Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

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4 Addressing Diversity in Design of Online Courses Madhumita Bhattacharya* and Maggie Hartnett** * Athabasca University, Canada ** Massey University, New Zealand . . . everybody who is human has something to express. Try not expressing yourself for twenty-four hours and see what happens. You will nearly burst. You will want to write a long letter or draw a picture or sing, or make a dress or a garden. – Ueland (1987) Education for a Digital World 41
4 – Addressing Diversity in Design of Online Courses Learning outcomes After completing this chapter, you should be able to: • Demonstrate the knowledge and understanding of the emerging issues of diversity for online learning. • Explain different definitions of diversity with references from literature. • Identify the different parameters of diversity. • Analyze different learner characteristics and their online behaviour. • Prioritize different parameters of diversity according to their importance for designing online courses. • Design learning environments to sustain motivation in online courses. Introduction “In the life of the human spirit, words are action, much more so than many of us may realize who live in countries where freedom of expression is taken for granted. The leaders of totalitarian nations understand this very well. The proof is that words are precisely the action for which dissidents in those countries are being persecuted”. – Carter (1977) The world is shrinking rapidly. The Internet has brought the world together in ways that nobody would have expected. You can now attend a college halfway around the world, with students from any country with Internet access. People will telecommute to their jobs more in the future, while their companies compete globally (elearners.com). Many countries around the world are experiencing increasing diversity amongst their populations (Wentling & Palma-Rivas, 2000). While this is having a major impact on organizations within the business sector (Thomas, 1995), higher education institutions are also feeling the effects of increasing diversity within student populations (Smith, 1995). The last decade in particular has seen an increasing trend towards globalization (Farrell, 2001) particularly with the introduction of the World Wide Web and the Internet. As a result the tertiary education landscape has changed considerably as institutions seek new and innovative ways to meet the needs of a growing and increasingly diverse student population (Rumble & Latchem, 2004). Online learning, or e-learning, is an increasingly popular method being used by institutions to meet the requirements of the changing learning landscape (Dimitrova, Sadler, Hatzipanagos & Murphy, 2003). Diversity Within any group of people there will be many aspects of diversity. Whether the focus of investigation is a sports team, a school class, a work group within an organization, or a group of online learners, these groups are made up of individuals who differ on at least some dimensions of diversity (Maznevski, 1994). While many would acknowledge that no two persons are alike in every respect and therefore can be regarded as diverse relative to each other, it is the similarities between some specified group of people and differences to other groups that has been the focus of much research on diversity (Cox, 1993; Hofstede, 2004; Thomas, 1995; Triandis, 1995b). Indeed it is this ability to identify meaningful distinctions that make diversity a useful and extensively studied concept (Nkomo, 1995). Defining diversity That diversity is a complex issue is reflected in the difficulty in defining what diversity is (Smith, 1995). In order to make some sense of the countless potential sources of diversity among groups of people numerous definitions have arisen. Within organizations diversity is “typically seen to be composed of variations in race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, physical abilities, social class, age, and other such socially meaningful categorizations” (Ferdman, 1995, p. 37). In other words diversity measures are assumed to capture a perception of similarities and differences among individuals in a group or organization (Wise & Tschirhart, 2000). Wentling and Palma-Rivas (2000) point out that there are many definitions of diversity that range from narrow to very broad. Narrow definitions of diversity tend to focus on observable or visible dimensions of difference (Milliken & Martins, 1996) which Lumby (2006) asserts are likely to evoke bias, prejudice, or the use of stereotypes leading to disadvantage. These include ethnicity, race, gender, disability, and age. Indeed much of the organizational diversity research has tended to focus on the identification of differences between the cultural majority and particular minorities in the workplace with regard to race, culture, and gender (Thomas, 1995). As a result of this somewhat narrow focus some argue that the term diversity should only pertain to particular disadvantaged groups (Wise & Tschirhart, 2000). A direct consequence of this is the current politicised nature of the discussion which has seen diversity become synonymous with affirmative action where diversity is seen as a means of fostering the recruitment, 42 Education for a Digital World
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Education for a Digital World ADVIC
Page 4 and 5: Contents Chapter Abstracts / v Intr
Page 6 and 7: Chapter Abstracts Part 1: The Impac
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Page 10 and 11: Chapter Abstracts BUILDING COMMUNIT
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Page 18 and 19: 1 Emerging Technologies in E-learni
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Page 44 and 45: 3 Challenges Confronted and Lessons
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12 Articulation and Transfer of Onl
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Part 3: Implementing Technology Edu
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15 - Understanding Copyright: Knowi
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17 E-learning Standards Randy LaBon
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20 Instructional Strategies Peter F
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21 Media Selection Peter Fenrich If
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31 Looking Forward: Stories of Prac
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Contributors Dr. Mohamed Ally, Prof
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Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

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