Collaborative Online Learning across Cultures: the Role of Teaching and Social Presence

Abstract

Collaborative online learning (COL) has been associated with positive outcomes, such as critical thinking, shared problem-solving skills, and deep learning. Such outcomes require pedagogies that consider students’ backgrounds, including the cultural context in which they operate. This study reflects upon the role of culture through the lens of the Community of Inquiry Framework (CoI) and the elements of social - and teaching presence. German and Thai students were selected due to cultural differences in values of power distance, collectivism, and femininity. 20 in-depth interviews on students’ experiences with COL were conducted. Findings revealed differences in perceptions of and factors influencing social- and teaching presence across the two samples. German students were hesitant to initiate contact with non-familiar classmates through digital communication tools. The use of the camera overall supported social presence but also affected Thai students negatively, who were more concerned about the judgment, and emotions of classmates. Teaching presence differed as social media and messenger applications were more readily utilized for collaboration in Thai universities. While the presence of the lecturer in break-out rooms increased Thai students' voicing behavior, German students opened up as the lecturer was absent. The possible influence of educational-, national- and cybercultures is being discussed.

Development of Transdisciplinary and Complex Learning in Inclusive Educational Practices

“…They also highlighted the opportunity to work in a more dynamic and creative way, which allowed them to develop relevant skills for their academic and professional development. These results corroborate the importance of providing meaningful learning experiences with online resources which are transferable to the professional context [1,31].…”

Does the talking head matter? The mediating effect of social connectedness and cognitive load on remote learning during a global pandemic.

“…Counter to research on the personalization principle arguing that the talking head helps maintain appropriate levels of attention (Kizilcec et al, 2015) and research showing that including a video would make participants feel most connected (e.g., Cui et al, 2013; Grothaus, 2022; Ritonga et al, 2022), we found that participants in the audio-only video gave the highest ratings for social connectedness compared to the conditions that either featured a video display of the speaker at the beginning and end of the video or the picture overlay of the speaker throughout the learning video. Thus, our findings expand on previous research suggesting that the benefit of including a PiP overlay may depend on how familiar the audience is with the presenter.…”

Management Analysis of Inclusive Educators

“…The data that has been processed is then drawn to conclusions. Conclusions are the process of extracting the essence of data that has been organized in the form of short and concise sentence statements but containing broad meaning (Grothaus, 2022).…”