The Educational Environment

Cultural Aspects

It could be argued that all learning is essentially a social process which occurs in a cultural context. Awareness of this coontext is particularly important in Web-Based Instruction, where learning is often at a distance. Collis and Remmers discuss the broader issues of cross-cultural communication implicit in the use of a global medium, while McLellan considers how virtual learning communities may be created.

Cross-Cultural Communication

In their chapter Collis and Remmers (1997) ask whether global access to educational web sites means that they "will bring a new level of cross-cultural communication and interactionto education". They define two categories of educational site:

• 'Category 1' sites, made for one context and its culture, but visited by people from other contexts and cultures
• 'Category 2' sites, made for cross-cultural participation.

They cosider guidelines which could enable more effective development of educational sites for cross-cultural use under four headings:

1. Interaction and Communication - cross-cultural differences in factors such as formalism and how hierarchical the cultures are affect patterns of communication .These factors should be considered for local cultures in Category 1 sites, while the style and extent of communication and interaction need to be carefully planned for Category 2 sites, perhaps avoiding unmoderated discussion and real-time audio and video interactions which might present difficulties in some cultures.
2. Language-this is the most obvious barrier to global access, and is not amenable to technological fixes. The authors point out that we cannot assume that English will continue as the lingua franca of the Web, and that interpretations of a common language vary between cultures. They suggest that Category 1 sites might be produced in two versions, one for the local target culture and another, simpler version for cross-cultural use, drawing on cross-cultural materials. For Category 2 sites, they recommend multi-language support for at least some parts of the site, with pilot testing by cross-translation.
3. Content and Purpose- Collis and Remmers suggest that Category 1 sites which are mainly of local interest should be mounted on an intranet, or offered to outside visitors only in a 'sampler' verson. Category 2 sites should either be 'culturally neutral' or should designed to reflect cross-cultural differences explicitly.
4. Visualizations - these might seem an attractive solution to the problems of language, but their interpretation and acceptability vary between cultures. The authors warn that visuals need to be carefully chosen, particularly for Category 2 sites, even if this makes the site less interesting visually.

Collis and Remmers point out the ease of establishing a superficial level of access, the dangers of cultural parochialism in offering unquestioned cultural assumptions in educational sites, and the difficulty of achieving genuinely multicultural sites. They offer their own sites, Collis's Online Learning Course Site and Remmers' TechNet Finland WWW-Services site, as examples of their own attempts to achieve cross-cultural communication.

At the time of writing, Collis and Remmers' guidelines seem unlikely to be adopted widely by Category 1 sites, mainly because their creators will be exposed to the wider commercial medium of the Web, which is only multicultural at the most superficial level. It is to be hoped that creators of Category 2 sites will develop a deeper awareness of the implications of a multicultural context, and that their task will be aided by the approach advocated in this chapter.

Virtual Learning Communities

Collaboration plays an important part in most of the more innovative courses delivered via the Web. Groups of learners interact and develop the attributes of a 'virtual community', even though they may never meet in the same place or time. McLellan (1997) bases her discussion of the creation of such communities on Shrage's (1991) model of collaboration. Shrage defines collaboration as "the process of shared creation: twp or more individuals with complementary skills interacting to create a shared understanding that none had previously possessed or could have come to on their own". McLellan discusses how the 'themes' identified by Shrage may be implemented in creating a virtual learning community, including:

• Competence - members of the community share a 'communal mind' assembled from complemetary skills and offering mutual support.
• A shared, understood goal - learners are united by common aims and learning objectives.
• Mutual respect, tolerance and trust - McLellan notes that the Internet diminishes some of the obstacles to mutual tolerance and trust, making irrelevant differences in race, gender and appearance less significant in the collaboration, but warns that the teacher may need to intervene to influence the tone. She surprisingly does not refer to the tendency for peer pressure to create an internal group culture which moderates interaction.
• Creation and manipulation of shared spaces - McLellan refers to the listserv on her own course; more recent developments such as the 'virtual cafe' in Harasim's Virtual-U perform a similar role in facilitating a sense of ownership of a shared virtual space.
• Formal and informal environments - in McLellan's course, the instructor created the formal environment of course pages, while the listserv acted as a generic informal environment for academic and social interaction. Many courses now offer a variety of informal environments, with different purposes and levels of access (see, for example, coMentor at Huddersfield University)
• Physical presenced is not necessary - communication in McLellan's course was enhanced by publishing brief biographies and E-mail addresses on a Web page and by inviting students to introduce themselves informally on the listserv at the start of the course.

McLellan's chapter provides a valuable intoduction to the concept of a Virtual Learning Community and the circumstances in which it can be supported. It is particularly relevant to off-campus and distance learning courses.