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

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