By the end of my MET program, I will be able to articulate the role of theory and evidence-based approaches through the development of a curriculum to support faculty in online teaching readiness.
Goal #1
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Format: Academic Paper
Course: ETEC 542 Culture and in Communication Virtual Learning Environments
Towards the end of the course I authored a paper documenting my takeaways from the course and how I would apply these in my work.
A key takeaway was that online spaces can themselves be said to have ‘culture’ -a ‘third culture’ that is influenced by, but independent of the cultures that each participant brings with them.
I chose to approach this theme through a ‘traditional’ academic paper instead of via other modalities because it was a relatively new idea to me, and I tend to default to writing when a concept is new. If I were to present this to faculty, a different modality would work better.
Guiding Theories and Frameworks
- Social Constructivism in multicultural cohorts: Constructivism (e.g. Galloway 2010) emphasizes the social nature of learning and can help describe how a ‘third culture’ emerges from the interactions between participants in an online space. Reading Hewling (2005) was a key learning for me in understanding how the idea of a third space can be applied to the delivery of online courses. Hewling points out that “As a result of interaction among all the parties in class, whose contributions will be derived from their personal (varying) frames of reference, they (Raybourn et. al., 2003) posit that a new ‘‘third’’ culture will emerge. This will then provide a shared context of understanding in which the members of the group will be both participants and co-owners”.
This ‘third culture’ approach is an interesting line of inquiry for how we might change the way we deliver training to faculty, and how faculty in turn teach a diverse cohort of students.
Reflections
International students represent a growing proportion of students at VCC, and understanding how the various cultures that they bring can work together in an online environment has been a challenge. Completing ETEC 542 gave me valuable insights into how this can work, and also into the idea of an online course as a space that enables a specific culture of its own making. This is something I’d like to explore more with instructors at the college. Perhaps a mini research project could examine how students from different backgrounds interact in an online course, and look at their own perceptions and experiences of the course.
The course equipped me with a positive skepticism toward notions of cultural determinism – the idea that a group or nationality has specific characteristics (an idea made popular by Geert Hofstede and applied too often outside of the context in which he developed the theory). As part of the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, there is a much needed focus right now on Indigenizing the curriculum. This can sometimes lead to ‘pan-Indigenous’ approaches, where the more than 600 First Nations (and the Metis, Inuit and urban Indigenous people) are considered as a single group. I hope I’ve gained enough of an understanding of the complexity of cultures, and of the way they interact to create hybrid and original cultures, to push back on this when I come across it in my work.