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Nabil Sultan, U. Campus Suffolk,
[email protected] Sylvia van de Bunt-Kokhuis, Vrije U. Amsterdam,
[email protected]
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Transcultural Challenges for Open Online Learning Keywords:
MOOC;
Language
and
Communication;
Management Education; Talent Development; Social Inclusion; Transcultural Challenges. Abstract The digitalisation of management education has increased rapidly in the last decade. Modern technologies transform the way teachers and learners view and experience their classroom. More often, teachers offer a variety of online gateways, serving their management students in their learning process. With the fast development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) the learning organization is entering a new phase in talent development. Universities and business schools are currently wondering how to react to this new massive development. To be prepared for the future of massive open online learning new solutions for new problems need to be found. This paper explores the inherent transcultural challenges of MOOCs for talent
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development; in particular those related to the social inclusion of prospective learners in low-income countries. We highlight the language
and
communication
challenges
in
an
online
transcultural classroom where the power of words is enhancing educational success. In line with this transcultural perspective, the last part of this paper includes a discussion on MOOCs‟ costeffectiveness, credit-bearing certificates, e-recruitment, and the commodification of management courses. Introduction Online learning is entering a new phase of its development where management learning is free and available to an unlimited number of students. These so called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) will impact several important aspects of traditional education in terms of income, quality, content, recruitment, transcultural diversity, student experience, talent development,
credibility,
certification,
employability
and
acceptability (Reeves, 2013, Siemens, 2012). MOOCs raise a big
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question mark on the future of higher education (HE) and business schools. This paper will seek to explore this phenomenon and attempt to foresee some directions of this new learning model. Language and communication challenges are identified that may hinder prospective learners to benefit from these new educational phenomenon.
1
The new phenomenon of MOOCs
Increasingly, the Web is having a disruptive impact on online management learning. What is very interesting about free online learning, however, is the latest interest in MOOCs. A number of Anglo-American business schools are keen to deliver their own online courses for free (Zionek, 2013). Since 2011, MOOCs began to attract a great deal of interest, especially from highly prestigious Anglo-American universities and business schools. Examples include, amongst others, Harvard, Stanford, Michigan (Rose School of Business), Pennsylvania (Wharton School),
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Virginia‟s
Darden
School
of
Business,
Princeton
and
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Several start-up companies since then have developed partnerships with some of these universities and professors to offer MOOC's. These include companies such as Coursera, Udacity, edX, Udemy and Khan Academy. Coursera, Udacity and edX are among the leading (and high profile) providers of MOOCs. The company Futurelearn (www.futurelearn.com) is also aware of the potential of MOOCs and possible threat to the UK‟s educational market. Futurelearn has been set up by the British Open University to offer MOOC services from 2013 onwards with relevant management education courses, e.g., on sustainability and climate change. MOOCs are currently provided free of charge but this approach is unlikely to be sustainable. MOOC providers will ultimately consider making returns on their investments. Charging a fee for credit-bearing certificates or courses may well be one of the business strategies. 2
MOOCs and its potential for underserved learners
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The Web has opened learning possibilities for many people worldwide and is likely to have a major impact on low-income countries in particular, e.g., African countries (Adkins, 2013). Many African countries have suffered for decades from poor education due to factors such as lack of resources, bureaucracy, political interferences and ill-equipped teaching and academic staff. For the first time in their lives, the Web offers underserved students almost unhindered access to global management education. Likely these new opportunities for learning will be supported through low price web-enabled mobile devices (Canalys, 2012, Dikaiakos, Katsaros, Mehra and Pallis, 2009). Accessing the Web through traditional desktop personal computers is likely to be problematic. Because, many low-income countries suffer from low broadband coverage and frequent power cuts (Internet World Stats, 2012). The MOOCs phenomenon will have a fertile ground for potential management learners in low-income countries; many learners in these countries are unable to gain access to Western universities. More
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often, local talent cannot fully be developed in these low-income countries due to their inability to afford their fees, travel, the relative high cost of living in Western countries and the unrecognised status of their qualifications. Such prospective (and underserved) learners could find MOOCs provided by respectable Western business schools hugely attractive. 4 The language challenge A MOOC is more often subscribed by students from different nationalities and mother languages. Thus, for example, the first EdX course provided by MIT had over 150,000 students enrolled from nearly every country in the world (DeBoer, Stump, Seaton, and Breslow, 2013). The online teacher plays a critical role in student engagement and needs the e-competence to interact with learners across language groups. MOOC teachers and designers must understand and anticipate issues relating to the diversity in language background of the students they serve. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (in: Ratcliffe, 2012) stated “He who does
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not know foreign language is ignorant of his own”. Here we will discuss the language challenge in the multilingual classroom, in particular when some members of a MOOC speak a language unknown to other members and subsequently run the risk of having their words lost in the translation. Endangered languages. According to Vygotsky (1986) thought does not express itself in words, but rather realizes itself in them.
Language is the most powerful tool in education, and is a vehicle of ones cultural identity. However,
people may speak an
endangered mother tongue language that is unknown to others. The B@bel Initiative of UNESCO (UNESCO, 2011) is raising awareness for endangered languages on the web and the need to safeguard the world‟s linguistic diversity. About 90% of internet content is available in only 12 languages (UNESCO, 2005). Endangered languages on the web include amongst others, Scots Gaelic,
Istro-Romanian
in
Croatia,
Haida
in
Canada,
Kadazandusun in Sabah Malaysia and Baka in Gabon. Another example is India with 22 official languages and 1650 dialects. -7-
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Over 95 percent of the Indian population is derived of the benefits of online learning and communication due to the language barrier (Nair and Peter, 2012). The Lexical project of Sarai (see: www.sarai.net) helps to safeguard and serve the further online development of Hindi in India. Sancharkosh is a Sarai project on lexical resources to build an electronic dictionary of Hindi keywords in old and new media, and the humanities. Sancharkosh tries to include common Hindi words while also introducing unfamiliar terms from the world of new media. Interesting links in this respect are the ones for serving machine translation techniques (Nair and Peter, 2012), for Hindi language fonts (see Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, www.cdac.in). Furthermore, the Anusaarak system of machine translation is helpful across Indian languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Sanskrit, and Punjabi with language tools (see International Institute of Information Technology in Hyderabad www.iiit.net and Nair and Peter, 2012). Shusha and other Hindi fonts can be found on www.ffonts.net. The machine translation
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techniques that have been developed so far have many shortcomings. Further research needs to be conducted with relation to dictionary and translation methodology in order to produce intelligible translations (Nair and Peter, 2012) for the benefit of underserved students in multilingual countries such as India and beyond. For the impact of language on online communication see also Hwang, Piazz, Pierce & Bryce (2011). Local language and content. The value, local applicability and credibility of online management courses in various non-English speaking countries may be at stake if that course is only offered in English. Thus, for example in the Arab world, ready-made contents are frequently pre-packaged in English (e.g., OER, MIT Open Courseware). This excludes many prospective students from participation if the language of instruction is English e.g. some Arab students do not have the necessary fluency in English to undertake college-level tests (Fox, 2008). 5. The communication challenge
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Communication barriers touch on the very essence of the way elearners construct their worlds and the level of professionalism and motivation they can reach. The timing, pace and intensity of communication across cultures
has
multiple
faces.
The
communication via social-media blogs, video, audio and other word-carrying mobile devices create challenging cross-overs beyond the boundaries of the traditional business school. Online communication and sense making. Technical features such as different power supplies, varying keyboards or nonmatching
plugs
are
most
obvious
barriers
to
online
communication. According to Isaias, Miranda and Pifano (2013) lack of access and technology‟s capacity further the digital divide. The pace of its constant technological innovations is much faster than the speed that (business) schools can keep up with. However, these technical barriers are relatively minor problems compared to the more sensitive communication barriers. The communication style in MOOCs may influence the
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level of sense making and therefore the possible motivation and inspiration of management students. More often MOOC learners will experience complex and fragmented communication styles. According to Siemens (2012) there is a notable power shift of sense making artifacts in MOOCs; learners can self-organize and guide each other, rather than simply following established knowledge paths created by educators. Communication in a MOOC network lacks the routines from traditional classrooms. There is no centre, no one space where everything is held. The subject views of the instructor are not duplicated by students (Siemens, 2012). MOOC students rather create their own content and communication style, which some students might be familiar with and others might not. Collaboration in MOOCs is essential for students‟ sense making. MOOCs tasks require collaboration in teams or pairs, not just cooperation (Reeves, 2013, slide 86). Technical communication tools that are appropriate and cultureproof for various international groups of e-learners are not yet available, or it may still be at an early experimental stage of - 11 -
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development.
Steers, Nardon and Sanchez-Runde (2013)
describe the lack of shared understanding in virtual teams. Reeder, Macfadyen, Roche and Chase (2004) identify some of the hidden barriers inherent in communication across cultures. Thus, for example, the „bulletin board‟ in the virtual classroom is built on the basic assumption that students like to publish their thoughts or initial ideas. However, this e-tool for communication is not popular among some cultural groups on the virtual campus. For example, in Asian countries the fear of loss of face may hinder the online communication and sharing of knowledge with people you do not know. Furthermore, online learning platforms such as WebCT and Blackboard, which are based on a western style
of
efficiency,
may
not
always
be
appropriate
communication tools across cultures. Chat, for instance, is of a distinctly oral nature. At the same time, chat lacks important features of verbal communication, and is predominantly rooted in literacy. Reeder, Macfadyen, Roche and Chase (2004) and Betts (2009) found missing sense-making elements in online
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communication such as context perception, parallel visual channels, and direct eye contact. All kinds of gestural information, side talk, dynamic real-time repair mechanisms and avoidance mechanisms may be more important for some students than others. Communication
is fine art.
In the
traditional learning
environment we might find cultural communication clues with more emphasis on the oral tradition, compared to online learning. Thus, for example, in the Arab classroom storytelling and poetic expression are a kind of art form expressed by teachers. The regular keyboard of a computer cannot support this depth and ambiguity of the Arab writing and artistic expression. Storytelling and oral communication are not that easily supported in MOOCs where face-to-face communication is missing. Arabs, especially, value verbal fluency and elegant expression and relish the cultural music of words. Communication at home, school or at work is almost an art. Compare calligraphy cultural art of writing, unique way of expression in Asian cultures. Calligraphy has been - 13 -
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a feature of the Chinese culture for the past 4000 years. It is an emotional form of expressing the dynamics of life such as time, space and rhythm (China Orbit, 2013). Cultural attitudes, expectations and behaviour norms.
In the
context of online management education, it is important to understand how attitudes, expectations and behaviour norms may vary across cultures. Thus, for example, in the Arab World dignity is an important communication clue, which may be missed out in the online management classroom. Criticism of an individual in front of a group of ordinary people (or management students) may need to be avoided in order to protect the dignity and to avoid loss-of-face of the criticized person. In the online learning environment this implies that critical comments and student assessments may need to be kept private in order to avoid humiliating
the
individual.
Furthermore,
in
the
Arab
communication silence plays an important role. Silence in communication may also convey implicit judgment in this
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culture. What to a Western student may appear as a wilful unwillingness to proffer a straight answer may represent a significant transmission of information to a closer person in the Arab context. The power of silence and the nuance of the space between words that is so important in Arab face-to-face communication might be missed out in a MOOC. However, the high-tech use of visual media may help to fill this gap in online communication. It will strengthen the connection of oral and visual expression of words through combining high-tech and high-touch opportunities in MOOCs. 6
Discussion
The MOOCs phenomenon, as explained in this paper, implies many transcultural challenges for management education. One major challenge for the 21st Century is its potential to attract and include prospective talents, those who cannot afford or are unable to access class-based management education. With developments in data-enabled smart mobile devices, MOOCs could turn
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management education into a scalable and ubiquitous service. In low-income countries a large human potential of underserved students could benefit hugely from this innovation, and in the end diminish the digital gap. In principle, any student - regardless of his/her economic or cultural background - should have the civic right to gain access to a good quality online course. However, before MOOCs become an acceptable badge of transcultural quality and respectability in the world of management education, more work is required. Ultimately, the success of MOOCs for management education could depend on whether business schools and employers (both in Western and low-income countries) are prepared for a cultural change. We will discuss some of the transcultural implications and good practices in line with the earlier mentioned language and communication challenges. Language challenge: the tablet generation in China. The MOOCs market in China is big. To provide one example:
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Tsinghua
University
launched
its
own
platform
called
http://XuetangX.com, to host local MOOCs as well as courses on the edX platform of Harvard and MIT business schools. There are multiple language challenges for Chinese students. Currently, Chinese officials are concerned because a large part of the population has difficulty with the handwriting of Chinese characters (Meijdam, 2013). One fears the end of the Chinese national culture. Until recently the most powerful medium of traditional Chinese education was the Chinese language with its content-rich characters. This language is endangered in the digital age. This phenomenon is called Character Amnesia whereby speakers forget how to write Chinese characters. Illustrative is a recent CCTV show, where only 30% of participants were able to write "toad" (Chinese: 癞蛤蟆; pinyin: Lài há ma) in Chinese (Want China Times, 2013). For centuries Chinese students conceptualized
their world through their Chinese language, or like Vygotsky (1986) stated: “Learning to direct one‟s own mental processes
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with the aid of words or signs is an integral part of the process of concept formation”. How can you transfer five thousand years of Chinese history without the written word? The cause of the lack of written language competencies is found quickly. In China, people hardly even use pen and paper anymore. On their smartphone or tablet, Chinese people simply tap the word with ordinary characters using a standard pinyin system (Demick, 2010). According to Meijdam (2013) Chinese school children often use their mobile phone secretly under the table. Children find it time-consuming to learn to write manually nowadays. Will the Chinese handwriting culture become less powerful or even disappear? The Chinese spoken/written languages have strong roots in traditional Chinese culture. So, what about the potential loss of Chinese meaning, the power of words and the limitation of Chinese thought? As far as MOOCs are concerned there is hope and potential for technical support. Some tablet personal computers such as the Galaxy Note 10 support a stylus and handwriting recognition. Finger-driven screens are potentially
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better suited for entering variable-width stroke-based characters, such as Chinese/Japanese/Korean writing, due to their built-in capability of pressure sensing. According to UNESCO (2013, p.90) newest technology will enable anyone to write in their most familiar language. The Word Lens application captures all the nuances and translates them into a range of foreign languages. Word Lens is a smartphone application and works like a dictionary. This app uses the built-in camera on smartphones to scan and identify foreign language words. Much of this potential is still to be developed and further research is needed to fully apply in MOOCs. Communication
challenge:
more
effective
transcultural
communication. How do we make communication in MOOCs more effective across cultures? In an interview management guru Edgar Schein (Lambrechts, Bouwen, Grieten, Huybrechts, and Schein, 2011) suggests the adoption of the dialogue style in multicultural groups. This style makes the communication
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process culturally neutral and allows different thoughts to merge slowly in the context of management education. This is because giving feedback in a very direct and personal way may be counter-productive for some students. According to Schein, the kind of feedback that might be appropriate for one student would be totally offensive to someone else in another culture. In a multicultural educational setting where management students speak limited English, the best way to get them engaged is to give them a „campfire‟ task. According to Schein (Lambrechts et.al, 2011) the campfire dialogue enhances mutual understanding and reframing. The dialogue is oriented toward thought, listening and building a collective consciousness, all important artifacts in the transcultural MOOCs learning environment. This is in line with earlier findings in this paper on narrative storytelling and conversation in the Arab classroom where the power of words is key to achieve mutual understanding and bring meaning in the learning process. Thus, transcultural communication can be enhanced by digital storytelling and dialogue. Shachaf (2008)
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investigated the effectiveness of transcultural communication too. The author interviewed 41 team members from nine countries on the effects of cultural diversity and ICT. Results suggest that cultural diversity had a negative influence on intercultural online communication. More effective intercultural communication media include e-mail, teleconferencing combined with emeetings and (online) meeting rooms for teams. Remarkably, some MOOCs offer courses on this issue of transcultural communication. Globalvoicesonline.org of MOOCs Galore offers a course on „E-learning and Digital Cultures‟. The course teaches
how digital cultures intersect with learning
cultures online, and how our ideas about online education are shaped through narratives and the relationship between people and technology. The University of Edinburgh offers a course on „The Future of Storytelling‟.
Students in this MOOC learn
storytelling basics such as antagonist/protagonist relationships, and narrative/narrated time. Students have a look at exciting
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current media projects, analyze how they are designed and discuss how (and if) new online tools and formats change the way stories are told and perceived (Coursera, 2013). Last but not least, to communicate effectively with peers and instructors it is vital that MOOC students are served with the necessary social-cultural skills. Students need to be enabled with critical, creative reflection skills and need to require empathy to reach out to the other in transcultural communication. In this respect Erez, Lisak, Harush, Glikson, Nouri and Shokef (2013) demonstrate how students collaborate in a virtual multicultural team. In this educational setting their cultural intelligence (ability to grasp and reason correctly in situations of cultural diversity) and global identity (to see beyond their national differences with empathy) is enhanced. Eteokleous (2011) developed an online social-virtual curriculum to enhance student‟s social-cultural skills, cultural competency and multicultural awareness. The curriculum promoted a new blended-learning and communication
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culture, an innovative method of addressing sensitive, personal, and difficult issues with empathy. Another good practice case comes from the ZONE learning community (Moore, DicksonDeane, Galyen,
Kumalasari, and Kwon, 2012).
The ZONE
mentoring model encourages development of meaningful skills in self–direction and the social empathic ability to problem solving when assisting online peers via discussion boards, e-mail, instant messaging, telephone, and in-person consultations. The above good practice cases illustrate how empathy and open mindfulness to reach out to diverse students serves the communication across cultures and languages. Reaching out to the other is illustrated greatly by John F. Kennedy speaking in Berlin (1963) with the powerful words „Ich bin ein Berliner‟, just four words that touched the hearts of the people in the cold war period. Finally, to make a cultural change happen in the massive world of online learning, the language and communication challenges have to be taken into account. At the same time, MOOC designers and
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providers are facing many other challenges, e.g., costeffectiveness. Business implications. MOOCs‟ business implications and cost effectiveness for the coming decade are hard to foresee. The financial prospects for MOOC providers are yet unclear. Some analysts such as Moody (the international financial research company, www.moodys.com) suggest that advertising (copying the Google model) could be one revenue option for MOOC providers. Receiving a fee by licensing MOOC material to other institutions is another option, similar to receiving payment for a textbook (Marklein, 2012), or charging a small fee for issuing certificates after completion. In a global 21 st Century context where social inclusion of diverse prospective students from lowincome groups is envisaged, the budgetary issue is key for stakeholders such as MOOCs participants, NGO‟s, governments and MOOCs entrepreneurs themselves .
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Can MOOCs bridge the digital gap through cost effectiveness? The increasing fees to enrol in Western higher education is likely to create non-participation among many students in low-income countries who are unable to meet the rising study costs. This implies a serious loss of (potential) talent, when talent development is key for economic development in the 21st Century. UNESCO shows how education can reduce poverty. Better education improves a poor country‟s economic growth and thereby generates economic opportunities and incomes (Van der Berg, 2008). A positive factor is that online courses are still relatively inexpensive when compared with traditional university courses (Clark, 2009). Thus, for example, in the USA the annual degree fees charged by some universities can exceed US$ 40,000 (Bridgestock, 2010). Online learning is not only less expensive, it also removes many of the inconveniences associated with a traditional management education, e.g., registering at certain times of the year, commuting, attending classes, finding a seat in a crowded classroom, or finding lodging accommodation. In
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many Western countries, online degrees (granted by wellestablished universities and business schools) have become popular with management students. There is indication that many employers are prepared to accept online degrees (see Columbaro and Monaghan, 2009, Damast, 2012). Can MOOCs generate income through credit-bearing certificates? MOOC providers such as edX and Udacity have signed deals with the education company “Pearson” so that their students can take exams via the company‟s network of test centres (Parr, 2012). Credit-bearing certification could become a major income generator for management education. Some MOOC providers such as edX have introduced sequences of MOOCs that can be taken for as little as six months and as long as two years (Bridge, 2013). The edX website (www.edx.org) features a range of courses in many different fields and successful completers of the course receive a personalised (not credited) certificate.
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Furthermore, Coursera developed with the support of the World Bank a MOOCs initiative NESAP-ICT (The New Economy ICT Skills for Africa Program). NESAP-ICT equips students with market-relevant and building employable IT skills, aligned to international standards. A pool of globally benchmarked IT talent in Africa is envisaged for young people to work in IT jobs e.g. in multilingual call centres in Egypt (Why Egypt, 2013). In Tanzania, NESAP-ICT is helping to support the development of SMART Knowledge Hubs and will become a model to other parts of the country (Trucano, 2013). Furthermore, talent recruitment will likely become big business in
the
MOOCs
era.
Thus,
for
example,
Udacity
(www.udacity.com) is developing a recruitment business by headhunting for companies to hire Udacity‟s high talented students. By doing so, Udacity charges a commission for each successful talent match. Reale (2013) confirms the talent recruitment potential of MOOCs. The provider can identify and
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monitor the best talent and the brightest minds everywhere in the world. By applying marketing automation software the best talents can be identified opportunities will opened to find potential leaders, CEOs and managers with specific and desirable skills. According to Pinault (2013) MOOCs providers realise they have access to the ideal databank of qualified CVs. Coursera has launched a service for purchasing of (management) student‟s profiles for recruiters. Coursera monitors student behaviour in, e.g., whether they have leadership qualities, or are good team player, etc. Finally, MOOCs will have the potential to commoditise education in a manner that has not been experienced before. Commodification within the MOOCs infrastructure will likely happen by providing „education as service‟ similar to the way cloud providers provide their IT services. MOOC providers could end up becoming the new cloud providers of education. Conclusion
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MOOCs potentially serve millions of prospective management students worldwide. This new massive educational phenomenon is likely to have a major impact on talent development and talent recruitment of managers across the globe, in particular in lowincome countries. We can only speculate about the pace and way MOOCs will contribute to the diminishing of the digital gap, while facing major transcultural challenges in the field of language diversity and various communication modes. In the coming decade, MOOCs are likely to be attractive to those prospective students who cannot gain access to university business
schools
due
to
cost
or
lack
of
sufficient
educational/language entry requirements. This group of talent potentials might see MOOCs as an alternative avenue to climb the management education ladder. It could also be potentially attractive to managers who are already in employment and cannot afford the time and/or completion commitment required by campus-based
(or
even
other
traditional
online-based)
management education. However, these managers may aspire to
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achieve career progression, at their own pace, by having MOOC certificates from some of the most respectable universities and business schools in the world. The aforementioned target groups will form the bulk of the talent-potentials in management education, which MOOCs will need to serve. We have seen that the language and communication mode used in MOOCs may influence the pathway to success for prospective students across cultures. Improving the cross-cultural sensitivity in MOOCs by understanding and anticipating on the power of words is a major step to help include prospective and underserved students. To end with Confucius‟ wisdom: “Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know more.”
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