Midterm topic

This is what I posted on the discussion board:

As we, as trainers and educators, take ever-increasing advantage of collabortive online/remote/distance learning to reach out to students all over the country, or especially around the globe, we need to become cognizant of cultural differences that may affect how our students perceive our courses, how they interact in their collaboration, and how we can avoid that certain cultural groups may be advantaged or disadvantaged in the coursework we design and offer.
Cultural bias in everything we do is inescapable (Tylee, 2001); therefore, when I design online content, when I try to motivate participation in the coursework, and when I determine the value of participants' contributions, I am doing so from my own cultural mindset, which may lead me to attach more importance to the contributions of some (namely, those more like me) over others. In order to offer more equitable evaluations of students' work, I need to take certain cultural vairables into consideration, as well as how I can best structure my training to be meaningful to all course participants. These are some of the cultural variables my paper will attempt to address.
-culturally-determined social roles, including those of student and teacher, and issues related to -power distance
-relationship v. task orientation
-high / low context societies
-educational systems and methods the participants are familiar with
-individualistc v. group learning orientations
-predilictions for group harmony (including saving face and group traditions) as opposed to -----seeking the truth at the expense of group conflict
-attitudes toward technology and towards f2f v. distance learning
-directness v. indirectness
-levels of uncertainty avoidance
Some of the effects of the above cultural variables may be seen in:
-how material is presented, perceived, and accepted
-who has access to what
-motivators for work and accomplishment
-how individuals are addressed and what & how much personal information is exchanged
-modes of interaction
-writing styles, amount of information and detail expected
-levels of cooperation and expectations of group and individual work
-amount of choice available to participants
-use of technology, e.g., to reduce ambiguity
-differing approaches to problem-solving
Finally, what can we do to avoid some groups being culturally advantaged or disadvantaged compared to other groups in online collaboration, or, in other words, how can we be more inclusive in our online training?

Tylee, Jennifer (2001). Cultural issues and the online environment, dowloaded 1/25/09.
Rose, C.P. et al. Exploring the influence of culture on collaborative learning, downloaded 1/25/09.
Germaine-Rutherford, A. An inclusive approach to online learning environments: models and resources. From the Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, April 2008, v 9, no 2, downloaded 1/25/09.

This, as I said in my last posting, is too much to address well in a 10 or so page paper, but I will pick out certain points to address as the coming week progresses.