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Weekly UpdatesABSTRACT
In this paper we report findings of a multidisciplinary study of online participation by culturally diverse participants in a distance adult education course offered in Canada and examine in detail three of the study's findings. First, we explore both the historical and cultural origins of "cyberculture values" as manifested in our findings, using the notions of explicit and implicit enforcement of those values and challenging the assumption that cyberspace is a culture free zone. Second, we examine the notion of cultural gaps between participants in the course and the potential consequences for online communication successes and difficulties. Third, the analysis describes variations in participation frequency as a function of broad cultural groupings in our data. We identify the need for additional research, primarily in the form of larger scale comparisons across cultural groups of patterns of participation and interaction, but also in the form of case studies that can be submitted to microanalyses of the form as well as the content of communicator's participation and interaction online.
INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
Intercultural communication is always a challenge, but even more so when it happens online in the absence of visual and oral cues or well-developed relationships. In computer-mediated courses, participants are involved in building learning communities. Culturally diverse individuals may hold widely different expectations of how to establish credibility, exchange information, motivate others, give and receive feedback, or critique or evaluate information.
In our recent study (Chase, Macfadyen, Reeder, & Roche, 2002), we began to explore the impact of cultural differences upon participation in a computer-mediated course offered by the University of British Columbia to a culturally diverse group of learners across Canada. The overall goal of the study was to test critically the widely held assumption that the use of standardized communications technology, implemented with competent professional pedagogy, will constitute sufficient conditions for successful communications and learning for culturally diverse cohorts participating in a distance learning program. Ascertaining the preconditions for successful online learning has potential significance for both policy and practice in distance learning. Recent studies of second language learning have begun to delineate in some detail the critical role of intercultural variables in mediated learning exchanges. Thorne (2003) for example develops the notions of medium as cultural artifact and electronic cultures-of-use, both of which we make extensive use of in our problematization of ostensibly culturally neutral e-learning tools in this study.
Phase One of our analysis, reported in Chase et al. (2002), described the differing ways in which cultural experiences, values, and influences were revealed in the online postings of the study's participants. The analysis also provided evidence of differing communication patterns and instances of miscommunication in online exchanges between culturally diverse learners and online facilitators. In addition, we constructed a taxonomy of nine major themes or clusters of communication difficulties encountered by our participants. Foremost in that taxonomy was the revelation that cyberspace itself came to constitute a cultural space in the course, so that cultural gaps could emerge not only between individuals but also between individuals and the dominant cyberculture inherent in the course.
In Phase Two, we now report on an exploratory case study of a single online course that investigates three main observations. First, we discuss both the historical and intercultural background for the emergence of cyberculture values as a social construct, introducing the theoretical notions of explicit and implicit enforcement of those values to describe potential mechanisms underlying patterns of communication. Second, we examine the idea of "cultural gap" between participants in our course in terms of the consequences for online communication successes and difficulties, in the light of Gudykunst's (1995) theory of the correlation between communication anxiety and perceived differences between communication partners. Third, we offer descriptive statistics suggesting that participation frequency differs as a function of cultural group, broadly defined. We consider these participation patterns in the light of current thought in a variety of social sciences that deal with issues in language, culture, and communication. Finally, after we identify some of the limitations of the present case study's approach, we urge further study of the patterns we describe, given the implications for future design, policy, and implementation of online distance learning courses for culturally diverse clientele who increasingly comprise the global educational mainstream (Cummins & Cameron, 1994).
For the purposes of the study a definition of culture was used that moves beyond "essentialist" views of culture as values, beliefs, and patterns of behaviour that are learned through our experience and environment (Hofstede, 1980; Hall & Hall, 1990). Rather, we tend toward the social constructivist view espoused by Scollon & Wong-Scollon (1995) in which culture is viewed as "shared ways of symbolic meaning making among members of a social community." We treat the nexus of cultural production as discourse, in the present case, the online discussions amongst participants in an emerging online community. We further suggest that in online communications, as in face-to-face communications, culture is negotiated, not given.
It appears in our study that the complexity and dynamism of such cultural negotiation can place learners at considerable odds with the best plans and unexamined communicative assumptions of online distance course developers. The sorts of cultural assumptions about effective communication held by designers of online discourse platforms, course assignments, and threaded discussions might match poorly with those of the adult learners that they target. In a stunning display of naivete and smugness, Canada's leading agency for the promotion of e-learning stated recently,
Our study contests the notion that culturally neutral content is even conceivable, let alone attainable in online settings.
METHODS
Setting
An introductory course for a university certificate program in Intercultural Studies was offered in a mixed mode consisting of 2 days of face to face meetings followed by 6 weeks of facilitated online assignments and discussion. WebCT served as the software platform for the online component. The face-to-face component of the course was delivered in parallel meetings held in Toronto and in Vancouver. The two cohorts were then blended for the online introductions, assignments, and discussions that comprised the remainder of the course proceedings.
For the purposes of the present case study, we decided to employ an intact group despite its lack of representativeness of some larger populations. We believe that the authenticity of an intact group located in the field and our case study method offset, to some extent, the limitations upon our ability to generalize findings to a broader universe of online courses in an unambiguous and immediate manner. We therefore decided against constructing an experimental sample for study under laboratory conditions. Nonetheless, on the basis of the authors' widespread collective experience as adult educators, we judged that members of a certificate program in intercultural communications would bring reasonably well developed skills and positive dispositions toward effective interpersonal communication. This self-selection provided us with a degree of control over basic interpersonal communicative skill level, offering us the advantage of being able to reduce its potentially confounding effect upon our examination of the respective roles of computer mediation and cultural group, in a case fairly representative of those in which "hard technology meets soft skills" (Macfadyen, Chase, Reeder, & Roche, 2003).
Participants
The community of 24 participants that embarked upon this course included 17 students, 5 course facilitators, and 2 moderators. Three learners failed to complete all the requirements of the course. In our descriptions below, both facilitators and moderators will be described for convenience as "Facilitators" despite their somewhat differing roles in the leadership of the course. There were 17 female and 7 male participants, ranging in age from 25 to 55 years, and participants in this course appeared to be representative socially of the population normally recruited for the certificate program, including individuals with high school, college, university, and post-graduate education. In the initial personal introductions posted online, participants used the following categories to identify their cultural heritages: Canadian, British Columbia First Nations (aboriginal), Middle Eastern, Southeast Asian, Southern European, German, African, South Asian, Italian, Chinese, and UK South Asian. Nine of the 24 participants were born and educated outside of Canada.
Table 1 divides participants into three broad groups that we compared for purposes of descriptive analysis of participation. While the cultural diversity of this cohort did not allow us to categorize it into easily identifiable ethno-cultural groups, we believed that this demographic grouping, employing participants' Canadian citizenship status, is relevant from the perspective of the participant's exposure to mainstream North American cultural values in early life and education. As first suggested by Tannen (1984) in research among North American populations, men and women can be socialized linguistically quite differently, which will be reflected in contrasting male and female communication patterns. For a recent social constructivist reanalysis of that observation, see Cameron (2003). We therefore also compared online course participation of male and female participants. Because the course was carried out in English, we conducted a preliminary survey of the full corpus to determine whether there was any evidence of differential written English proficiency across these three broad groupings. We found no evidence of systematic errors, and only normal performance slips found in the population at large. These errors were distributed roughly evenly across all groups. Moreover, a survey of educational backgrounds revealed that the three aboriginal participants had attended, as expected, and succeeded in, English-medium schools and postsecondary institutions, and were clearly native speakers of English. This allowed us to eliminate differential written English proficiency as a potential confounding variable in our subsequent discourse analyses.
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