Socio-cultural issues in the area of education and e-learning

Excellent practices and further resources

This document is a result of the Fe-ConE project co-financed from the

e-Learning programme (Agreement Number 2005-3872/001-001, ELE-
ELEB14). Information in this document represents opinions of the
partners participating in the project. Its content does not necessarily
reflect the position of the European Community, nor does it involve any
responsibility on the part of the European Community
Fe-ConE project overview

Fe-ConE aimed at the promotion of e-learning by identifying key factors for the development and
adoption of eLearning contents in the different socio-cultural environments in Europe. The project
was build on the premises that “learnability” is culturally bounded and that the success of e-learning
is highly related to – if not found at, the intersection between the implied by the setting learning
patrimony and the technology applied to achieve the desired learning outcomes. This area has not
as of today received the attention it deserves so as to facilitate the transmission of the notion of e-
learning from a global level to a glocal one – so as to make the notion more relevant for the users
and learners needs and requirements.

Fe-ConE was an attempt to provide evidence of socio-cultural nature to content designers and
developers as well as learners themselves – with emphasis in the less active in e-learning regions of
Europe, so as to enable them to address e-learning contents from a-relevant-to-the-learner point of
view, enhancing therefore the potential for e-learning uptaking.

The project has brought together individuals across Europe to an ongoing discussion and reflection
forum who will themselves define what constitutes good practice in e-learning contents and e-
learning content development.

The main target groups that should benefit from the work of Fe-ConE are:
• E-content designers and developers who facilitate the learning process of e-learners.
• Policy makers and designers of innovative learning schemes.
• Support personnel which function both inside the conventional educational/training settings
and the emerging learning organizations.
• Teaching professionals.

Fe-ConE project consortium and satellites network

The Fe-ConE project embraced not only the

countries represented by the project
partners, however also member states that
were not in the formal consortium
composition. The role of the latter ones was
to serve as project satellites to facilitate the
project with background evidence on the
distinct learning traditions in the countries
represented as well as to serve as National
nodes for the validation and testing of project
tools and framework.

This document outlines excellent practices

examples in the area of initiatives addressing
socio-cultural aspects in broadly understood
e-learning. The excellent practices were
provided by both the project partners and
satellite network members. More detailed
information can be found on the Fe-ConE
website:
http://promitheas.iacm.forth.gr/fe-cone
We particularly like to draw your attention to
the project document of “Inclusive e-learning
contents design and evaluation for socially
and culturally diverse groups of adult learners Country coverage by project partners and satellite network
 in Europe: The Fe-ConE framework” and the research tools entitled External Participant’s
Questionnaires. The project encourages elearning promoters to use its outputs both for research and
development purposes.

Excellent practices and further resources

Excellent practices and further resources in the area of education and e-learning from the
perspective of socio-cultural variables.

Initiatives and policies:

• eFit, eFit2 Austria Programs – one all embracing national program raised by the Austrian
government that aims at promoting e-Learning and the development and application of e-
Content in various settings. The program comprises several smaller actions that all focused on
different socio-cultural aspects of e-Learning in the Austrian education system. Available at:
http://www.efit.at.
• GISAH Project - education and research project funded by the Minerva action of the
European Commission. The aim of the project is to develop ways in which geographical
information systems (GIS) are applied to secondary school education and teacher training. The
project provides evidence that web-based inquiry based learning or any other fixed approach
to learning is heavily affected by different teaching and learning cultures across Europe.
• The decentralization policies implemented in education systems by some national
governments in Europe throughout the last decades have already offered the ground for
greater flexibility to regional and local education administration bodies to define their priorities
and targets and this may have led to the emergence of greater variability in terms of
prevailing values, dispositions, expectations and actual practices from region to region and
sometimes from local community to local community.
• Discussion forum at elearningeuropa – discussion between education experts on the
emerging socio-cultural dynamics in e-Learning from a multicultural knowledge society
perspective initiate within the frames of the Fe-ConE project. Available at:
http://www.elearningeuropa.info/community/index.php?page=forumtopic&f=2&t=24.
• Fe-ConE Workshop – an event organized in Vilnius, Lithuania on 10th October 2007 with
participation of numerous researchers and practitioners in the area of education and e-
learning. Workshop objective was to consolidate the partnership and satellite networks as well
as to exchange expertise in general in the area of socio-cultural variables influencing education
and e-learning. Results of the workshop are available at: http://promitheas.iacm.forth.gr/fe-
cone/workshop.html.
• The European eLearning Industry Group – is an open consortium of leading ICT companies
and e-learning content providers who seek to promote e-learning throughout Europe, in
schools, universities, the workplace and homes. eLIG made a recommendation that “the
content industry is concerned about expectations of some education groups to rely only on free
forms of ‘open content’ and considering non-commercial approaches as the only solution to
linguistically and culturally diverse European education content market”. Available at:
http://www.elig.org.
• Support-EAM – is an IST funded project under the Sixth Framework Programme of the
European Commission. The objective of Support-EAM (Supporting the creation of a e-
Accessibility Quality Mark) was to propose a strategy for creating a Web Accessibility Quality
Mark for Web services, as part of the Action Plan eEurope 2005: An information society for all.
It clearly refers to the Council Resolution on "eAccessibility" - improving the access of people
with disabilities to the Knowledge Based Society, inviting the Commission and the member
states "to consider the provision of an "eAccessibility mark" for goods and services which
comply with relevant standards for eAccessibility". It is supposed that eAccessibility mark idea
can be used to support in e-learning and e-content creation processes. Detailed information
available at: http://www.support-eam.org.
Research activities:

• A six weeks introductory course on “e-Learning Fundamentals” which was aimed to

provide with first hand empirical data on cultural dimensions on inclusiveness in e-learning and
e-contents. It was one of the most critical phases towards the development of the Fe-ConE
framework. The e-course included six weekly modules and was delivered exclusively on-line
(May-June 2007). The course was designed by a group of five experienced e-course
designers/tutors originally working in 3 different European countries so as to avoid as possible
hidden design biases. The designers also acted as course tutors with some extra help from
other project participants. Their role was to facilitate the learners but not explicitly offer
tutoring and also to contribute to discussions in a way so as to carefully challenge the
participants’ views in order to help them elaborate more on their ideas. The design of the
course was based on Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 2001; Hofstede &
Hofstede, 2005) that was adapted for the purposes of the project.
• Interview of education/training practitioners (representing Bulgaria, Germany, Italy,
Malta, Portugal and Slovenia) in the context of the Fe-ConE project. They have been asked to
provide views on socio-cultural perspectives in the design and evaluation of e-learning courses
and e-content from their national perspective. The analysis of their contributions revealed that
they all focused on a number of common parameters which need to be taken into account in
design and evaluation of inclusive courses and contents; these had to do with the socio-
cultural characteristics of the individual learner, the teacher, the learning environment and
didactical design, the learning content, the technology used, and the educational system and
society in general.
• Research project at the University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow,
Poland. The UITM enrolls over 500 international students originating from such countries as:
Ukraine, Belorus, China, Malaysia, India, Brazil and several others. The purpose for this project
is to analyze in depth the way that students act in multicultural blended learning
environments.
• Grounded based research to the unveiling of the complex multi-faceted cultural
issues that emerge in on-line learning by Clint Rogers and his colleagues (2007). A small
number of experienced instructional designers who had been involved in cross-cultural projects
have been interviewed. The main research questions they aimed to answer had to do with the
cultural competencies of instructional designers and how they affect their design practices. The
analysis of their interviews revealed that their learning needs had to do with a) the general
cultural and social expectations of the learners, b) the teaching and learning expectations
concerning the teacher-student relationships, roles and interactions, learning activity and
assessment types, categorization and structuring of knowledge, c) differences in the use of
language and symbols and d) availability of infrastructure and familiarity with it.
• The study of on-line learning with the use of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions by Pfeil,
Zaphiris and Ang (2006). They explored the relationship between national culture and
computer-mediated communication (CMC) in Wikipedia, an activity that can be paralleled to
collaborative learning projects, on the basis of four dimensions of cultural influences proposed
by Hofstede (not the short/long-term orientation). The researchers chose the French, German,
Japanese, and Dutch Wikipedia pages on the topic game as the source of data. According to
them, the analysis of the data showed that “… the amount and strength of the correlations
between changes made in Wikipedia and Hofstede's cultural dimensions shows that cultural
differences that are observed in the real world can be related, carefully, to the virtual world”.
This may has important implications regarding how aspects of collaborative online work are
influenced by pre-existing cultural differences. For example, as Pfeil, Zaphiris and Ang (ibid)
argue, people from countries “…with a high Power Distance Index, such as the French, are
likely to feel uncomfortable about deleting others' work” and “…it is therefore advisable not to
expect or require it of them in collaborative online work.” People from masculine countries
such as Japan, on the other side, should be able to get “rewards”, such as a “total edits” score.
• Interview of Arab graduate students pursuing degree programs in the United States, who
had taken at least one on-line course or a blended one by Aisha S. Al-Harthi (2005). Al-Harthi
explained the Arab interviewees’ expressed feelings of anxiety and reluctance to participate in
 (mandatory) distant education courses on the basis of Hostede’s model arguing that Arab
country nationals have stronger uncertainty avoidance than US nationals, which means that
they may feel more threatened by uncertain or unknown situations than do members of the
American culture. Another finding was that the Arab students felt less eager to actively
participate in the learning activities as compared to their US colleagues. Al-Harthi attributed
this feeling to the higher femininity score in the femininity-masculinity dimension of Arab
cultures as compared to the US culture. Finally, another observation was that Arab students
avoided confrontation with their teachers even in cases where they felt they were completely
justified to do so. Al-Harthi claimed that this was most likely due to pragmatic reasons, but
also maybe because they wanted to avoid social embarrassment, behavior justified on the
grounds of the collectivism of Arab cultures.
• Analysis of conference postings of participants from two different cultures -Finland and
the United States with the addition of a third with Korean students by Kim and Bonk (2002).
The findings indicated that there were differences in the participants’ online collaborative
behaviors. In particular, the “Korean students were more social and contextually driven online,
Finnish students were more group-focused as well as reflective and, at times, theoretically
driven, and U.S. students more action-oriented and pragmatic in seeking results or giving
solutions. The U.S. and Finnish students spent much time sharing knowledge and resources
and also providing cross-cultural feedback. The above findings were viewed as manifestations
of high (Korean) and low (USA and Finish) context cultures. Koreans for example developed
social interactions because they come from a high context culture which places more emphasis
on social relationships and less on task completion and the lack of social interaction among
American and Finnish students seems to reflect their task-focused cultural orientation.

Models and concepts:

• Review of 24 studies relevant to the design of learning environments for diverse

cultural needs prepared by Catherine McLouglihn (2007). The study proved the need to
include a cultural “angle” in the design and implementation of on-line courses, programmes
and contents as something imperative. Additionally it has been argued that, a) that social
interaction is important aspect of on-line pedagogy in catering for diverse learner needs, b)
that expectations and cultural understandings are of paramount importance, and c) that
diversity in learning approaches, style, and cultural patterns are universal.
• Claire Bélisle in her Fe-ConE paper provides argumentation that it is not just e-learning
course and content developers that have to cope with socio-cultural diversity. Practically all
stakeholders involved in education and training of adult learners have to cope with social and
cultural diversity in different teaching/learning contexts and situations and develop cultural
competencies. Therefore the demand for cultural competencies is also valid for curriculum
developers, education and training organisations, and from a wider perspective whole national
education and training systems.
• Geert Hofstede Cultural Dimensions - a model that identifies five dimensions to assist in
differentiating cultures: Power Distance, Individualism, Masculinity, Uncertainty Avoidance and
Short-term vs Long-term orientation. The model demonstrates that there are national and
regional cultural groupings that affect the behavior of societies and organizations, and that are
very persistent across time. Hofstede’s national culture dimensions and the calculated country
scores on each dimension are often used as a framework for explaining observed differences in
the dispositions and practices between international and native students doing courses at
universities in western countries (for example, Pritchard and Skinner, 2002), but also wider
educational issues such as female’s participation in formal education (Cheung and Chan,
2007), or failures in the “transfer” of pedagogic practices from one cultural context to another
(Nguyen, 2005, 2006). This model has been applied as well while developing research
framework at Fe-ConE project. Information on Hofstede model is available at:
http://www.geert-hofstede.com.
• A conception of culture as an ongoing iterative process of sense making by Anne
Hewling. This conception of culture when implemented in on-line learning leads to an
understanding of learning activities and interactions as an evolving context of social
negotiation and cultural creation. As she concludes, “practices may vary from nation to nation,
 but as students move online their varied collective prior experiences of ‘doing’ face-to-face
education become a frame of reference implicated in how culture in the online class may be
understood.” But even if we de-emphasise the idea that international learners’ frames of
reference can be entirely attributed to homogeneous collective experiences at national level,
we still need to identify, define and discuss what are these frames of reference that may be of
relevance in the design and evaluation of culturally inclusive e-learning courses and contents.

Books, research papers:

• Attwell, Gracham (2003). The challenge of e-learning in small enterprises: issues for policies
and practice in Europe. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European
Communities.
• Chaffin, Amy J. and Harlow, Steven D. (2005). Cognitive Learning Applied to Older Adult
Learners and Technology. Educational Gerontology, Vol.31, pp.301–329.
• Communication from the Commission –COM (2006, 614 final). Adult learning: It is never too
late to learn.
• Cunha, Flavio, Heckman, James, J., Lochner, Lance, and Masterov, Dimitriy V. (2006).
Interpreting the Evidence on Life Cycle Skill Formation. In E. Hanushek and F.Welch (eds),
Handbook of the Economics of Education, Vol.1. North Holland. Also available at:
http://www.econ.jhu.edu/seminars/elyLectures/2005/handbook_all_2005-03-31_mms.pdf.
• Detailed Analysis of Progress Towards the Lisbon Objectives in Education and Training
(February 2006). Annexed report endorsed by experts from the Member States meeting within
the Standing Group on Indicators and Benchmarks. European Commission, Directorate General
for Education and Culture.
• Ertl, Bernhard (2007). Dimensions and parameters for the evaluation of e-learning.
http://promitheas.iacm.forth.gr/fe-cone/docs/Workshop/Satellites/Germany.ppt.
• European eLearning Industry Group -eLIG (2005). i2010: Fostering European eLearning
Content to Make Lisbon a Reality. Available at:
http://www.elig.org/downloads/i2010%20Fostering%20European%20eLearning%20Content.p
df.
• Heemskerk, Irma, Brink, Anouk, Volmanw, Monique and Dam Geert ten (2005). Inclusiveness
and ICT in education: a focus on gender, ethnicity and social class. Journal of Computer
Assisted Learning, Vol.21, pp.1–16.
• Hewling, Anne (2005). Culture in the online class: Using message analysis to look beyond
nationality-based frames of reference. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Vol. 11,
No.1. Available at: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue1/hewling.html.
• Hofstede Geert (2002). Dimensions do not exist: A reply to Brendan McSweeney. Human
Relations, vol. 55, no.11, pp.1355-1361.
• Hofstede, Geert & Hofstede, Gert, Jan. (2005). Cultures and Organizations: software of the
mind. McGraw-Hill.
• Hofstede, Geert (2001). Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions,
and Organizations Across Nations. Sage Publications.
• Kalnins-Cole, Tristan and Peters, Dorian (2007). Towards an accessible learning management
system. International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning,
Vol.17, No.1, pp.84-96.
• Kim, Kyong-Jee and Bonk J. Curtis, Cross-cultural Comparisons of Online Collaboration. Journal
of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol.8, no.1, 2002.
• Mavromoustakos, Stephanos, Andreou, Andreas, S., Papanikolaou, Katerina (2007). Critical
factors in the socio-cultural e-Learning engineering process. International Journal of Continuing
Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning- vol. 17, no. 2/3, pp.178–200.
• McSweeney Brendan, Hofstede’s model of national cultural differences and their consequences:
A triumph of faith -a failure of analysis. Human Relations, vol. 55, no.1, 2002, pp.89-118.
 • Morse Ken (2003). Does One Size Fit All? Exploring Asynchronous Learning in a Multicultural
Environment. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, vol.7, no.1, pp.37-55.
• Pfeil, U., Zaphiris, P., and Ang, C. S. (2006), Cultural differences in collaborative authoring of
Wikipedia. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol.12, no.1. Available at:
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue1/pfeil.html.
• Rogers, P. Clint, Graham, R. Charles, and Mayes T. Clifford (2007). Cultural competence and
instructional design: Exploration research into the delivery of online instruction cross-
culturally. Educational Technology Research and Development, Vol.55, No.2, pp.197-217.
• Selwyn, Neil, Gorard, Stephen, Furlong, John and Madden, Louise (2003). Older adults’ use of
information and communications technology in everyday life. Ageing & Society, Vol.23, No.5,
pp.561–582.
• Shoemaker, Susan (2003). Acquisition of computer skills by older users: A mixed methods
study. Research Strategies, Vol.19, pp.165–180.
• Tikkanen, Tarja and Nyhan, Barry (2006). Introduction: promoting age-friendly work and
learning policies. In T. Tikkanen and B. Nyhan (eds), Promoting lifelong learning for older
workers. An international overview (pp.9-17). Cedefop Reference series, 65. Luxembourg:
Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.
• Velleman, Eric (2004). Evaluation Methodology and Quality Mark for Web Accessibility. In
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Computers Helping People with Special Needs (Vol.3118,
pp.317-322). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer.
• Withnall Alexandra, McGivney V. and Soulsby J. (2004). Older People Learning: Myths and
Realities. Leicester: NIACE.
• World Health Organization -WHO (2002). Active Aging: a Policy Framework.

Contact information

Project coordinator

Kathy Kikis-Papadakis
Institute of Applied and Computational Mathematics
Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas
P.O. Box 1385, 71110 Heraklion Crete, Greece
Phone: +30 281 0391802
Fax: +30 281 0391801
E-mail: katerina@iacm.forth.gr