Arab Learners' Cultural Values and Their Interference with
e-Learning
Khalid Said Rabaya'h
ICT4D Research and Development Centre, Arab American University, Jenin, West Bank, Palestine
Keywords: e-Learning, Distance Learning, Cultural Norms, Arabic Culture.
Abstract: This paper is set to identify the role of cultural norms on the adoption of e-learning practices in Palestine as
an instance of the larger Arabic culture. This stream of research is currently receiving mounting attention, as
e-learning systems and practices become a global issue, which crosses various cultures and boarders.
The paper relies on the experiences of the researcher, his observation and experience in teaching both online
and traditional courses at university level. Focus group discussion and interviews were also employed to
deepen understandings of various research issues.
This research proposes that domestic culture dimensions of collectivism and relationship-orientation of the
Arabs greatly impact their appreciation of e-learning. Oral-interactivity and synchronous chatting were also
basic drivers for Arab students to value e-learning. However, the need for structurization, and continuous
management and follow up were found crucial for the success of these solutions among Arab learners.
This analysis presents concrete guidance for global firms in the domain of electronic learning and training to
understand the role of the diverse cultural scope on e-learning. The guiding strategies stemmed out of this
report can be applied in other Arabian countries, as they more or less have similar cultural norms and
practices.
1 INTRODUCTION
This paper provides an explanation of how the Arab
learners' cultural values influence the way they
perceive and benefit from these technology
educational solutions.
Electronic or E-learning which encompasses the
extensive use of Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) in education, is receiving
mounting attention in all circles as most Internet
accesses these days are turned into broadband which
facilitates design, delivery and interaction with
learning material, which makes these technologies
more interactive, scalable, and effective.
However, it is to be stated that E-learning in its
different flavors and settings are built to satisfy the
western and developed society's development needs,
and thereof, have a western cultural bias. This might
make these educational solutions not fully
compatible with other cultures, such as the Arabic
culture.
It is quite obvious that habits and cultural norms
that are perceived through traditional learning both
inside and outside classrooms, which are sometimes
termed as learning "naturally", will impact the way
how learners perceive and view electronic and web
based learning methods.
The paper will rely on agreed upon definition of
culture and to use this definition to examine how this
culture will impact e-learning. In particular, it will
demonstrate how cultural factors interact with and
influence students’ learning and engagement in both
synchronous and asynchronous learning modes.
The main goal of this paper is to raise awareness
about the cultural factors that may affect E-learning
and to provide guidance for courses and content
developers for the needs and requirements of Arab
learners.
In all societies, culture is strongly linked to
national identity and ethnic foundations. Based on
the prominent work of Hofstede (1980), the trend
has been to think of national groups as having the
same patterns of thought, action, and values.
In recent times, culture is viewed as an entity that
crosses ethnic and national boundaries. Hence,
according Branch (1993) to culture covers all
patterns formed by religion, ethnicity, language,
socio-economic status, profession, ideology, gender,
154
Said Rabaya’h K..
Arab Learners’ Cultural Values and Their Interference with e-Learning.
DOI: 10.5220/0004390401540159
In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2013), pages 154-159
ISBN: 978-989-8565-53-2
Copyright
c
2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
and lifestyle. This definition of culture supports the
impression that every individual and organization is
both cultural and multicultural.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
The impact of culture on education has its roots in
traditional education before it extends its branches to
electronic or Internet based learning. Teachers
accommodations for students cultures within the
same class and the struggle between teacher culture
and student's culture is a subject of extensive
research in education, (Moore, 2006). Moore
reports on problems and difficulties evolve if the
instructor’s pedagogical values are not compatible
with students’ assumptions about how teaching
should be done.
Building educational systems and practices on
certain set of values, in a world of diverse context
has its severe consequences on the learning
processes and their outcomes. According to Gramsci
(1971) this practice is stemmed out of a
phenomenon he called "hegemony" which refers to a
bunch of assumption of the dominant group or
culture who view their values as common sense, or
interests that serve for all. Several scientists have
investigated the question of cultural hegemony in
traditional learning, and many of them have
proposed methods of incorporation of multiple
cultures in education. Such theories include. Ladson-
Billings, (1995) proposed the “culturally relevant
pedagogy”, while Gay (2000) developed the
culturally responsive teaching”. “Culturally sensitive
instruction” was put forward by Boyer, (1993).
Zhao, Lei, Yan, Lai, and Tan (2005) classified
the issues influencing the effectiveness of Electronic
learning. They analyzed 423 empirical studies that
compared face-to-face education to electronic
learning. They came to conclude that electronic
education is still a form of education, and the factors
that impact the effectiveness of electronic education
are more or less the factors that affect the
effectiveness of traditional education.
Their findings clearly indicate that electronic
learning is by no means exempt from the difficulties
stemmed from cultural norms. Moore (2006)
claimed that electronic environments is more
vulnerable to cultural conflicts than traditional
systems as both teachers and learners are
participating in the educational processes from their
native cultures, i.e. while stay situated physically
and socially in the different cultures. This according
to Moore will pose shift cultural challenges to higher
level.
There exists considerable number of studies that
treated cultural intervention with electronic learning.
Thompson and Ku (2005) studied the interaction of
Chinese students with online learning. The study
revealed that Chinese students were less critical and
narrow-minded in online chats than their US
counterparts. Thompson and Ku referred this
observation to the fact that Chinese culture is highly
collective and feminine, which tends to respect
group endeavors, agreement, affection, compassion
and emotionality. Tu (2001) et. al (2000) also
investigated Chinese online learners. They too
stressed the significance of social domestic context
and cultural norms and showed how they tend to rely
on non-oral signs and cues in their interface with
online courses.
Al-Harthi’s (2005) investigated cultural
interferences of Arab students studying in American
universities. The researcher remarked that these
students were rather afraid and nervous concerning
their participating in online courses. The researcher
associated this to their inability to act independently
in their learning efforts, which reflects Arab
culture’s high uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede,
1991).
Shattuck (2005) investigated Asian and Middle
Eastern students taking online courses delivered by
an American university. They both found that
cultural discrepancies hamper students’
communication and success in online courses,
producing a feeling of isolation, alienation, and
conflict with the dominant educational culture at
these universities.
Goodfellow, et al. (2001) studied the
performance of non-English native students pursuing
their education in UK. The researchers found that
their difficulties with languages and their inability to
use English professionally and other difficulties
related to environment in UK greatly affected their
academic achievement.
Morse (2003) found that the low context group
highly appreciated the opportunity given to them by
the online courses to participate in the discussion
and to reflect on other people's opinions, which he
termed as “outwardly oriented”. On the other hand,
he discovered that the high context participants are
more “inwardly oriented,” as they tended more to
value the time afforded by online courses to think
more about their own contributions. This study also
revealed that students from high context cultures
stressed that the lack of face-to-face communication
hinders their ability to learn and to form social
ArabLearners'CulturalValuesandTheirInterferencewithe-Learning
155
relationships, whereas low context students had not
had any difficulties in the lack of face-to-face
contact which impacted their learning abilities
positively or negatively.
Biesenbach-Lucas (2003) studied the
discrepancies in attitudes and behavior of American
and non-American students, again at graduate level,
in regards to Asynchronous discussions. None
American participants expressed their satisfaction in
regards to the system as it gives them opportunity to
dig into issues at their own pace, and to understand
issues from various angles which greatly improves
their level of understanding of material much better
than traditional and face to face lecturing. The same
study revealed that None American were reluctant
and less enthusiast in expressing their opinion and
showing disagreement, they may consider
challenging and criticizing other’s ideas culturally
inappropriate, and/or they may “not know how to
express disagreement appropriately in English.
Anakwe and Christensen (1999) studied the
influence of individualism and collectivism on
online education. The study concluded that distance
and online learning is more compatible with cultures
that tend to have high individualism attitudes that
collectivism. Tapanes, et al. (2009), investigated the
same theme through collecting data from 40 online
students from two American universities. The study
found that students from collectivistic cultures to be
less motivated to participate in online courses than
those from individualistic cultures.
3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Qualitative research methodologies are adopted in
this research, as the research aims to analyze and
understand attitudes and behaviors on performing
and practicing certain set of actions, namely
electronic and distance learning. The research team
believes that qualitative research fits better with the
research question of this paper as the research theme
is exploratory in nature, and needs to go deeper into
the issue of interest and explore nuances related to
the problem at hand.
The paper relies heavily on the technique of
participant observation, which is considered to have
some strength, particularly in organizational
research. Participant observation in organizational
research tends to investigate core issues from within
inside the organization. The arguments used by
many organizational sciences scholars, backing this
research approach list the use of personal
involvement, expertise, and deep knowledge of issue
at hand of the research question, Evered and Louis
(2001).
Iacono, Brown, and Holtham, (2009) asserts that
better knowledge can be generated by functioning
within the organization. Sometimes participant
observation arises from an ongoing working
situation, as is the case when the observer is an
industry practitioner [ibid]. It involves participating
in a situation, while, at the same time, recording
what is being observed. It offers the chance to obtain
unique insights into the organization or social group.
This study is set to investigate students’
experiences in electronic learning, and how their
practices are stemmed out of their domestic cultures.
The data sets of this study are collected throughout
the years of experience the investigators have
undergone in teaching and observing students
through 3 years of time, the period of the
involvement of the investigator with the e-learning
at the local university where he teaches. The
collected data comprised of the cumulated
experience of the phenomena, including thinking,
believing, perceiving, observing – and the things to
which these acts are related such as ideas or material
objects. According to Merriam and Simpson,(
1995),these are eligible source of data sets for such
kind of research.
The researcher was an observer during the
course, collecting qualitative data through the
observation of activities and engagement and also
carrying out a focus group in the final week of the
course to gain a deeper understanding of particular
issues related to the active participation of learners.
In addition to observations, Semi-structured
interviews were arranged and employed to collect
data. Throughout the interviews participants were
allowed to reconstruct their experience within the
context in which it occurs, and to reflect on the
meaning the experience holds for him/her.
This study focuses on students from the Northern
Part of West Bank, Palestine, pursuing their
education at the Arab American University, a
university adopting the American teaching style, and
launching some initiatives in Electronic and distance
learning as support for traditional learning. The
sample population is a homogeneous one with the
same cultural basis such as languages, religion,
history, norms and values. They even share many
similarities in their socio-economic and political
structure. Participants in the research have taken as a
minimum one online course or some components of
their courses are done online. The sample population
consisted of more than 200 students.
CSEDU2013-5thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation
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4 MAIN FINDINGS
Throughout the research period, the researcher
continue observing students behavior in relation to
their learning practices in the e-learning courses, and
try to categorize their behavior in regards to their
views and utilization of the available learning
resources. The remarks compiled throughout the
observations are categorized into themes so that their
impact on the overall learning processes is easily
assessed.
The main findings of the research will be
summarized as students learning habits and then see
how they can affect their interaction with electronic
learning.
1- Students in general tend to be oral-based, as they
enjoy communicating their knowledge orally, i.e.
they highly value the spoken language. Students
enjoy listening and speaking, this was very clearly
indicated by the level of their involvement when oral
interaction was involved in the electronic course.
The majority of students (over 80%) who
participated in the study revealed that they prefer
oral presentation over textual or documental
information.
2- Participating students tend to be very social and in
favorite of collaborative and collective activities
much more than self or individual efforts. Students
showed high level of enthusiasm when there are
group activities. That was clearly indicated by their
tendencies towards participating in synchronous
group discussion over the E-learning portal.
3- Students are very keen to synthesize personal
relationship with instructor and with other course
participants, and they consider this as very crucial
for them to enjoy learning the material and benefit
the most from it. The more students have lively and
close relationship with teacher the more then tend to
put efforts and to spend more time with the
Electronic courses.
4- Students are always in favorite of high
structurization in their teaching endeavors.
Structurization, includes specifying what exactly to
study, how much material is required, setting up
times and deadlines for assignments and exams, and
specifying the rewarding mechanism and grading
policies beforehand. This issue has very much to do
with the fact that students should be forced to
participate in the learning activities, and not to give
them the feeling that their obligations are relaxed via
the e-learning system. Majority of students
participated in the study are not independent
learners, as they need continuous guidance and
encouragement throughout their learning processes.
Most of them feel lost in the flexible nature of online
learning, and are desperately seeking some kind of
support or structure.
5- Students are addicted to the teacher-centered
approach of learning. Even in an online courses,
students requires some kind of higher authority, with
better knowledge and experience to guide them
through the learning processes. This phenomena has
to do with society hierarchy and structure which
requires some kind external promoter for their
actions deeds.
Figure 1: Hofstade Arabic cultural dimensions (PDI: Power
distance, IDV: Individualism, MAS: Masculinity /
Femininity, UAI: Uncertainty avoidance, LTO: Long term
orientation.
Source: http://geert-hofstede.com/arab-world-egiqkwlblysa.html
4.1 Impact of Learning Habits on
e-Learning
Collectivism and socialism of students in this area
and Arab students in general seem to induce students
to work together more than students in the Western
societies. This is why chats (both voice and text) in
our courses are much more popular than the
discussion forum. Students ability to use online
course to form a stance together, or a debatable issue
is much more attractive and efficient than forming a
personal opinion alone. This trend can be easily
explained by the fact that Arab culture tends to be
more oral and collectivists. This means that in
general they tend not to like the distance aspect of
the e-learning approach, at the same time they found
it attractive because of the interactive and collective
nature of the activities. The student's culture
appreciates close association and prefers visual and
people-centered, interactions.
Throughout my experience with the students, it
was quite clear that they prefer to do their
ArabLearners'CulturalValuesandTheirInterferencewithe-Learning
157
assignments and tasks in real-time. And they tend to
share their ideas with their colleagues when possible
and not to form an individual opinion, especially
when there is a debatable issue, with which it is not
easily possible to formulate a stance for.
Online collaboration on projects requires them to
work at the same time on the tasks, with a kind of
group thinking, and online real time discussion. That
is to say collaboration on tasks where students have
to build on each other's work has not been so
successful. This was quite clearly pronounced by
the preferable synchronous chats by the students
over the wiki facility provided by Moodle.
This observation is crucial in the way of
assigning online tasks for students. Online
assignments should promote online synchronous
discussion as much as possible. This will allow
students to learn from each others synergistically,
and allow them to generate and synthesize new
knowledge. The assignment that promotes
discussion among students is the one which does not
imply division of tasks into sub tasks for students,
but rather the one where all students are asked to
work on the same task at the same time.
Interaction and networking are strongly rooted in
the students' Arabic culture, this means that students
will like the course and be attached to it the more it
promotes interaction and communication. As one
student has put it; "it is much more attractive to
participate in the synchronized chat than to write in
the Wiki. Via chats teacher and all students see your
participation, and they may like it, which give me a
sense of pride and self fulfillment"
Students inclined to have a collective conclusion
or opinion, stemmed out of their strong incline
towards collectivism, an culture norm which
opposes individualism, see figure (1) above. This is
still another indication of the direct interference of
the cultural pillars with students learning style.
Another very critical issue raised by participant
students has to do with their willingness to
participate in online over face-to-face discussion.
Many students, especially female students expressed
their satisfaction and convenience with the online
chatting and discussion, as it does not involve facial
and in person confrontations. For female students
and for significant percentage of male students, face
to face argumentation and disagreement would lead
to embarrassment, emotional and psychological one.
"Over the web, you don't real feel it, even if it is
expressed in writing, you parley feel it, and in most
cases it passes with only few people feel it" Areen
has commented. The Arabian society is a place
where opinions do matter a lot, and the person's
position is mainly a reflection of his or her opinion
over some issue.
Many students have talked about the opportunity
online learning give them to talk in public with no
teacher presence. They expressed relieve over the
ability to express opinion without the instructor
presence. These stances, are related to the fact that
Arabian society is hierarchical, and respect of elder
people is a quite common practice.
5 CONCLUSIONS
This paper is arguing that cultural norms are crucial
factors to be taken into account when e-learning
material are designed and presented to learners with
various cultural settings. The paper tested the
interaction of learners of one Palestinian university
throughout years of teaching using both traditional
and electronic means.
The paper has demonstrated that socialization
and collective activities are crucial aspects to be
taken into account when designing electronic
learning for Arab students. Arab students, as the
cultural norms dictate tend to interact and respond
with higher enthusiasm with collective and live
activities. Students are inspired by their colleagues
at the other end talking and text interacting in a
synchronous than in asynchronous mode. Arab
students are found to prefer oral than textual
interaction via the electronic learning systems.
The research project is at its beginning, and more
cultural components like power distance, sense of
time, the balance between image and meaning, and
the influence of context, will be analyzed and
integrated in future research activities and
publications.
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