opportunities and challenges

With the ever-increasing expanse of communications technologies such as the internet, opportunities for distance education continue to expand. As the internet expands its reach, greater percentages of the world’s population have increased access to distance education. However, as distance education expands from one country to another, there are several issues that should be addressed. Some of these issues relate to culture, specifically how culture relates to distance education, or even more specifically how people from different cultures react and respond to distance education. As I have written before this is an area of great interest to me.

I am interested in the interrelation of culture and distance education for several reasons. A key part of designing any educational program should be helping ensure the audience actually learns something from the program. If we are going to take the time to develop distance education programs it seems we should put effort into designing programs that will help people learn. This is usually taken as a given. However, if people from different cultures react to online educational programs in different ways, perhaps we need to try and design programs that are targeted to people in the culture we are targeting. At the very least we need to design educational programs in such a way as they will not alienate people from the target audience. Though I am now very much a novice in this area I feel it is an area with a great many research opportunities.

We in the west must also be careful that we are sensitive to cultural differences. What I mean to say is that when we are developing programs to help improve people’s knowledge in a certain area, we should be careful that we do not at the same time impart values specific to our culture to people from other cultures. Of course if we are aiming to alter another culture’s values that is another matter entirely.

In my beginning quest for knowledge about distance education I feel as if I am standing on the edge of a very great ocean. I am barely getting my feet wet as the waves occasionally roll up the beach to where I am standing. However, as far as I can see there is nothing but water. I want to drink it all in but where do I start? How can I possibly make even a small impact on the amount of water there? Perhaps it is useful to remember the saying “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

As you can tell from my writings here I am only beginning to take baby steps. Nevertheless, I am encouraged to keep going. I hope you will continue to journey along with me.