The definition of digital culture
It has been said that the concept of
culture should be approached critically. Even culture based categorization, as
any other classification, should be avoided. Everyone is unique. Even though everyone is unique, (s)he
bears his or her cultural signature. Race, culture, ethnicity, and religion
must be seen as “dimensions along which individuals and samples vary, rather
than as categories in which individuals can be classified”. (Phinney, 1996 in
Liu, 2007). I agree it´s important to remind that everyone is unique even we
all have our cultural backgrounds. It would be too easy to just use stereotypes
of different backgrounds, we are much more than just our cultural background. I
believe it´s necessary for a teacher to understand different kind of cultures
and learner´s backgrounds in order to support learning in an optimal way.
Each student brings their own specific culture to their education. This
means that every classroom contains layers of multiculturalism and diversity.
It means that educators must think outside their own comfort zone and area of
knowledge to develop meaningful learning for all their students. (Harrington,
2010: ICT and the Multicultural Classroom http://www.slideshare.net/jha174/the-multicultural-classroom-and-eportfolios). For an educator it´s important to understand own background. That way
own comfort zone and the limits are easier to recognize and it will help to
understand different learners too.
“I think that
the first and most important lesson of culture is that it belongs to the
people, it belongs to us, it is what we make, and we have tools now more than
ever than we did in the past to make culture” (Downes, 2012). To me this is a very important statement. The culture is up to people. This
is why culture can change and be different depending on people. This could also
explain why one person can belong to different cultures depending on the group
(s)he belongs to.
Online culture
Online or Cyber
culture is a social place in which
human beings interact and communicate and can be assumed to possess an evolving
culture or set of cultures (cyber cultures) that may encompass beliefs,
practices, attitudes, modes of thought, behaviours, and values (cf. Palaiologou,
2007, 79).
There are some concerns that the lack of face-to-face
communication makes intercultural communication difficult and that may result
ineffectivity in online education (Hannon & D’Netto, 2007.) This might be
true, if online education is done like traditional education. Online education
needs careful and different planning and implementation compared to traditional.
In many studies it´s referred that online learning culture is something
different compared traditional learning. It has been stated that an online
culture is “negotiated” rather
than “given” (2004, in Rutherford & Kerr, 2008).
This means that online
education can be successful if the learners’ communication and knowledge
sharing is supported and implemented to be an essential part of online
education. Based on my own experience as a learner, I agree that online culture
is negotiated assuming that there has been a space for communication and sharing.
I have also participated to online courses which have been very traditional, no
communication nor knowledge sharing between learners. I believe it´s much more
effective learning to let the learners communicate and participate to culture
creation. Some values maybe good to give to ensure the wanted direction for
culture creation. When I participated inside a company to internal online
trainings as an educator or learner, the culture of the company is already
there. There is still space for negotiation but maybe less than at school.
If the online learning culture is different compared
to traditional learning, how does that affect to whole learning process? It´s
easy to assume that the whole learning process is different compared to traditional
learning. Learner´s role and teacher´s
role is changed. The learning is different. The assessment should be
different. The different culture affects to the whole learning environment.
Online teacher
As it has been said, that the
traditional, teacher-centered and content-driven learning culture does not
produce learning that is needed today. It is crucial to develop learning
designs that allow dialogue, reflection and collaboration. That will create a
solid starting-point for the group to
collaboratively create a multicultural learning culture. (Teräs,
Leppisaari, Teräs & Herrington, 2012.) It´s easy to agree to this
statement. Working life has also partly changed to this direction. It seems that for learning, it´s challenging
to implement new learning culture to the reality. The change seems to be quite
slow anyway compared to working life.
When I was a student, the
traditional and teacher-centered learning culture was the way of learning. I
have a lot of work experience in modern technology and multicultural working
environment, but still I think it´s important to gain also personal experience
as a learner in multicultural e-learning environment in order to develop myself
as an online teacher. Then also the learner´s way of working will be more
familiar and easier to understand. That experience I can then utilize when
developing my own way of working as an online teacher.
