Cultural Inclusivity in Online Learning Design
Tuesday, April 16, 1400 HAST (1900 CDT, 2000 EDT, Wed 0900 TOKYO)
Description
Designing for sustainable learning in diverse contexts includes considering what it means to be culturally inclusive in online learning design. It also investigates the tangible benefits of factoring culture into the design of online instruction and argues for the necessity of designing for cultural differences in diverse contexts rather than designing around them. The session introduces the Wisdom Communities (WisCom) instructional design framework to design culturally inclusive online learning environments. WisCom draws from sociocultural theory, social constructivism, and distributed cognition to provide insight into the development of a wisdom community supported by communication and technology; distributed co-mentoring; and learner support. In a WisCom design, learners engage in a Collaborative Inquiry Cycle (CIC) that leads to transformative learning and wisdom.
About The Presenter
Charlotte Nirmalani “Lani” Gunawardena
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
Charlotte Nirmalani “Lani” Gunawardena is Distinguished Professor of Distance Education and Instructional Technology in the Organization, Information, and Learning Sciences Program at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A., where she founded the graduate emphasis area in distance education. She has published and presented on distance and online education for 30 years, and received the Charles A. Wedemeyer Award for Excellence in Book-length Manuscripts in the field of Distance Education. She researches sociocultural contexts of online learning communities, social presence theory, e-mentoring, and interaction analysis. Dr. Gunawardena has consulted about distance education for the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, U.S. corporations, and international higher education institutions in Brazil, Ghana, Mexico, Spain, Sri Lanka, and Turkey.
Can we measure teaching skills? If so, how?
Thursday, April 18, 1400 HAST (1900 CDT, 2000 EDT, Wed 0900 KOREA)
Description
Measuring the skills teachers use to influence students’ academic performance can inform the teachers how to improve their skill sets. Observing classroom instructions have been used as a way to tell the quality of teaching but the results are not easy to understand.
A quantitative method called ICALT (International Comparative Analysis of Learning and Teaching) will be presented; observations within 6 domains can lead to analysis of the teaching skills by domain. That analysis will inform teachers how to improve their teaching skills.
About The Presenter
Ok-hwa Lee
Chungbuk National University, Cheongju, South Korea
Professor Ok-hwa Lee is a specialist in educational technology and a practitioner in pre-service teacher education. She has been a pioneer of the e-learning, ICT based education, smart education in Korea when she worked at the national research center, Korea Educational Development Institute, and a faculty member of Chungbuk National University College of Education. She was a member of the Presidential Educational Reform Committee, the Presidential e-Government Committee and consulting member for various ministries regarding technology and education. She has experience in international collaboration with advanced and developing countries through UNESCO, OECD, and Korean government ODA (Official Development Assistant) projects.