One of the problems people have on the Net is with finding a reliable provider of any commodity they are seeking. They are either overwhelmed by irrelevant search results, or they find providers they have never heard of and are unsure they can trust. In such an environment a familiar brand name becomes invaluable. On the Net, the brand becomes as important as the location for traditional businesses.
This could have implications for education. If someone is searching for a course, say an online MBA, then rather than filter through lots of results and try to assess the quality of the offerings, there is a temptation to go straight to a known and trusted provider, let us say Harvard. Not only can you guess the appropriate URL (www.harvard.edu), but also you can be assured that the MBA will meet certain standards. In such a scenario the big-name educational establishments (Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, MIT, etc) become online brand names, to the detriment of many smaller, more local providers. This is the anticompetition scenario where there are ultimately a few, or even only one, online providers, a sort of Microsoft of education.
The alternative view is that in fact students want a course or qualification that is accredited, and thus recognized, in their own country. There are also strong cultural differences between nations that make few subjects generalizable to the extent that they could be studied in any country equally effectively. By utilizing
their familiarity with the local culture, the needs, interests and concerns of the environment in which they operate, local universities and colleges can provide a much better online course than a global provider. They might also take advantage of their geographical location, for instance by supporting online courses with face to face activities such as residential schools or day sessions. By operating this way, the local universities can increase the proportion of the population they can educate effectively.
It is likely that neither extreme view will materialize: this is usually the way with new technologies. They encourage visions of technological utopia or dystopia, which often seem to have a determinist underpinning: that is, the technology will force the change, for better or worse, regardless of people. It is the opposite effect—the manner in which technology itself is adapted through use by people—that results in these predictions largely being unfulfilled. When the personal computer first began to achieve a mass audience, the utopians
similarly predicted that it would be a democratizing force, which would free the artistic creativity of individuals and give them powerful information tools. The dystopians predicted that it would increase the power of governments and corporations and that people would stop communicating and become slaves to their computers. Of course, neither vision quite came true, and although huge changes occurred in work practices, education and society, it is also true that a great deal stayed the same; we merely found different ways of doing it. From the explosion in computer gaming to the people who transformed their Apple Macintoshes into fish tanks, the technology was used in unexpected and unpredictable ways.
Courses being offered to a global audience raise several issues. The first, and most obvious, is applicability of content. However sensitive to different cultures we might be, we are all influenced by our own environment. It is often difficult to appreciate how relevant the examples you have selected might be in another culture, or whether your use of language contains subtle cultural references that might have different meanings elsewhere. To make the course feel relevant to students you might need to provide local examples or case studies. However, such issues can be addressed, for example by collaboration with a local education establishment, or by careful use of language and a resource bank of different examples.
A more difficult problem to overcome for global courses is the difference in cultural values embodied in the pedagogy. These often go deep to the heart of the social values of a particular culture. For instance, intensive online collaboration is more difficult in a society which tends to promote politeness and reservation. Similarly, strongly familial societies often place a great emphasis on respect, which is also exhibited to teachers. A course pedagogy that expects critical questioning and dialogue with the educator might thus not translate well into such an environment, where such behaviour is usually frowned upon. These factors, combined with language, local recognition and subsidies, suggest that the globalization of education is an issue that will occur only in specific sectors, and usually through collaboration between international partners.
Read More : The Internet will mean the globalization of education
