distributed, interactive, contextualized medium—further complicates our cultural makeups (Noble & Tynes, 2016; Porter, 1997; Zittrain, 2014). Online cultures can be just as real as their analog counterparts, but they allow ideas to traverse spatial and temporal barriers in ways that generate novel values and beliefs. This cross-pollination of ideas continually generates new cultural norms.

Cultures persist by way of interaction. Unmediated interactions occur within familial and communal cultures. Parents, teachers, and community leaders tell us about how the world works and help us understand what our place in it might be. They tell us these things directly, but also indirectly, such as via modeling. As we grow up, we come in contact with beliefs and values within national and global cultures. Media play a big role in our exposure to these broader cultures, and, because of society’s increasing reliance on technology, we first connect with mass media at increasingly younger ages (Lemish, 2015; Rasmussen, 2017). Beyond just exposing us to new cultures, media can transmit culture to local communities around the world. Over time, we also encounter organizational cultures, which endure through both direct and mediated communication via formal and informal channels, whether engrained in company policies or told through stories to new hires (Martin, 2013). These cultural standards, enshrined in plaques and embedded in jokes coworkers tell one another, have been studied in relation to performance, leadership styles, and the prevalence of workplace bullying and harassment (Hertzog, Wright, & Beat, 2008; Rajalakshmi & Gomathi, 2016; Quick & McFadyen, 2017).

In the end, no two people share the same set of cultural beliefs and values. Each of us has a unique “cultural DNA”—the distinct mix of values and beliefs that we’ve accumulated through the many social cohorts to which we’ve belonged. We always share aspects of our cultural identities with others, but their aggregate is ours alone. In this way, culture contributes both to our connections with others and our uniqueness as individuals.

Culture and Learning

Researchers (e.g., Edmundson, 2007; Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner, 1998) have identified several ways that culture shapes learning by informing how we think and communicate. One such dimension concerns the philosophy of learning and teaching that undergirds a course—what Edmundson (2007) called the pedagogical paradigm. This philosophy guides all decision making in the instructional design process and the ultimate trajectory of the learning experience. Other elements concern the expectations that learners, instructors, and designers bring to the learning process. According to Edmundson, attitudes toward each of these dimensions range somewhere on a continuum between two opposing values:

• Origin of Motivation: Learners find motivation from an extrinsic source, such as a desire to benefit financially or meet another’s expectations, or learners find motivation from an intrinsic source, such as a desire for personal growth.
• Learner Control: Learners encounter inflexible, predetermined paths, or learners make choices that shape their experiences.
• Teachers’ Roles: Teachers assume the role of experts, or teachers assume the role of facilitators.
• Value of Errors: Learners seek to minimize mistakes whenever possible, or learners embrace errors as opportunities to grow.
• User Activity: Learners engage in activities that revolve around accessing content, or learners engage in activities that revolve around solving problems.
• Experiential Value: Learners gain insights into theories and models, or learners focus on real-world application.
• Accommodation of Individual Differences: Learners receive a predetermined experience, or learners customize their experiences.
• Collaborative Learning: Learning happens independently, or learning happens collaboratively.

Instruction that promotes learning across cultures seeks to accommodate diverse perspectives and preferences by following the principles of universal design for learning (UDL) rather than anticipate individual learner differences upfront. These principles emphasize flexibility and learner choice.

UDL extends the ideals of universal design—an important movement in the fields of architecture and software development. According to universal design, spaces, products, and experiences should permit the greatest degree of involvement by the most people (Barajas & Higbee, 2003). Elias (2011) identified eight universal design principles that are particularly useful in the context of distance education: equitable use, flexible use, simple and intuitive, perceptible information, tolerance for error, low physical and technical effort, community of learners and support, and instructional climate. Applied to learning, universal design underscores the value of active participation. Instruction becomes most accessible when learners choose how they receive content, submit assignments, and communicate. By prioritizing student choice, UDL also helps designers account for cultural factors that shape learning, without the need to localize or adapt the teaching (Eberle & Childress, 2006; Rose & Meyer, 2000). Al-Azawei, Parslow, and Lundqvist (2017) found that designing online courses in accordance with UDL principles has a direct, positive impact student perceptions and receptiveness to online learning.

Shifting control to learners helps meet their needs and increase their investment in the experience. Thomas, Mitchell, and Joseph (2002) provided a roadmap for doing this when they proposed accounting for three cultural dimensions in the instructional design process. These dimensions—introspection, intention, and interaction—align with the principles of universal design for learning by encouraging more inclusive experiences. The first dimension, introspection, involves reflecting on culture, including one’s own cultural values and beliefs, and encouraging similar reflection among learners. The second dimension, intention, calls for embedding cultural perspectives into a course rather than attempting to eliminate them. This entails examining how culture might influence course content, structure, and communication. The third dimension, interaction, prioritizes learner involvement via different forms of communication and by welcoming divergent viewpoints.

Marinetti and Dunn (2002) considered culture from a different standpoint: the steps needed to adapt a course for cohorts from different cultural backgrounds. They focused on regional and national cultures while identifying four levels of adaptation: translation, localization, modularization, and origination. The best kind of adaptation, they found, depends on the course content and its instructional goals. At the first level, a course is translated into a new language. Translation works well for straightforward content in well-established subject areas. At the second level, designers adapt content for a new local, regional, or national audience. Like translation, localization is most appropriate for straightforward concepts. Examples of localization include updating units of measurement, removing idioms and obscure references, and replacing irrelevant examples. The t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Table
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Designing for Culture, Learning, and Community
• PART I Foundations, Culture, and Wisdom
• PART II Components of the Wisdom Communities Learning Design Framework
• PART III Assessing, Evaluating, and Researching Learning in Wisdom Communities
• PART IV Building Online Wisdom Communities Across Cultures
• Glossary
• Index