Diversity in Online Teaching: When Culture and Online Education Conflict

Developing and implementing communication strategies to counterbalance the obstacles to social interaction created by the separation of learners from one another present a challenge for Internet-based instructors. Sensitivity is required to accommodate ethnically diverse variations in communicative practices so that learners are neither penalized for their cultural differences nor impeded in their learning processes by those differences. The literate discourse style imbedded in the online threaded discussion may be a new way of communicating for learners with a culturally based oral discourse style. Ill-structured problems, facilitation, and explicit criteria for evaluation that is distinctly different from the directions for participating in the discussion help students make a successful transition from speaking in the classroom to writing in the online threaded discussion.