Reflection on authentic learning from a multicultural perspective

In this development task, I have here compared authentic learning elements and online education delivery principles by McLoughlin and Oliver (2000). They have used authentic learning approach in their principles and emphasized the importance of minimising cultural misunderstanding among teaching and learning groups. I wanted to understand what´s the difference. A summary of my reflection is shown below.

Authentic elements	Design principles for a culturally inclusive curriculum for online learners	My reflection
	Adopt an epistemology that is consistent with, and supportive of constructivist learning and acceptance of multiple perspectives.	Constructivist learning and multiple perspectives is part of the cultural understanding,
Authentic  context Authentic activity and tasks	Design authentic learning activities that build on existing knowledge, values and skills of all learning groups in the learning community. Create flexible tasks and tools for knowledge sharing to enable the notion of online learning. These tools include shared workspaces, discussion forums and other web-collaborative tools for study and social interaction.	Authentic learning is emphasized also in design principles. Tasks need to have a real-world relevance and meaningful to a learning group. Principles are also taking into account the flexible tools in online learning which are suitable for study and social interaction.
Expert performances		Networking, use also external expertise and more experienced learners. Can be part of the multicultural understanding.
Multiple perspectives		Important part for multicultural understanding was also present in a first principle added to epistemology definition.
Collaborative construction of knowledge	Establish responsive student roles and responsibilities to provide a sense of autonomy and ownership for students. This includes creating self-direction tasks and having methods that encourage students to take charge of their own learning paths.	Collaborative learning is emphasized in authentic elements. Design principles are more defining the independence and the responsibility of students. Earlier there was a mention about web-collaborative tools in principles but collaborative or peer-to-peer learning is not visible in principles
Reflection		Didn´t find reflection from design principles. I wonder why it has been left out. Isn´t that important for learning.
Articulation		Articulation is only emphasized in authentic elements. This could be part of taking responsibility of their learning anyway that design principles emphasize.
Coaching and Scaffolding	Provide different forms of support, both within and outside of the learning community. This includes online help tools or provision for students to contact one another using web-based tools as well as providing flexible tutoring and mentoring roles. Another way is to provide various access means to different resources to promote students’ efforts to obtain information from multiple sources and perspectives.	Support is noticed in elements and principles. Principles are defining how students can get support. Also teacher´s role would be good to define.
Authentic assessment	Provide flexibility in learning goals, outcomes and assessment modes. Using learner contracts with mature students or guidance.	Flexible assessment is defined. Principles don´t tell here if it´s an individual or group assessment.

Issues in multicultural online education

It seems that even if there are theories, guidelines and checklists concerning multicultural online teaching; it needs a lot of effort to implement multicultural e-learning environment properly. Main task is to get learners participate and engage to a course that learning can happen. There are several things to consider in implementation e.g. learning cultures, language and ICT which in online learning play the important role. 

 
ICT has already a big role in young people´s lives, and virtual interaction is natural for them. Children adopt easily functions from computer games. The challenge is for teachers and course planners to utilize children´s competence and construct online work methods for group-based collaboration. In many schools, also ICT resources might be limited for the use of the entire class.

In multicultural e-learning experiences, also English skills were raised as one obstacle. In multicultural environment some analysis of English skills could be useful at the beginning of a course. To lower language barriers, a use of diversified activities could help and also giving the opportunities to improve English proficiency to students. Visual communication instead of just text reading can help international students in learning.

Addition to language skills and ICT, online teachers need to have cultural sensitivity. The need of cross-cultural training for online teachers has been addressed since cross cultural competencies are specially needed in online learning environment. Teachers should be able to provide extra support to the international students to help their learning experience. Also students could need some culture and way of working orientation in the beginning of a course.

In general multicultural online courses should be planned to be flexible and variable that they could meet the diversified needs of multicultural learners. In order to understand this, online teacher could conduct pre analysis in order to get an understanding of the learners´ expectations and cultural backgrounds. That could help the teacher to adjust the diversity of the course.

With all these aspects, I think that a multicultural learning environment needs a new planning since certain things like cultural understanding, language barriers and ICT need extra attention and new competencies for a teacher. Also teacher´s role for supporting learners needs attention. 

Despite the demanding implementation, the attitude towards multicultural courses has been positive. This is the direction where learning is going and it´s worthwhile to learn to do effective multicultural online learning courses. I see that it´s a challenging work for the teacher at the beginning, new shoes are needed! Shoes should support flexibility and variability, or maybe it´s enough to take away the old shoes and continue with bare feet. They might fit best for this purpose!

Referencies

Liu, X., Liu, S., Lee, S.-H., & Magjuka, R. J. (2010). Cultural Differences in Online Learning: International Student Perceptions. Educational Technology & Society 13 (3), 177–188. Retrieved 18.7.2013 from http://www.ifets.info/journals/13_3/16.pdf

English-Korean Experiences of environmental education. Educational & Technology Society Journal 15 (2), 244-256.  http://www.ifets.info/journals/15_2/21.pdf

Development task

I´m going to plan a course about the sustainability as my development task. Sustainability is a wide concept, but I ask students to find out what would be the most sustainable way of living for them at the future. They should cover in their work some key areas including e.g. ecosystems, climate change, energy, agriculture, food and water. This course tries to find some answers how people can continue living sustainably in our world.

The main question of the course is for learners to solve: What would be the sustainable way of living for an individual? 

Students work in groups around the question. There will be several weeks time to solve the question. Groups will plan their work and agree what areas of the sustainability are covered. Possibly support from the teacher is needed in the planning phase. Groups will have their own online discussion forums where they can discuss and work together. Periodically (e.g. once a week) groups will write a diary (blog) about the work done and discussions around the topic. Writer of the diary changes every time so that each member of the group participates to writing. Other groups will then read and comment diary. If possible some blogs are replaced by f2f discussion meetings.

Teacher suggests a wide range of online resources for learner´s about the subject. There will be e.g. digital libraries, articles from magazines, interviews of experts, book chapters, videos, statistics and other web sites. Also experts working in this area will help students online. Also other resources defined by students can be used.

End product of the course will be an article which will be published in the school magazine. It will also be presented to other groups f2f or online, depending on the groups. Every group will write an article of their own, and the assessment will happen based on the article and group work (activities during the work). The assessment criteria has been agreed together before the work.

When planning the course, it´s important to consider the learning culture. It will form a basis to the whole learning process. It should be considered what kind of students there are in the course, what is their learning environment what will be their working environment at the future. It should be decided if the traditional teacher centered learning culture is enough to produce the learning students need or if the learning needs to fit better to the modern society as a student centered learning. 

Aim for this course is that multicultural authentic learning culture will be created in teams. Learning culture creation is possible when teams work collaboratively being positively dependent on each other. The nine elements of authentic e-learning also support the culture understanding and creation. Learning communities including access to expert thinking with group and individual reflections support the culture creation. 

In Table 1 I have used the template Reflection tool for e-benchmarking to help for the the course definition.

Element of authentic learning	Guidelines for implementation	Course implementation
Provide authentic context that reflects the way the knowledge will be used in real-life	• a physical/virtual environment that reflects the way the knowledge will ultimately be used	Sustainability course aims to gain the skills and knowledge which can be applied to own personal life in order to make sustainable choices.
	• a non-linear design to preserve the complexity of the real-life setting	Aim is to keep the course content flexible. Students can plan to work themselves. Students can choose the topics they want to work with and decide the working order.
Provide authentic activities	• activities that have real-world relevance	Aim of the course is to get it applied in real life with real knowledge.
	• ill-defined complex activities that provide an opportunity for students to define the tasks and sub-tasks required to complete the activity	Purpose is to have a very wide concept of sustainability here as a main subject. Students define the tasks to be done of their own.
	• a sustained period of time for investigation	This course will last several weeks, maybe five to eight weeks.
	• the opportunity for the detection of relevant versus. irrelevant information	Since the sustainability as a subject is wide, there is a variety of inputs available e.g. digital libraries, articles from magazines, interviews of experts, book chapters, videos, statistics and other web sites
	• tasks that can be integrated across subject areas	All tasks are to be integrated in to the area of sustainability
Provide access to expert performances  and the modelling of processes	• access to expert thinking and modelling processes	Accesses to expert skills are provided e.g. with online discussions (e.g. access to expert forums) and several video interviews addition to written articles.
	• access to learners with various levels of expertise	Addition to experts, learners can also learn from each other during discussions and find information we they think is needed e.g. different observations.
	• opportunity for the sharing of narratives and stories and access to the social periphery	Blog writings, online discussion and f2f discussion meetings are arranged in order to share stories.
Provide multiple roles and perspectives	• different perspectives on the topics from various points of view	Purpose is to get as broad view as possible from the sustainability; different points of view can be e.g. population, ecosystems, climate change, energy, agriculture, food and water or individual, company and global view.
	• the opportunity to crisscross the learning environment	The students are able to use the learning resources for multiple purposes and in flexible order.
Support collaborative construction of knowledge	• tasks are completed in pairs or groups rather than individually	The course work is done in groups.
	• appropriate incentive structure for whole group achievement	The assessment is done on group level based on the article and group work (activities during the work).