The “Handbook for Distance Education” begins with a fourpage preface followed by an eleven page overview, both written by Dr. Michael Moore. The book is then divided into seven sections, each section containing several chapters (55 in total). Each chapter is written by a well known (previously published in The American Journal of Distance Education) author or collection of authors. The title of each section and the number of chapters found in each section is shown below:

Handbook of distance education

The amount of resources being poured by Western universities, companies, and governments into creating educational content to be exported (via the Internet) to other cultures is astounding. Those assigned to accomplish this task are left with the great challenge of meeting the needs of learners who come from cultures that are foreign to them, and who often have very different abilities and expectations than originally assumed. This study explores the cultural competence in the lived experience of 12 professionals who have been involved with such efforts. Often they have had to question their assumptions, recognizing flaws in their own thinking and in the organizations that support them, and tried to alter their practice accordingly. Their awareness of cultural differences and the importance and impact of these differences in their practice will be discussed.

http://adlawrence.blogs.wm.edu/files/2011/03/cultural-cometence-and-instructional-design.pdf

Cultural competence and instructional design: Exploration research into the delivery of online instruction cross-culturally

Citizen science websites are emerging as a common way for volunteers to collect and report geographic ecological data. Engaging the public in citizen science is challenging and, when involving online participation, data entry, and map use, becomes even more daunting. Given these new challenges, citizen science websites must be easy to use, result in positive overall satisfaction for many different users, support many different tasks, and ensure data quality. To begin reaching these goals, we built a geospatially enabled citizen science website, evaluated its usability, and gained experience by working with and listening to citizens using the website. We sought to determine general perceptions, discover potential problems, and iteratively improve website features. Although the website was rated positively overall, map-based tasks identified a wide range of problems. Given our results, we redesigned the website, improved the content, enhanced the ease of use, simplified the map interface, and added features. We discuss citizen science websites in relation to online Public Participation Geographic Information Systems, examine the role(s) websites may play in the citizen science research model, discuss how citizen science research advances GIScience, and offer guidelines to improve citizen-based web mapping applications.

User-friendly web mapping: lessons from a citizen science website

This paper reviews past research that focused on questions of culture in distance learning. Of specific interest are the studies that examined the influence of culture on students’ learning and engagement in asynchronous learning networks (ALNs). The purpose of this review is three-fold: to present the state of knowledge concerning the questions of culture in distance learning, to highlight important methodological issues that past research has left unresolved, and to provide practical insights into teaching culturally and linguistically diverse online communities of learners. For these purposes, 27 studies are examined and the findings are reported under the following categories: What do studies focusing on questions of culture in distance learning tell us? What implications do they suggest for practice and future research? Also, the paper provides methodological insights for researchers who wish to investigate the cultural dimensions of distance learning in future studies.

/pdf/questions-of-culture-in-distance-learning-a-research-review-337htt22hg.pdf

Questions of Culture in Distance Learning: A Research Review

Online learning courses are hypothesized to be influenced by the instructors' and students' cultural values. This study collected survey data from online instructors and students to analyze the effects that Hofstede's individualism/collectivism and ambiguity (in)tolerance cultural dimensions exert on online courses offered from an individualist/ambiguity tolerant perspective. Results revealed that the students' cultural dimensions relate significantly to some of their perceptions of culture in the online classroom. Contrary to their individualist peers, collectivist learners felt that their individualist instructors were not usually aware of cultural differences in the online classroom and that their culture was not being considered to make learning relevant to their cultural context. Ambiguity intolerant students, in contrast with their ambiguity tolerant peers, felt that cultural background consideration is important and would appreciate being informed about relevant cultural differences they might experience taking an online course based on a different cultural perspective. Students from ambiguity intolerant cultures also reported less motivation to participate than their counterparts. In addition, language was found to influence the participation patterns when the ambiguity (in)tolerance values of the students were studied. However, language was not found to influence participation patterns for the individualist/collectivist dimension. The results of the study suggest that cultural differences do affect how students perceive the online classroom.

Cultural diversity in online learning: A study of the perceived effects of dissonance in levels of individualism/collectivism and tolerance of ambiguity

https://facultycenter.ischool.syr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/intercultural-internet.pdf

Intercultural Internet-based learning: Know your audience and what it values

/pdf/intercultural-internet-based-learning-know-your-audience-and-5964915tdu.pdf

Mari Vawn Tinney

Papers

Intercultural Internet-based learning: Know your audience and what it values

Intercultural Internet-Based Learning: Know Your Audience and What They Value