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**Section 1:** **Changing trends in culture and learning: Impact on cognition **
Section abstract:

This section of the book will explore the impact of emerging technologies on cultural and social aspects of human cognition. It will also argue that internalized cultural values can influence technology appropriation and can explain differences in cognition and human behavior. It will explore the question of whether the advancement of technology has enabled learners to learn faster and more effectively by having opportunities to connect ideas to other ideas and grounding them more richly. The authors will also analyze learning with rich media (images, audio clips, video clips, and specific self-directed learning objects) and investigate whether such multisensory learning engagement is deeper and founded on learners' differing cultural approaches to learning. Linguistic, social, geographical factors as well as deep cultural values and traditions will be examined as designing interactive, multicultural and multidimensional learning environments pose new challenges to educators, educational technologists and researchers.

Chapter Title: Aligning Blended Culture and Blended Learning:Toward Enhancing Teacher //and// Learner Performance Outcomes
Author(s): Siew Mee Barton and Jason Sargent Extended Abstract:


 * Background**
 * Many universities were quick to adopt the web for basic promotional marketing and public relations purposes and for the sharing of useful information when the first user friendly web browsers appeared in the early 1990s, just as they had been quick to adopt the use of email in the 1980s. From the outset there were high expectations expressed by some academic teachers and university managers that the web would revolutionize teaching through online delivery of course materials and interaction between students and staff. Curiously, after an initial burst of activity during which universities established websites to publicize their programs and to act as virtual brochures and handbooks, by the end of the decade development had slowed. Some sections of some universities had begun to explore online teaching but they remained a small minority. It was as if no one knew which way to go next. In this, the universities were not alone, having invested tens of billions of dollars into the dot.com sector; the business community was forced to face the reality that it too did not really know where it was going. With a few exceptions, mostly those catering to vice (pornography and gambling) or consumer-to-consumer selling (online auction sites such as eBay) the business world was forced to admit that it had not worked out how to make money out of e-commerce (Hof, 2000; Johnson, 2002). In the higher education world, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology making the rush to commercialize to make -its entire curriculum free and open to the public. **
 * Australian Higher Education Systems Multicultural Australian Campuses

As Australia’s Higher Education system embraces emerging technologies that promise a better and improved way of flexible delivery, resource-based learning, online learning, and mixed mode delivery have become “buzz-words” of higher education. With Australian universities having a strong desire to integrate multi facet online learning, also known as blended learning, into course programs and at the same time depending upon high levels of international student enrollment for financial viability, flexible learning brings a much needed set of new tools to the academic’s toolbox. The dependence of the universities on international students has contributed to an increase in competition between universities to develop online offerings. This has meant that universities with a strong heritage in distance education, such as the researchers’ university, are at risk of losing their historical competitive advantage

In recent times Australian universities have experienced an increasingly large influx of international students (denoted as //tribes// in this study//)//, particularly from Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, China and Thailand) and the South Asian Sub-Continent (India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka). The integration of such a diverse cohort of international students into existing course programs presents a range of implications for universities, students, both local and international, and particularly the academics //tribes// involved in administering and delivering courses. This paper presents Phase 2 of a three-phase study into the aligning of blended cultures with blended learning towards enhancing teacher and learner performance outcomes for the two //tribes// involved. Phase 3 will focus on the alignment of learning technology and design. In this paper the researchers put forward the notion that for universities to deliver on their ability to be internationally aware, be culturally sensitive and to effectively communicate and teach cross-culturally, there needs to be an alignment of a blended culture to learning activity to achieve enhanced performance from an academic (pedagogical) perspective and from a student (participation in class and improved grades) perspective. The connecting factors between the student tribes and the academic tribes, and the enabler of any alignment the author’s believe are the over-arching themes of cultural awareness, social capital and trust. Whilst this study is focusing on an Australian university - it is anticipated that the findings of each phase of the study will be broadly applicable in universities where staff are drawn from a number of cultural backgrounds using a blend or suite of teaching and learning technologies, as is the case with the majority of universities in the English-speaking world. ** The course was delivered as a blend of face-to-face (f2f) and online learning using a university enterprise-wide suite of learning technologies, WebCT Vista (Blackboard) and has been supplemented by other technologies such as Elluminate Live and iLectures to provide enhanced functionality in perceived key areas. The ratio of international to local students in the course was approximately 8:1. The diverse cultural mix of the population included international students from Chinese (including Hong Kong), Thai, Indian, Iranian, Middle-Eastern (United Arab Emirates), Japanese, Indonesian, Malay, Sri Lankan, Vietnamese, Korean, Kenyan, Greek and Italian backgrounds. The six academics involved in delivering the course were drawn from cultural backgrounds including Malay, Italian, Thai, Turkish and Australian. One of the pioneering theoreticians in this field of the role of cultural factors in organizational behaviour is Hofstede, and although his work has attracted a number of critical responses such as (Corbitt et. Al, 2004), it remains a seminal point of reference and a significant inspiration for other scholars. This research project seeks to apply the insights of Hofstede and others into cultural influences on behaviour to understanding the individual and group dynamics involved in the adoption and development of online learning information technology. It seeks to do this by examining the role of trust and inspiration in building and sustaining motivation amongst groups and networks of pioneers and early-adopters. Hofstede (1991) has provided an in-depth discussion on culture and the various dimensions of culture, which have been widely accepted and used in a variety of disciplines (Corbitt et al., 2004). Capital can present itself in three fundamental guises according to Bourdieu (1986) depending on the field in which it functions: as economic capital, as cultural capital and as social capital. The concept of cultural capital was explored by Bourdieu as “a theoretical hypothesis which made it possible to explain the unequal scholastic achievement of children originating from different social classes by relating academic success to the distribution of cultural capital between the social classes” (Bourdieu, p. 47). Knowledge acquired by middle and upper classes is considered valuable to hierarchical societies and may be reproduced (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990). However, if a person is born into a family where the knowledge of that family is not deemed valuable, (i.e. a person of lower class) formal schooling can provide an avenue to accessing the knowledge of the middle and upper classes to this person (Yosso, 2005). Cultural capital can act as a conduit into building social and economic capital. Rodriguez (2009) describes how the interaction of asking a question and remembering the answer between student and teacher captured the beginning of a meaningful relationship and where the student acted as a cultural broker (Vigil, 1988) to gain confidence of and engage with other students. Cultural capital may also be converted directly into economic capital by an individual through the attainment of educational qualifications leading to employment or increased employability.
 * Course delivery **
 * Review of Literature**
 * Culture **
 * Cultural Capital **
 * Social Capital

Social capital was described by Hanifan (1916) in the context where “the individual is helpless socially, if left to himself…If he comes into contact with his neighbor, and they with other neighbors, there will be an accumulation of social capital, which may immediately satisfy his social needs and which may bear a social potentiality sufficient to the substantial improvement of living conditions in the whole community” (p. 130). Social capital gained renewed interest through the work of Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu, 1983), James Coleman (Coleman, 1988) and Robert Putnam, most notably in ‘Bowling alone: The collapse and the revival of American community’ (Putnam, 2000).

On a practical level, social capital can be of three types according to Woolcock (2001), //Bonding// – relations between family, close friends and neighbours; //Bridging// – relations between distant friends, associates and colleagues; and //Linking// – relations with sympathetic individuals in positions of power. Social capital and particularly its dimensions of trust and reciprocity are vital components of building relationships between teacher2student and student2student which in turn transform relationships into participation and enhanced teaching and learning outcomes. **
 * // Guanxi

//** Guanxi is a specifically Chinese term for networking. It is used to describe high-trust, long-term relationships that allow individuals to assist one another in a synergistic fashion. The pattern of guanxi is, however, endemic to academic environments around the world. The concept of guanxi has been rediscovered by a number of writers in recent years. Davies (1995), for example, defines guanxi as “the social interactions within the network place and its members” (Davies, 1995). The researchers of this paper undertook an initial qualitative study to seek to identify the various cultural influences and personal and social factors that affect the way academics from predominantly Non-Australian cultural backgrounds approach teaching in Australian higher education institutions. In qualitative research, what people say is captured and interpreted to understand the participants’ point-of-view of a particular event or phenomenon (Burns, 2000). A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with a number of Australian academic staff who have experience in teaching diverse cohorts of students, particularly those academics who have migrated from other countries to study in Australian higher education institutions themselves. ** The findings of this study suggest that the inherent barriers between the student tribes and academic tribes present in the first few weeks of the course can be broken down by applying social connectivity and cultural awareness; particularly through the formation of trust. The researchers believe that these three factors need to align in order to enhance performance outcomes of improved participation, grades and learning outcomes from student tribes’ perspectives; and pedagogy and teaching outcomes from the academic tribes’ perspectives. The research into the impact of cultural awareness and social connectivity to the alignment between student tribes and academic tribes will assist future research into the integration of appropriate emerging learning technologies in the delivery of a large multicultural undergraduate course at an Australian university. The results from adopting a culturally sensitive mindset at the researcher’s university is a pool of educators who have become change-agents by inspiring a network of their peers in using components of a collective cultural toolkit as a culture reference point.
 * Exploratory Study
 * Conclusion and future research**

Author: Yang Yang Abstract: Development of distance and Online education not only has made possible for education providers to reach global learners, but also increases learners’ opportunities to achieve their educational goals. With the increasing use of information communication technologies, Online teachers are able to facilitate learning of students who are geographically separated from them.
 * Chapter Title: Understanding Global Learners and Bridging Cultural Differences in Distance and Online Education.**

A wide range of students participating in virtual classrooms raises several culturally related issues in instruction and facilitation of Online learning communities. That is to say, global learners are not only physically distant from their teachers, but also hold their unique cultural values of and beliefs about learning. Learner’s cultural background may influence their learning strategies (e.g., cognitive processing) and needs. Culture, indeed, has significant impact on shaping of how people gather and process information, understanding of their own learned information and construction of knowledge. In order to effectively facilitate learners with various backgrounds, it seems important to emphasise culturally responsive Online teaching and being aware of a diversity of students’ learning styles, cognitive styles and learning strategies, and being able to recognise students’ learning needs.

This chapter intends to discuss the complexities of culture issues in distance and Online education and explore the potential of employing new educational technologies to break geographical barriers and bridge cultural differences among teachers and distance learners.

Chapter: **Title:Conceptual Frameworks for the Changing Trend in Learning and Culture and its Impact on Human Cognition** Author(s): Abstract: Learning is usually regarded as the process of acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, preferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing different types of information (Wikipedia, 2009). This description presuposses that learning is more of a process, although some researchers regarded it as a product. For instance, Mangal (2005) defined learning as a relatively permanent changes in behaviour as a result of experience. Culture on the otherhand can be described as the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group. Characteristically, culture is dynamic, and according to Winnerman (20009), human cognition is not excluded of culture since it takes place in a social and cultural context. It makes use of tools provided by the component of culture, words, concepts, beliefs, folklores and ethics of the society. This study is designed to carry out an appraisal of the changing trend in learning and culture and how these have impacted on how learners process, utilize and reform information. It is hoped that this will help to promote further positive development in learning systems, given the dynamic nature of culture and the special role cognition plays in human learning.
 * Adebowale, O.F. &**
 * Olayiwola, O.I **

Chapter Title: Games Without Frontiers: How the Real Shapes the Virtual Author(s): Derek Briton Abstract: The proposed chapter examines how the rich, multi-sensory experience of virtual worlds is shaped by internalized cultural values yet, at once, holds the potential for gamers to develop a more profound understanding of cultural systems, how they come into being, why they persist, and how they can be resisted. The chapter further proposes a conception of gamers that sublates (in the Hegelian sense of elevates, conserves, and abolishes) the oppositional view of gamers as either dupes of the military-entertainment complex or socially irresponsible, apolitical aesthetes. Virtual worlds provide gamers with an unprecedented opportunity to expose the assumptions and presuppositions that underpin gaming and cultural systems, and this chapter explores those opportunities in light of the work of Bernard Suit, McKenzie Wark, and Slavoj Žižek.

** Submissions for Second Call short abstract deadline: September 10, 2009 **

Chapter Title: Author(s): Abstract: