Up to now, many researches have demonstrated the importance of including the cultural context in knowledge acquisition. We believe that the cultural context is important to increase reuse of learning objects. Here, you will find our evolving ideas according to two main aspects of this topic:
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Culturally sensitive instructional designer’s competency profile
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Cultural factors that can influence learning and/or instructional design.
Instructional Designer’s Competency Profile
The instructional designer’s profession stands on well established competency profiles, which refer to the same scientific foundations, and that we are attempting to standardize.The idea is to express how cultural factors influence the ID’s competency profile and what those new competencies and attitudes might be. For example, when analyzing target audience the Instructional Designer will have to think about the teaching and learning expectations in his culture and about these expectations in the learners' culture(s). In some cultures, learners will easily interact with the professor and are encouraged to question the content, whereas in others, it is just not permitted to question the content presented by a professor ("the sage on stage"). It is important to be aware of such differences because it may affect the kind of learning activities that can be planned.
The Q4R Repository will contain resources concerning this aspect of quality, which you can find by using the keyword "Cultural ID Issues". You can also discuss this issue in the Wiki. Go to Best Practices Wiki.
Cultural Factors
A list of cultural factors that might influence learning and/or instructional design is presently being developed by the Q4R team. These factors will be developed using the most commonly agreed upon ID processes called ADDIE (Gagné, 1970 http://ed.isu.edu/addie/ ) as a framework to classify the cultural diversity factors. These processes are Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation.Below are some examples of socio-cultural factors that might influence the quality of the LO
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Level of individualism (vs collectivism),
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Temporal Issues, for example scheduling of live or collaborative events ;
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Awareness of own cultural biais ;
- Importance accorded to assessment of learning or content acquisiton
Your comments and suggestions on this issue are much appreciated! Go to Best Practices Wiki (Q4R Strategies – Before Inclusion in the LOR;">– Instructional Design - Cultural Factors).
The Q4R Repository will contain resources concerning this aspect of quality, which you can find by using the keyword "Cultural Factors".