Cross-cultural issues in learning

Four days ago I was leading a workshop on facilitating online learning for the faculty of the Higher Colleges of Technology in Abu Dhabi. One professor pointed out that most eLearning pedagogy was created by North Americans, for North Americans.

A typical student attending the Colleges is an Emerati whose English-language skills can't be taken for granted. Prior to coming to college, all schooling was in Muslim schools. In all likelihood, the student is weathy and drives either a BMW or a LandCruiser. He'll be studying engineering, computer science, or management. The distance learner will be coming online after work.

Can anyone share some stories or point to resources about tailoring online learning environments to non-U.S. cultures?

Mobile as an Early Warning System

Last week, while attending ASTD's TechKnowledge, I had the chance to catch Harvey Singh's presentation on learning and mobile technologies. Besides the fact that I now have to have a tablet PC - NOW! - one comment Harvey made stuck with me. (Paraphrasing)

mobile technologies can enable intervention as performance begins to become misaligned with goal behaviors creating a tangible performance improvement.

His point being that while processes are automated and captured through mobile technology, we will also be able to monitor performance much more granularly. Is this Big Brother watching and screaming as soon as we make one minor false step? Or is it coaching at it's very best?

What's going on here!?!?

Surprise! There are some changes we're making here at the Learning Circuits Blog. Jay's getting some relief by bringing on a new blogmeister, we've changed platforms (from Moveable Type to Blogger), and other changes described below. Please have patience as Dave, Jay and the Authors revitalize LCB to make it an exemplar of what blogging can do!

Don't forget to re-bookmark LCB with our new address [learningcircuits.blogspot.com].

Learning Circuits Blog Evolution

In the past year it seems the world discovered blogs. We’re proud that LCB was one of the first team authored blogs on the net but the attention received by blogs have brought tremendous changes in capability and expectations for content and design. To stay at the forefront, Learning Circuits Blog has to evolve. In addition to the obvious changes to format and page design (due in part to a switch to Blogger as our platform), there are five major areas of change:

Tie-in to Learning Circuits. We will be making more conscious efforts to tie to the content of Learning Circuits. We’ll be discussing and debating the topics found in Learning Circuits and linking to related LC content.

Expand Author Voice. The author team is being expanded to bring in voices from various eLearning markets – K-12, Corporate, Government, and International. Recently there has been discussion that there is duplication of efforts in different learning environments. We hope that through new voices from various areas, LCB can be a place to share best practices and learn from each other.

Collaborative Practices. Much has been said about how blogs are a powerful learning tool We think so too and plan to use LCB as a workshop to demonstrate and experiment with new types of collaborate practices in a blog. In other words we intend to practice what we preach.

Enhance Participation. Blogs are at their best when everyone is involved, so we’re taking steps to encourage everyone to participate. We’ll have flash polls to get feedback on topics we’re discussing, sweepstakes for those who post comments, and working with the author team to assure posts are written to be provocative and welcoming of commentary. We’ll also have a subscription service to keep you informed of changes on the site and, of course.

New Blogmeister. Finally, Dave Lee will be taking over the reigns from Jay Cross for the administrativeaspects of LCB. Dave has worked on both sides of the vendor/consumer table with eLearning and has 16 years of building innovative educational programs for corporate, higher educational and international markets.

We hope these changes will make Learning CircuitsBlog a community you’ll want to be an active participant in. We welcome and need your input into these changes and any other you’d care to suggest. Drop Dave an email at david_c_lee@mac.com to make suggestions or volunteer to help out.

Hit the comment button and let us know what you think.