Thursday 12 June 2008

INTERESTED IN COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH?

This post is about a research proposal on intercultural e-learning, and to invite expressions of interest. First, thanks to everyone who came to my presentation in session A1 this morning - a scattered audience in a big room doesn't exactly invite discussion but your attention was appreciated! Basically I see an excellent opportunity for a number of us to get together and conduct some research with our students, inevitably from a variety of cultures and backgrounds, to assess their attitudes to e-and-distance learning, how they engage with it, learning preferences an so on. Built into the survey could be one of the typologies of cultural styles - Hofstede's is one example, there are others, and they've all been criticized one way or another. My feeling is, we know there are issues, and plenty of the papers today pointed to what they might be: I'm indebted to the first presenter today (Bernd Kleiman) for the reminder that subjects have cultural differences too. We know what some of the questions might be but until we test them out then we will just be posing questions, not driving the field of knowledge forward. I know that with a few collaborators we can't get comprehensive coverage of cultures and nationalities but if we can just make a start, that will at least deepen our understanding. And like I said, we may even attract some research funding! Anyhow, I came away from the presentation feeling I hadn't said half of what I wanted to say - I'm always really nervous at conferences - and that from a lecturer with 25 years experience! Hey-ho. Glad to hear your views, or to have direct contact on andrew.rothwell@coventry.ac.uk. Thanks for reading this.

2 comments:

Jon said...

Andrew,

I would Very much like to work with you to explore the cross cultural issues that develop from the particular kinds of engagement that occur in an international online classroom. I will try to add something to the discussion in my Saturday, 11:30 presentation. Jon Rubin

andrewrothwell1@gmail.com said...

Jon, thanks for your interest , unfortunately I have to travel on to another destination (lorry drivers strike permitting!) on Saturday morning so will not be able to attend your presentation - any chance of a chat before the conference dinner tonight?

AR