Thomas Richter | University of Duisburg-Essen (original) (raw)
Papers by Thomas Richter
Increasing globalisation and mobility of learners and faculty is inevitably reflected in a wider ... more Increasing globalisation and mobility of learners and faculty is inevitably reflected in a wider range of cultural diversity in educational scenarios. On the one hand, increased cultural diversity presents itself as a very positive development: It helps learners to achieve competences in intercultural communication and collaboration. On the other hand, if the learners’ experiences are not accordingly reflected, frustration through perceived intercultural conflicts could emerge. Loss of motivation could be a consequence, which is directly related to higher dropout rates. We consider education as a process in which learners are guided on their way to transform experiences into knowledge. Thus, we are looking for ways to support both students and educators, to better understand and deal with socio-cultural diversity in education. With the 2008 started and on-going “Learning Culture Survey”, we aim to foster the implementation of culturesensitive education. The motivation of this study ...
Basic demand from enterprises towards academic education: provide students not only methodologi-c... more Basic demand from enterprises towards academic education: provide students not only methodologi-cal/theoretical knowledge, but also prepare them for the future tasks in the world of works! This contradicts academia's focus on sustainably teaching basic principles. With the extra-curricular international online program erp4students, we successfully managed to bridge this "conflict-of-interest " .
With the implementation of the Bologna process in Germany, curricula – originally designed for di... more With the implementation of the Bologna process in Germany, curricula – originally designed for diploma and magister programs – had to be transferred to three-year bachelor programs. The general purpose was to enable university students to enter the world of works with a qualified (academic) degree earlier.
In the context of the German language speaking countries, unique characteristics were required for the new academic bachelor degree in distinction from the regionally traditional (non-academic) bachelor degrees, which were provided by the industry and the chamber of crafts after three years lasting apprenticeships (Dobischat et al. 2008). Different to the modus operandi “learning on the job” as it is the rather common concept outside the German-speaking countries, the education of apprentices in industry and crafting disciplines is not limited to the particular tasks arising from the daily business in an employing enterprise but, within the particular branch, they are expected to being practically prepared for the full range of tasks from any kind of job. For that purpose, the apprentices are demanded to visit a branch-related school for professionals, which ensure that even very specialized enterprises can employ apprentices. In these schools, lectures are provided on general job-related theoretical knowledge and hands-on training to achieve the full range of practical skills. In order to receive the degree, apprentices must prove their abilities in theoretical and practical exams. The difficult competitive situation for the academic bachelor degree holders particularly gets obvious when it comes to apprenticeships with the purpose to educate assistants for academic disciplines, like biological, chemical and architectural assistants, system programmers, and management assistants in the health industry. Another difficulty for the design of the academic bachelor degrees arose from the demand that education in universities generally is expected to be fully sustainable (timeless). Teaching application-related competences in the framework of academic education as demanded by the industry is understood as a contradiction against this very basic principle: Applications, however mainstream they might be used in a specific field, might easily be substituted as soon as new technologies emerge.
During the redesign of the curricula, most of the theoretical contents from the prior diploma and magister programs eventually were adopted for the new bachelor curricula on the cost of practical experiences, which the students earlier achieved in the context of several seminars, field trips, and hands-on trainings. While the understanding of basic principles and methodologies was focused, practical research skills were reduced to a minimum assuming that these were rather irrelevant for the work in the industry but exclusively required for academic working purposes. Consequently, related practical research skills and experiences were related to the consecutively designed master programs. These were meant to establish the beginning of an intended academic career. It is still not fully clear which specific abilities distinguish academic bachelor degree holders from non-academic bachelors in terms of advantages on the job market at entry-level. Sure, academic bachelors have a deep general understanding of the context and above that, also a basic understanding of typical strategies, measures, and theories, which the non-academic bachelors lack to a large extent. Just, at least for the first years of employment, enterprises still perceive a higher return of investment if employing the cheaper non-academic bachelors who far quicker can fully be integrated within current work processes.
The program erp4students was 2006 launched with the purpose to solve the found educational dilemma. Since it was designed as an extracurricular offer, the basic principle of sustainable education in universities was not in danger.
In our case-study-driven extracurricular vocational online training program, we experienced that combining relatively small theoretical lectures in printable PDF-documents with hands-on work on extensive case studies led to the achievement of competences in the field. We further found that group work is not the method of choice when it comes to extracurricular training: In order to successfully complete the courses, the learners need to study in their very own pace. Our learners further expressed to highly value our individual round-the-clock tutor-support because it ensures that they still can make the best out of the rare free time available for extracurricular work once they experience seemingly unmanageable problems. Finally, in our study, we found that the learners’ perceptions of and attitudes towards learning are quite similar comparing online programs and traditional learning.
http://thejournalofbusiness.org/index.php/site/article/view/927/591, Mar 28, 2016
The aim of design science research (DSR) in information systems is the user-centred creation of I... more The aim of design science research (DSR) in information systems is the user-centred creation of IT-artifacts with regard to specific social environments. For culture research in the field, which is necessary for a proper localization of IT-artifacts, models and research approaches from social sciences usually are adopted. Descriptive dimension-based culture models most commonly are applied for this purpose, which assume culture being a national phenomenon and tend to reduce it to basic values. Such models are useful for investigations in behavioural culture research because it aims to isolate, describe and explain culture-specific attitudes and characteristics within a selected society. In contrast , with the necessity to deduce concrete decisions for artifact-design, research results from DSR need to go beyond this aim. As hypothesis, this contribution generally questions the applicability of such generic culture dimensions' models for DSR and focuses on their theoretical foundation, which goes back to Hofstede's conceptual Onion Model of Culture. The herein applied literature-based analysis confirms the hypothesis. Consequently, an alternative conceptual culture model is being introduced and discussed as theoretical foundation for culture research in DSR.
Due to the increasing professional mobility of their parents, pupils often find themselves in new... more Due to the increasing professional mobility of their parents, pupils often find themselves in new and unfamiliar learning scenarios in foreign contexts and countries. Besides having to leave their familiar environments, these pupils additionally may face language barriers, different curricula, and have to cope with foreign cultures. Printed textbooks, which are the most commonly used educational resources in schools, provide little support for these pupils to manage the new challenges. Teachers are the professionals designated to provide the necessary support. However, they often may not fully appreciate the pupils’ individual challenges. Possible solutions could be the provision of alternative learning contents in the pupils’ native languages and an international open exchange of knowledge and experiences amongst schoolteachers. These issues are addressed by the Open Discovery Space platform. In order to empower this platform to provide the best possible support to teachers, we exp...
The aim of our research is finding measures to preserve the learners’ initial motivation in educa... more The aim of our research is finding measures to preserve the learners’ initial motivation in educational settings. For that we need to avoid conflicting situations that possibly could jeopardize their joy of learning.
In our thematically comprehensive Learning Culture Survey, we
investigate the cultural biasing of students’ attitudes, behaviours, and expectations towards education. Particularly in times of massive international migration and growing numbers of refugees, the relevance to deeply understand cultural aspects in education increases. Just with this understanding, we can raise the awareness towards more cultural tolerance across all involved stakeholder groups and thus, foster the development of more culture-sensitive educational approaches. In this paper we focus on the most relevant aspect of motivation and comparatively discuss our study conducted in Germany and South Korea.
In this paper, we introduce the international program “erp4students” as general example on how to... more In this paper, we introduce the international program “erp4students” as general example on how to successfully prepare university students for the world of works without having to give up the basic principle in higher education, i. e., to exclusively provide sustainable education. We start with introducing the general concept and design of our program and provide information regarding the demographic development over the past decade and implemented quality assurance mechanisms. Subsequently, the scope and design of and hitherto achieved insights from the Learning Culture Survey are outlined. On the basis of found results, we finally discuss how erp4students can deal with possible culture-specific issues that latest might emerge when the program gets available for learners in the Asian context.
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Education, Research and Innovation, ICERI 2015, Nov 2015
With the program “erp4students”, we introduce a successful solution on how to meet the demands of... more With the program “erp4students”, we introduce a successful solution on how to meet the demands of Bologna in terms of directly preparing university students for the world of works without having to give up the basic principle to focus university education exclusively on sustainable contents. The program is herein introduced from general concept and design over demographic development in the course of the past decade to implemented quality assurance mechanisms. It consists of a number of vocational training courses and is not limited to students from a specific field or context but internationally acces-sible and open to any registered student. Thus, it shall serve as a best-practice example on how such programs can be implemented and invite students and faculty from all over the world to join our ef-forts. This paper, further on, intends to encourage faculty and institutions around the world to design similar content offers and to share related results and experiences with the community.
With a focus on Technology Enhanced Learning, this paper investigates if and to which extent a cu... more With a focus on Technology Enhanced Learning, this paper investigates if and to which extent a culture shift can be expected alongside with the adoption of currently emerging Web 3.0 technologies. Instead of just offering new opportunities for the field to improve education, such a culture shift could lead to unexpected general consequences not just for Technology Enhanced Learning but the whole educational sector. Understanding the dimension of expectable changes enables us to prevent conflicts and pointedly support culture-related change processes. After an introduction of the Revised Onion Model of Culture, which, later on, serves as theoretical foundation, expectable changes in the design of learning scenarios are analysed, distinguishing the stakeholder groups “learners” and “educators”. Eventually, the found changes are analysed to which extent a general culture shift is to be expected in order to understand the transferability and limitations of future research results in the field.
Despite the opportunities and benefits of OER, research and practice has shown how the OER reposi... more Despite the opportunities and benefits of OER, research and practice has shown how the OER repositories have a hard time in reaching an active user-base. The opportunities of experience exchange and simple feedback mechanisms of social software have been realized for improving the situation and many are basing or transforming their OER offerings towards socially powered environments. Research on social software has shown how knowledge-sharing barriers in online environments are highly culture and context-specific and re-quire proper investigation. It is crucial to study what challenges might arise in such environments and how to overcome them, ensuring a successful uptake. A large-scale (N = 855) cross-European investigation was initiated in the school context to determine which barriers teachers and learners perceive as critical. The study highlights barriers on cultural distance, showing how those are pre-dicted by nationality and age of the respondents. The paper concludes with rec-ommendations for overcoming those barriers.
Job-related migration has been fostered across Europe balancing unemployment in one country with ... more Job-related migration has been fostered across Europe balancing unemployment in one country with demands for employees in others. However, the numbers of early school leavers and university dropouts significantly increased in the hosting countries. We propose a higher measure of cultural sensitivity in education in order to prevent frustration. The Learning Culture Survey investigates learners’ expectations towards and perceptions of education on in-ternational level with the aim to make culture in the context of education better understandable. After a brief introduction, we subsume the steps taken during the past seven years and found results. In the end, we will introduce a method for the determination of conflict potential, which bases on the understanding of culture as the level to which people within a society accept deviations from the usual. We close with demonstrating the method’s functionality on examples from the Learning Culture Survey.
For a successful enrolment of modern E-Learning-based education, it is inevitable to apply a holi... more For a successful enrolment of modern E-Learning-based education, it is inevitable to apply a holistic quality-concept across the entirety of processes around planning, development, implementation, ex-ploitation, and dissemination. The aim of a related quality strategy is ensuring that all stakeholders in the supply chain fully understand all processes, conditions, and responsibilities. For this purpose, proper descriptions of the processes are required.
What makes a proper and homogenous description of processes on a general level very complicated, is the fact that stakeholders from different fields need to fully understand them. In our experience, if project partners do not feel familiar with a certain type of process-representation method, it is most likely that they either stay ignorant regarding the details or generally reject the processes in lack of understanding. In smaller TEL-related projects (up to 15 partners) face-to-face discussions at the round table can reveal and cope with lacks of understanding. But what happens when face-to-face discussions are not an option because of the project’s size? In such contexts how can still be ensured that all partners in the project fully understand their own responsibilities and also dependencies be-tween different project parts? A compromise between formal, semi-formal and informal description models is required without losing information but aiming interdisciplinary comprehensibility.
Particularly for such cases, we developed a project description model type, which provides benefits of several existing process description models and languages and eventually produces outcomes easy enough to understand for any kind of (academic) education. With 51 project partners from several fields, we tested the modelling technique in both directions, confronting the project partners with a va-riety of already described project-related processes as well as asking them to describe their own planned processes. The tool we are going to introduce alongside the methodology bases on MS Pow-erPoint. We decided to use this particular application because we found it most commonly used the employees of all of our project partners’ organizations/institutions.
Increasing globalisation and mobility of learners and faculty is inevitably reflected in a wider ... more Increasing globalisation and mobility of learners and faculty is inevitably reflected in a wider range of cultural diversity in educational scenarios. On the one hand, increased cultural diversity presents itself as a very positive development: It helps learners to achieve competences in intercultural communication and collaboration. On the other hand, if the learners’ experiences are not accordingly reflected, frustration through perceived intercultural conflicts could emerge. Loss of motivation could be a consequence, which is directly related to higher dropout rates. We consider education as a process in which learners are guided on their way to transform experiences into knowledge. Thus, we are looking for ways to support both students and educators, to better understand and deal with socio-cultural diversity in education.
With the 2008 started and on-going “Learning Culture Survey”, we aim to foster the implementation of culture-sensitive education. The motivation of this study is based on the need for better understanding of the reasons for intercultural conflicts in education. When aiming at the reduction of (unintended) cultural conflicts in educational scenarios and support of students to keep their motivation on the highest possible level, these issues are particularly pertinent to international learning scenarios, such as in Internet-based Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), or urban education. In order to investigate and contrast a vast number of national contexts, our standardized questionnaire has been translated into a multitude of languages. We already were able to collect and analyse data in/from several countries, such as Bulgaria, Cameroon, Germany, Ghana, South Korea, Turkey, and Ukraine. While some of the studies were not fully representative, we achieved a good impression of what to expect in future studies. In 2014, we started investigations in France, and prepared environments for China, Greece, Japan, and Portugal.
The Learning Culture Survey investigates learners’ expectations towards and perceptions of educat... more The Learning Culture Survey investigates learners’ expectations towards and perceptions of education on international level with the aim to make culture in the context of education better understandable and support educators to prevent and solve intercultural conflicts in education. So far, we found that culture-related expectations differ between educational settings, depend on the age of the learners, and that a nationally homogenous educational culture is rather an exception than the rule. The results of our recently completed longitudinal study provided evidence that educational culture on the institutional level actually is persistent, at least over a term of four years. After a brief introduction of the general background, we will subsume the steps taken during the past seven years and achieved general insights regarding educational culture. Last, we will introduce a method for the determination of conflict potential, which bases on the understanding of culture as the level to which people within a society accept deviations from the usual. We close with demonstrating the method’s functionality on examples from the Learning Culture Survey.
Managing the needs of learners is crucial in order to support their motivation and keep dropout r... more Managing the needs of learners is crucial in order to support their motivation and keep dropout rates on a low level. With the constantly growing level of internationalization in classrooms, the variety of different context-specific requirements from learners increase; without a profound understanding of the learners’ contexts, successfully maintaining a culture-sensitive and learner-focussed education is impossible. A solution to reach this understanding is the open exchange of experiences and knowledge amongst educators of the different contexts. In this paper, we will briefly introduce the two European projects “Open Discovery Space” (ODS) and “Inspiring Science Education” (ISE), which have the aim to foster the establishment and improvement of Open Educational Practices in the context of school education. The purpose of this paper is to attract and invite potential partners to affiliate with, contribute to, and profit from the projects.
Paper translated to Chinese by Junhong Xiao
Increasing globalisation and mobility of learners and faculty is inevitably reflected in a wider ... more Increasing globalisation and mobility of learners and faculty is inevitably reflected in a wider range of cultural diversity in educational scenarios. On the one hand, increased cultural diversity presents itself as a very positive development: It helps learners to achieve competences in intercultural communication and collaboration. On the other hand, if the learners’ experiences are not accordingly reflected, frustration through perceived intercultural conflicts could emerge. Loss of motivation could be a consequence, which is directly related to higher dropout rates. We consider education as a process in which learners are guided on their way to transform experiences into knowledge. Thus, we are looking for ways to support both students and educators, to better understand and deal with socio-cultural diversity in education. With the 2008 started and on-going “Learning Culture Survey”, we aim to foster the implementation of culturesensitive education. The motivation of this study ...
Basic demand from enterprises towards academic education: provide students not only methodologi-c... more Basic demand from enterprises towards academic education: provide students not only methodologi-cal/theoretical knowledge, but also prepare them for the future tasks in the world of works! This contradicts academia's focus on sustainably teaching basic principles. With the extra-curricular international online program erp4students, we successfully managed to bridge this "conflict-of-interest " .
With the implementation of the Bologna process in Germany, curricula – originally designed for di... more With the implementation of the Bologna process in Germany, curricula – originally designed for diploma and magister programs – had to be transferred to three-year bachelor programs. The general purpose was to enable university students to enter the world of works with a qualified (academic) degree earlier.
In the context of the German language speaking countries, unique characteristics were required for the new academic bachelor degree in distinction from the regionally traditional (non-academic) bachelor degrees, which were provided by the industry and the chamber of crafts after three years lasting apprenticeships (Dobischat et al. 2008). Different to the modus operandi “learning on the job” as it is the rather common concept outside the German-speaking countries, the education of apprentices in industry and crafting disciplines is not limited to the particular tasks arising from the daily business in an employing enterprise but, within the particular branch, they are expected to being practically prepared for the full range of tasks from any kind of job. For that purpose, the apprentices are demanded to visit a branch-related school for professionals, which ensure that even very specialized enterprises can employ apprentices. In these schools, lectures are provided on general job-related theoretical knowledge and hands-on training to achieve the full range of practical skills. In order to receive the degree, apprentices must prove their abilities in theoretical and practical exams. The difficult competitive situation for the academic bachelor degree holders particularly gets obvious when it comes to apprenticeships with the purpose to educate assistants for academic disciplines, like biological, chemical and architectural assistants, system programmers, and management assistants in the health industry. Another difficulty for the design of the academic bachelor degrees arose from the demand that education in universities generally is expected to be fully sustainable (timeless). Teaching application-related competences in the framework of academic education as demanded by the industry is understood as a contradiction against this very basic principle: Applications, however mainstream they might be used in a specific field, might easily be substituted as soon as new technologies emerge.
During the redesign of the curricula, most of the theoretical contents from the prior diploma and magister programs eventually were adopted for the new bachelor curricula on the cost of practical experiences, which the students earlier achieved in the context of several seminars, field trips, and hands-on trainings. While the understanding of basic principles and methodologies was focused, practical research skills were reduced to a minimum assuming that these were rather irrelevant for the work in the industry but exclusively required for academic working purposes. Consequently, related practical research skills and experiences were related to the consecutively designed master programs. These were meant to establish the beginning of an intended academic career. It is still not fully clear which specific abilities distinguish academic bachelor degree holders from non-academic bachelors in terms of advantages on the job market at entry-level. Sure, academic bachelors have a deep general understanding of the context and above that, also a basic understanding of typical strategies, measures, and theories, which the non-academic bachelors lack to a large extent. Just, at least for the first years of employment, enterprises still perceive a higher return of investment if employing the cheaper non-academic bachelors who far quicker can fully be integrated within current work processes.
The program erp4students was 2006 launched with the purpose to solve the found educational dilemma. Since it was designed as an extracurricular offer, the basic principle of sustainable education in universities was not in danger.
In our case-study-driven extracurricular vocational online training program, we experienced that combining relatively small theoretical lectures in printable PDF-documents with hands-on work on extensive case studies led to the achievement of competences in the field. We further found that group work is not the method of choice when it comes to extracurricular training: In order to successfully complete the courses, the learners need to study in their very own pace. Our learners further expressed to highly value our individual round-the-clock tutor-support because it ensures that they still can make the best out of the rare free time available for extracurricular work once they experience seemingly unmanageable problems. Finally, in our study, we found that the learners’ perceptions of and attitudes towards learning are quite similar comparing online programs and traditional learning.
http://thejournalofbusiness.org/index.php/site/article/view/927/591, Mar 28, 2016
The aim of design science research (DSR) in information systems is the user-centred creation of I... more The aim of design science research (DSR) in information systems is the user-centred creation of IT-artifacts with regard to specific social environments. For culture research in the field, which is necessary for a proper localization of IT-artifacts, models and research approaches from social sciences usually are adopted. Descriptive dimension-based culture models most commonly are applied for this purpose, which assume culture being a national phenomenon and tend to reduce it to basic values. Such models are useful for investigations in behavioural culture research because it aims to isolate, describe and explain culture-specific attitudes and characteristics within a selected society. In contrast , with the necessity to deduce concrete decisions for artifact-design, research results from DSR need to go beyond this aim. As hypothesis, this contribution generally questions the applicability of such generic culture dimensions' models for DSR and focuses on their theoretical foundation, which goes back to Hofstede's conceptual Onion Model of Culture. The herein applied literature-based analysis confirms the hypothesis. Consequently, an alternative conceptual culture model is being introduced and discussed as theoretical foundation for culture research in DSR.
Due to the increasing professional mobility of their parents, pupils often find themselves in new... more Due to the increasing professional mobility of their parents, pupils often find themselves in new and unfamiliar learning scenarios in foreign contexts and countries. Besides having to leave their familiar environments, these pupils additionally may face language barriers, different curricula, and have to cope with foreign cultures. Printed textbooks, which are the most commonly used educational resources in schools, provide little support for these pupils to manage the new challenges. Teachers are the professionals designated to provide the necessary support. However, they often may not fully appreciate the pupils’ individual challenges. Possible solutions could be the provision of alternative learning contents in the pupils’ native languages and an international open exchange of knowledge and experiences amongst schoolteachers. These issues are addressed by the Open Discovery Space platform. In order to empower this platform to provide the best possible support to teachers, we exp...
The aim of our research is finding measures to preserve the learners’ initial motivation in educa... more The aim of our research is finding measures to preserve the learners’ initial motivation in educational settings. For that we need to avoid conflicting situations that possibly could jeopardize their joy of learning.
In our thematically comprehensive Learning Culture Survey, we
investigate the cultural biasing of students’ attitudes, behaviours, and expectations towards education. Particularly in times of massive international migration and growing numbers of refugees, the relevance to deeply understand cultural aspects in education increases. Just with this understanding, we can raise the awareness towards more cultural tolerance across all involved stakeholder groups and thus, foster the development of more culture-sensitive educational approaches. In this paper we focus on the most relevant aspect of motivation and comparatively discuss our study conducted in Germany and South Korea.
In this paper, we introduce the international program “erp4students” as general example on how to... more In this paper, we introduce the international program “erp4students” as general example on how to successfully prepare university students for the world of works without having to give up the basic principle in higher education, i. e., to exclusively provide sustainable education. We start with introducing the general concept and design of our program and provide information regarding the demographic development over the past decade and implemented quality assurance mechanisms. Subsequently, the scope and design of and hitherto achieved insights from the Learning Culture Survey are outlined. On the basis of found results, we finally discuss how erp4students can deal with possible culture-specific issues that latest might emerge when the program gets available for learners in the Asian context.
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Education, Research and Innovation, ICERI 2015, Nov 2015
With the program “erp4students”, we introduce a successful solution on how to meet the demands of... more With the program “erp4students”, we introduce a successful solution on how to meet the demands of Bologna in terms of directly preparing university students for the world of works without having to give up the basic principle to focus university education exclusively on sustainable contents. The program is herein introduced from general concept and design over demographic development in the course of the past decade to implemented quality assurance mechanisms. It consists of a number of vocational training courses and is not limited to students from a specific field or context but internationally acces-sible and open to any registered student. Thus, it shall serve as a best-practice example on how such programs can be implemented and invite students and faculty from all over the world to join our ef-forts. This paper, further on, intends to encourage faculty and institutions around the world to design similar content offers and to share related results and experiences with the community.
With a focus on Technology Enhanced Learning, this paper investigates if and to which extent a cu... more With a focus on Technology Enhanced Learning, this paper investigates if and to which extent a culture shift can be expected alongside with the adoption of currently emerging Web 3.0 technologies. Instead of just offering new opportunities for the field to improve education, such a culture shift could lead to unexpected general consequences not just for Technology Enhanced Learning but the whole educational sector. Understanding the dimension of expectable changes enables us to prevent conflicts and pointedly support culture-related change processes. After an introduction of the Revised Onion Model of Culture, which, later on, serves as theoretical foundation, expectable changes in the design of learning scenarios are analysed, distinguishing the stakeholder groups “learners” and “educators”. Eventually, the found changes are analysed to which extent a general culture shift is to be expected in order to understand the transferability and limitations of future research results in the field.
Despite the opportunities and benefits of OER, research and practice has shown how the OER reposi... more Despite the opportunities and benefits of OER, research and practice has shown how the OER repositories have a hard time in reaching an active user-base. The opportunities of experience exchange and simple feedback mechanisms of social software have been realized for improving the situation and many are basing or transforming their OER offerings towards socially powered environments. Research on social software has shown how knowledge-sharing barriers in online environments are highly culture and context-specific and re-quire proper investigation. It is crucial to study what challenges might arise in such environments and how to overcome them, ensuring a successful uptake. A large-scale (N = 855) cross-European investigation was initiated in the school context to determine which barriers teachers and learners perceive as critical. The study highlights barriers on cultural distance, showing how those are pre-dicted by nationality and age of the respondents. The paper concludes with rec-ommendations for overcoming those barriers.
Job-related migration has been fostered across Europe balancing unemployment in one country with ... more Job-related migration has been fostered across Europe balancing unemployment in one country with demands for employees in others. However, the numbers of early school leavers and university dropouts significantly increased in the hosting countries. We propose a higher measure of cultural sensitivity in education in order to prevent frustration. The Learning Culture Survey investigates learners’ expectations towards and perceptions of education on in-ternational level with the aim to make culture in the context of education better understandable. After a brief introduction, we subsume the steps taken during the past seven years and found results. In the end, we will introduce a method for the determination of conflict potential, which bases on the understanding of culture as the level to which people within a society accept deviations from the usual. We close with demonstrating the method’s functionality on examples from the Learning Culture Survey.
For a successful enrolment of modern E-Learning-based education, it is inevitable to apply a holi... more For a successful enrolment of modern E-Learning-based education, it is inevitable to apply a holistic quality-concept across the entirety of processes around planning, development, implementation, ex-ploitation, and dissemination. The aim of a related quality strategy is ensuring that all stakeholders in the supply chain fully understand all processes, conditions, and responsibilities. For this purpose, proper descriptions of the processes are required.
What makes a proper and homogenous description of processes on a general level very complicated, is the fact that stakeholders from different fields need to fully understand them. In our experience, if project partners do not feel familiar with a certain type of process-representation method, it is most likely that they either stay ignorant regarding the details or generally reject the processes in lack of understanding. In smaller TEL-related projects (up to 15 partners) face-to-face discussions at the round table can reveal and cope with lacks of understanding. But what happens when face-to-face discussions are not an option because of the project’s size? In such contexts how can still be ensured that all partners in the project fully understand their own responsibilities and also dependencies be-tween different project parts? A compromise between formal, semi-formal and informal description models is required without losing information but aiming interdisciplinary comprehensibility.
Particularly for such cases, we developed a project description model type, which provides benefits of several existing process description models and languages and eventually produces outcomes easy enough to understand for any kind of (academic) education. With 51 project partners from several fields, we tested the modelling technique in both directions, confronting the project partners with a va-riety of already described project-related processes as well as asking them to describe their own planned processes. The tool we are going to introduce alongside the methodology bases on MS Pow-erPoint. We decided to use this particular application because we found it most commonly used the employees of all of our project partners’ organizations/institutions.
Increasing globalisation and mobility of learners and faculty is inevitably reflected in a wider ... more Increasing globalisation and mobility of learners and faculty is inevitably reflected in a wider range of cultural diversity in educational scenarios. On the one hand, increased cultural diversity presents itself as a very positive development: It helps learners to achieve competences in intercultural communication and collaboration. On the other hand, if the learners’ experiences are not accordingly reflected, frustration through perceived intercultural conflicts could emerge. Loss of motivation could be a consequence, which is directly related to higher dropout rates. We consider education as a process in which learners are guided on their way to transform experiences into knowledge. Thus, we are looking for ways to support both students and educators, to better understand and deal with socio-cultural diversity in education.
With the 2008 started and on-going “Learning Culture Survey”, we aim to foster the implementation of culture-sensitive education. The motivation of this study is based on the need for better understanding of the reasons for intercultural conflicts in education. When aiming at the reduction of (unintended) cultural conflicts in educational scenarios and support of students to keep their motivation on the highest possible level, these issues are particularly pertinent to international learning scenarios, such as in Internet-based Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), or urban education. In order to investigate and contrast a vast number of national contexts, our standardized questionnaire has been translated into a multitude of languages. We already were able to collect and analyse data in/from several countries, such as Bulgaria, Cameroon, Germany, Ghana, South Korea, Turkey, and Ukraine. While some of the studies were not fully representative, we achieved a good impression of what to expect in future studies. In 2014, we started investigations in France, and prepared environments for China, Greece, Japan, and Portugal.
The Learning Culture Survey investigates learners’ expectations towards and perceptions of educat... more The Learning Culture Survey investigates learners’ expectations towards and perceptions of education on international level with the aim to make culture in the context of education better understandable and support educators to prevent and solve intercultural conflicts in education. So far, we found that culture-related expectations differ between educational settings, depend on the age of the learners, and that a nationally homogenous educational culture is rather an exception than the rule. The results of our recently completed longitudinal study provided evidence that educational culture on the institutional level actually is persistent, at least over a term of four years. After a brief introduction of the general background, we will subsume the steps taken during the past seven years and achieved general insights regarding educational culture. Last, we will introduce a method for the determination of conflict potential, which bases on the understanding of culture as the level to which people within a society accept deviations from the usual. We close with demonstrating the method’s functionality on examples from the Learning Culture Survey.
Managing the needs of learners is crucial in order to support their motivation and keep dropout r... more Managing the needs of learners is crucial in order to support their motivation and keep dropout rates on a low level. With the constantly growing level of internationalization in classrooms, the variety of different context-specific requirements from learners increase; without a profound understanding of the learners’ contexts, successfully maintaining a culture-sensitive and learner-focussed education is impossible. A solution to reach this understanding is the open exchange of experiences and knowledge amongst educators of the different contexts. In this paper, we will briefly introduce the two European projects “Open Discovery Space” (ODS) and “Inspiring Science Education” (ISE), which have the aim to foster the establishment and improvement of Open Educational Practices in the context of school education. The purpose of this paper is to attract and invite potential partners to affiliate with, contribute to, and profit from the projects.
Paper translated to Chinese by Junhong Xiao