The need for international courses
A number of factors account for the steady growth in institutions offering courses to distant students in other countries, whether to one other institution half way around the world, or to dispersed students in many distant countries, or to their own nationals resident in other countries. Many of these factors are financial: the need to find new markets because of the dwindling number of traditional students, the need for a larger market base to defray the cost of developing software, and the fact that it is cheaper to buy in courses than to develop them in-house. Other factors are technological: the development of a global communications infrastructure which permits affordable textual interaction and even videoconferencing via satellite. The amount of rhetoric about the need to share educational resources, to provide life-long learning and continuing professional updating for both the employed and the unemployed, and finally, to be aware that the whole world is our neighbour in the global economy, has als
o contributed to the general sense that educating beyond national boundaries is no longer a specialist activity. Indeed, institutions without international connections are the exception rather than the rule in some countries.
From the learner's point of view, there is the cachet of a degree from a foreign institution; there is increased choice of courses offered by more flexible and open distance teaching methods; there may also be a need to broaden the international profile of one's curriculum vitae.
Anyone wanting to take advantage of the large European job market will in future require further qualifications over and above his [sic] professional ones. These will have more to do with the private side, with so called 'key qualifications' which make him 'fit for Europe' (Hernaut, 1993, p.96).
These 'key qualifications' include the ability to work in other languages, but equally, the ability to work in other cultures. Multicultural understanding is a significant factor for the 'new age' curriculum vitae.
In some respects, therefore, international distance education is meeting the needs of both the providers and the receivers.
The range of provision
At the primary and secondary school level, group email schemes linking many countries are very common. Children work on joint projects in such fields as environmental studies, history and science. Many of the schemes are specifically designed to introduce children to other cultures, by preparing material on their own culture to exchange with other schools.
At the tertiary level, international video-conferencing courses are becoming commonplace. Their popularity is partly due to the fact that this medium does not challenge the traditional teaching mode: lecturing with pre-prepared drawings or writing on a blackboard/whiteboard during the session. Student numbers can easily be doubled by adding a distant lecture room.
The area of greatest activity, however, is undoubtedly that of continuing and professional education. Niche and specialist markets—such as telecommunications—need a wide catchment area to provide a continuing intake of students. MBAs are also very popular as a distance education course rather than a campus-based facility, and many institutions which offer MBAs have students abroad, usually supported by computer conferencing, but a few by video-conferencing.
Language teaching is, of course, an obvious subject for intercultural teaching (see, for example, Baumgratz, 1993). Interactive technologies are frequently used so that students can practice with native speakers. Specialist language learning, e.g. for bankers or for business studies, combine subject specific material with the second language in order to increase motivation and provide authentic learning situations.
Cross-cultural communication
The truism about travel broadening the mind reflects the fact that we normally tend to communicate with those who share a common outlook, language, belief structure and value system. Most of this commonality actually passes unnoticed, until we find ourselves communicating with people who have a different culture. Then, lack of understanding, or more significantly, misunderstanding, frequently arises.
However, people from different cultures are not necessarily from different countries. Multi-cultural, multi-ethnic communities exist in all countries and large cities. Some would even say that cultural differences within societies are increasing. Differences in life-style and in outlook between any two European cities have definitely decreased, but they may have been replaced by other cultural differences between groups of people within any of these cities (e.g. the old and the young, professionals and the unemployed). (Verma and Entzinger, 1992).
Learning is well accepted as a dynamic process in which all of one's life experiences are brought to bear. Inevitably, cultural differences will influence this learning process. As the current multi-cultural mix of many societies continues to grow, so will the need to produce courses of a global perspective even for the national market.
Cultural imperialism
Universities should not be involved in cultural imperialism. Knowledge should not be monopolized by one country or one institution. The search for global solutions requires universities to co-operate and to share information. International education should receive the support of national governments (Alladin, 1992, pp. 11-2).
The accusation of cultural imperialism has long been levelled at attempts to export courses outside national boundaries, particularly as most of the examples involved Western institutions providing courses for Third World countries. Recently, with extensive funding and pressure from the European Commission, there have been many more programmes for developing courses for a European market. Although the accusation still lingers—for example, in the dominance of the English language as the lingua franca in many instances, the amount of development work and the range of partners involved in the preparation, have brought intercultural distance education out of the closet and into the limelight. For example, The European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) has promoted the development of joint courses in three areas: European law, business administration and the humanities. (For an account of the first such course in this area, see Wilson in this volume.) Through its DELTA programme (Develo
ping European Learning through Technological Advance), the European Commission is sponsoring the Multimedia TeleSchools project (described later) and a wide variety of other technology-based courses with pan-European coverage.
A number of such courses have tried to tackle directly the problems of addressing a multi-cultural audience. One of the primary ways of preventing cultural bias is to use joint course teams from the participating countries to produce the courses. Another way is to translate courses, not just into another language, but also into another culture, by using national case studies, idioms and examples. Courses which rely on computer based technologies have sometimes been devised with a neutral interface—icons, colours, images with no strong cultural associations.
Some practitioners have come full turn on cultural neutrality after much negative experience searching for such a Holy Grail.
We have only to look to the experience of satellite television to become aware of the diminution of quality that arises from trying to serve a mass audience of different cultural origins. In trying to devise generic courseware to try to please all of the people, we may end up with courseware which doesn't really satisfy any of the people (Dixon and Blin, 1992, p.732).
The alternative is to argue that the 'cultural flavour' of one country simply enhances the course, and encourages students to develop an independent attitude to knowledge acquisition. Anyone who has experience of intercultural course provision, however, has a raft of stories about misunderstandings arising from material with different connotations in another culture. Undoubtedly, the 'flavour' of one country can leave a bad taste in another.
Yet another alternative is to allow the learner (or the receiving institution) to 'version' the material to suit their own needs. For example, with computer-based courseware, students could choose the language, icons and keyboard configuration they required. With new developments in software, students could even indicate their cultural preferences and the courseware would present appropriate examples and illustrations.
Interactive technologies provide perhaps the best way out of the cultural imperialist taint. When students from several countries communicate—by text, voice or full motion video—it is possible to promote inter-cultural understanding along with subject understanding. Mason (1994) gives an account of these communication technologies and describes a number of applications.
Scenarios of intercultural courses
As outlined above, co-operative activities across national boundaries take a number of different forms. Many of these do not involve actual courses, such as the schools-based email projects, and various other research level interactions amongst peer groups. The range of course-based intercultural activities can be roughly categorised into the following types:
- Franchise Type: in which one partner designs, develops, examines and makes awards, while the other provides students and support mechanisms.
- Marketplace Type: in which one institution purchases course materials from the other, adapts and delivers them and examines learners and awards credits.
- Collaborative Type: in which several institutions jointly design and develop courses which they use in their respective institutions independently of each other.
- Technology-Based Type: in which students from other countries access the host institution via electronic communication (possibly enhanced by print materials, occasional videoconferences or even face-to-face meetings).
Although there are some clear distinctions between these types, in practice there are many overlaps. The 'franchise type' may appear to be a hang-over from the imperialist tradition, but in fact, any of the categories may have elements of inequality. Collaboration does not guarantee equality between the partners and their cultures, and can involve the dominance of one or two partners. The benefits and difficulties of these kinds of courses will be illuminated by specific examples.
The Open University in Eastern Europe—the franchise type
The UK Open University has begun a programme of offering a number of its Open Business School (OBS) courses to students in various Eastern European countries. The OBS received Know How Fund support with the aim of passing on know how about western management to post-communist economies. Distance teaching of the sort pioneered by the OU was considered to be an appropriate means for reaching large numbers of students in Eastern Europe and Russia. (Farnes and Woodley, 1993).
The basis of the programme is that courses are translated into the national language, and that national case studies are exchanged for the UK examples. Although tutors are selected by the national institution to mark assignments and meet with students, some scripts and exam papers are translated into English for monitoring by the Open University.
As the main purpose of the programme is that Eastern Europeans have access to western management procedures, the situation is inevitably one of a dominant culture transfering its view of the world to a culture which seeks to emulate, at least its economic advantages. How successful has this transfer been?
Farnes and Woodley (1992; 1993) have carried out a number of evaluations, through student and tutor surveys, interviews and on-site visits. In Hungary, for example, they found that the courses work well for students in both small and large companies which are undergoing changes, but less well in organisations with fewer changes. One student said:
In a centrally controlled company the boss would tell everybody what to do—one direction communication. The bosses are not consultation minded in spite of the fact that they sent us on the courses.
However, another was enthusiastic:
I have to survive the recession; the knowledge from the courses is very useful in a small enterprise. It has helped me survive and given me ideas for surviving (Farnes and Woodley, 1992).
On the whole, students have rated the courses as being very relevant, and a high proportion have used the information to change aspects of their jobs, or to find more satisfying jobs (Farnes, Woodley and Ashby, 1993).
The Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong—the marketplace type
Great value is placed on educational qualifications in Hong Kong, for employment, promotion and possibly emigration. Consequently, Hong Kong boasts a great number of overseas educational programmes (Ngok and Lam, 1993), many of the 'franchise type' described above.
The Open Learning Institute, however, has developed the 'marketplace type' , buying course materials from all over the world to meet some of its curricular needs. The producer of the materials is no more than a supplier, while the Open Learning Institute (OLI) takes complete responsibility for curriculum, delivery and assessment. Dhanarajan and Timmers (1993) have analysed a whole range of difficulties faced by institutions purchasing materials on the open market:
- Courses need a detailed listing of aims, major topics and headings, additional readings or other media.
- Poorly structured courses are much more costly to adapt.
- Digitised versions of the original material are much more desirable for purchasing in the 'marketplace type'.
Although the OLI predominantly buys courses written in English, this is an English for native speakers, not for those with English as a second language. The OLI must pay considerable attention to the readability of adapted courseware and to the reading skills of their expected students. Dhanarajan and Timmers (op. cit.) point out that there are many different readability scoring systems: counting the length of words and number of words used in a sentence are not sufficient to assess the way a piece of writing is comprehended by non-native speakers. Syntax, the use of passive constructions and complex prepositional phrases also affect the degree of complexity and consequent understanding by second language readers.
Dixon and Blin (1992) also found, in preparing software for non-native English speakers, that they needed to 'translate' English into the simplest prose possible:
We used very short sentences and avoided complicated constructions as well as using 'small' words rather than 'big' words as much as we could. We stripped the material of all slang and we explained all abbreviations, and we provided an online glossary to give simple explanations of key terms. This process was quite complex since we had to be careful not to lose the sense of the material itself (op. cit. p.729).
Humour can be quite difficult to handle in cross-cultural courses. On the one hand, it provides interest and motivation for learners, but on the other, it can easily be misunderstood by non-native speakers.
Adapting courses which contain significant non-print material depends largely on the availability of equipment (e.g. computers, video recorders) amongst the student population. While distance educators are keen to develop multi-media course materials, they are often not saleable abroad.
While the 'marketplace type' scenario has many difficulties, especially cultural ones, the benefits for both producers and purchases are real—financial savings on course development, and the sense of sharing resources rather than continually re-creating the same material.
Multimedia teleschools—the collaborative type
In October 1992, a series of interactive television broadcasts for language learning in Europe was launched. These broadcasts were part of the Multimedia Teleschool Project (MTS), funded by the European Community DELTA Research programme. The MTS project addresses the current market for realistic distance learning syatem, based on an optimal mix of telecommunications-based learning and tutoring.
The project has sixteen partners from five European countries; it also has the support of major European enterprises. The prime contractor is Berlitz International, the largest private language training institution worldwide, which has recently developed a range of foreign language distance learning courses.
Sixteen one-hour live broadcasts—focusing on the range of topics contained in the two Berlitz distance learning courses, English for Telecommunications and English for Banking are being broadcast throughout Europe over a period of nine months by ARTE, Europe's new cultural channel as well as on EUROSTEP. ARTE transmits the programmes via satellite from its studio in Strasbourg, France.
A large number of employees of European enterprises are taking part in these courses. Using PCs at their workplaces, they make contributions during the live broadcasts, putting questions to the experts being interviewed, and answering questions asked by the tutors in the studio. A computer conferencing system links the participants in their European branches with each other and with the experts in the television studio. All participants receive their study letters and assignments from the Berlitz Distance Learning Centre in Eschborn, Germany via the computer conferencing. They also use the system to return their completed assignments to their tutors. The system enables participants to communicate with their fellow students throughout Europe, allowing them to work in groups to complete study-based tasks.
A typical television broadcast might consist of a fifteen-minute presentation of the topic by a subject expert in the studio, fifteen minutes of filmed material on the same topic and about fifteen minutes of participants' contributions and questions which are sent to the studio via the conferencing system during the live broadcast.
This project is collaborative on a large scale, as the group includes the course providers, software developers, television programme designers and broadcasters, as well as the companies seeking training for their employees. Collaborative course development is well known to be fraught with inter-institutional rivalries (Kaye, 1991). The funding policy of the DELTA programme, nevertheless, supports only transnational collaborations. It remains to be seen whether the practice will continue after the extensive funding period for collaborative work comes to an end.
Online education and training—the technology-based type
As part of a COMMET project in training-the-trainers, a course delivered almost entirely via computer conferencing was developed by the London University Institute of Education and the Open University Institute of Educational Technology. The course is designed for teachers and trainers who want to develop their onlineskills and learn how to apply the medium of computer conferencing in their own context. The course is open to anyone with a first degree and access to a computer and telecommunications. The Institute of Education awards a graduate level certificate on completion.
To date, the course has attracted international participation primarily through notices passing on electronic bulletin boards. The 'multiplier' effect of this course has been significant in that many of the students have used it as a launching pad from which to design and run their own computer conferencing courses.
Interaction between student and tutor and amongst students is the hallmark of computer conferencing. This course has, on both occasions it has been run, been a remarkable example of this principle. The fifty students on each course have been divided into small groups to work together on set projects, to discuss readings and to prepare material for the whole group. The quality of discussion during various modules of the course, has been so outstanding that some students have found it very daunting to participate.
I had no idea I was going to find it so hard to join in—I enjoy the medium and have been using it for about eighteen months and I have composed numerous messages off-line only to chicken out after reading other comments, better written, more concise etc. than my own.
Those students working in their second language were undoubtedly more reticent in their messages—in all but a few cases, these students made fewer and shorter inputs. One of them commented:
It can be quite frustrating in [computer conferencing] that some people always is very fast with their responses, specially when you need more time yourself. I have been very quiet myself, due to problems with reading/writing English; I therefore need a lot of time preparing before commenting on anything.
Computer conferencing is usually considered to be a teaching medium which favours reflective thinkers and non-native speakers, because responses can be made at any time. Nevertheless, the pace at which comments were input on this course made some students feel that they couldn't keep up with the flow of this asynchronous conversation. Feedback from the majority of students has been very positive:
I think it has been one of the most worthwhile learning experiences I have undertaken for a long time. It requires you to develop all sorts of skills—technical, writing, communicating, discovering. Many thanks again for opening new doors for me and giving me the opportunity to participate in a very innovative course.
This type of course, in which students world-wide can take part through electronic communication, will continue to grow as the technology becomes more widely available. Although this particular course is not open in terms of entry qualifications or equipment provision, it is very flexible in terms of time and location of access. The kind of learning community which easily develops in such a multi-cultural environment is a very positive educational feature of this medium.
Conclusions
We have seen that there are no simple solutions to multi-cultural distance education, and there are no short-cuts to providing trans-national education. For a more detailed analysis of the difficulties, see Hawkridge (1993). Nevertheless there are financial and educational benefits. Certainly many forms of provision are being developed and are spreading to most countries world-wide.
Competition amongst the growing number of providers will allow the student to choose, at least to some extent, and one type of course provision may prove to be the most satisfactory in the long run. Yet, just as there is no archetypal student, so there is no one best way of learning. Multiplicity and innovation are to be welcomed in international education.
The proliferation of computer networking and the growth of various forms of teleconferencing will increasingly influence the nature of distance education across national boundaries. Telecommunications can reduce the long timescales of printbased distance education. The immediacy of human-to-human interaction may make cross-cultural dialogues more effective and timely than print-based course material. However, technology itself will not change educational provision, whether national or international.
Economic forces are also influencing the nature and growth of international education projects. As we have seen, both providers and receivers of courses can find substantial benefits in collaborating. While futurists talk about the emergence of a global civil society, the economics of distance education may play a significant role in bringing it about.
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