An exploratory study of cross-cultural engagement in the community of inquiry: instructor perspectives and challenges

The purpose of this study was to explore how instructors of online courses accommodate and make provisions for culturally diverse learners in an online community of inquiry. Ten instructors from two Alberta higher education institutions participated in two phases of research. To explore this phenomenon in the CoI model, intercultural competency indicators were created to test how they could develop and expand teaching and social presence in a cross-cultural environment. In the first phase, analysis of the open-ended survey questionnaire (AMEQ) revealed that in the absence of any cross-cultural design, instructors use facilitation and open communication strategies to foster learning and prevent conflict. The second phase, informed by the first phase, involved augmenting the original 34-item CoI survey instrument. Additional roles that relate to instructor cross-cultural efficacy were incorporated into both teaching presence and social presence elements in the CoI survey instrument. The revised 37-item CoI survey instrument was then administered to the same respondents for face validity. Findings revealed that the incorporated cultural indicators correlated highly with the teaching and social indicators, indicating their usefulness to measure multicultural efficacy in the CoI model. / 2012-April

  1. http://hdl.handle.net/10791/15
Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:AEAU.91/15
Date30 April 2012
CreatorsVladimirschi, Viviane
ContributorsHoven, Debra (Centre for Distance Education), Jones, Tom (Centre for Distance Education), Baskett, Morris (University of Calgary), Cleveland-Innes, Marti (Centre for Distance Education)
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
Detected LanguageEnglish

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