Saturday 15 September 2012

#aufgs2012 Viviane Vladimirshi Exploratory study of cross-cultural engagment in the community of #inquiry: instructor perspectives and challenges


Viviane Vladimirschi has finished a thesis on the subject of Exploratory study of cross-cultural engagment in the community of inquiry: instructor perspectives and challenges April 2012 and you can find the full thesis here:
 http://hdl.handle.net/10791/15

During the Athabasca University conference she gave a talk on her research and used methodology (also part grounded theory).

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.

The cultural indicators Viviane used were very interesting. So a good read if you are interested in the content.

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