Do we need to use inspirational symbols, templates, slogans, which are content related and culture-inclusive to heighten the value awareness and quality conviction?
Yes, I think that symbols, templates, etc... that are content related and culture-inclusive are a very important aspect of quality within OER. I believe that some of the principles and practices identified within the maturity model should "evaluate" these contextual elements.
Thank you Peter for your engaging response. Please provide the link for "maturity model", if available, or elucidate the concept a bit. You may also check out my posts in the COLLaGE Community regarding culture. I look forward to your observations.
Hi Peter,
Do you have any examples to illustrate how this might work. I'm trying to get my head around the differences between localisation versus culture-inclusivity as a criterion for quality.
Education is contextually bounded and culture is a determinant for educationally relevant materials. I'm not sure that it's practicable to develop indicators or criteria for culture-inclusive materials that are universal. For example -- the visual design of websites in South East asia are very different from the Western web design. Design elements which are considered good practice, for example in India would be considered poor design in the UK.
In this regard WE is really a pioneering project. In the case of an encyclopedia article authors are working to develop an objective article on some concept or topic adhering to principles like NPOV. When it comes to culture -- I'm not sure that its possible to implement the cultural equivalent of NPOV -- if you know what I mean ...:-)
Lets say, for instance, that Uganda develops some Philosophy materials on the meaning of truth, I would imagine that Asian philosophy might have a different take on the topic. I do think that there is tremendous value for indigenous communities to express their own world views in their respective educational materials --- especially for other learners around the world to learn about different cultures.
mmmm -- I'm not sure how we would integrate this into a QA framework.
Hi,
Please expand NPOV. It would help newbies to think faster..
Thank you in advance.
Dr.Ramakrishnan
Wayne,
I agree. I do not think you could find universally held indicators that are also culturally sensitive when defining quality. This is why a maturity model is so effective, it is subscriptive not prescriptive. It is not how we measure (or indicate) the quality, it is that we are measuring (or indicating) quality. This is maturity. I believe this discussion would fall into the Development Process category of the e-Learning Maturity Model. There are two process that I believe relate directly to this discussion of culture and context, they are;
Development: Processes surrounding the creation and maintenance of e-learning resources
- D2. Course development, design and delivery are guided by e-learning procedures and standards
- D3. An explicit plan links e-learning technology, pedagogy and content used in courses
As you can see niether D2 or D3 describe how something should be done they just describe that they should be done. And the extent to which something is done is how maturity is determined. So as the context / culture change so do the procedures, standards, technology, pedagogy and content. From here we would have to get into the dimensions, I believe that is another discussion... I hope my view of maturity models applied to culture / context made sense...
Peter,
I'm clear about capability models and how they work. That said, I'm not sure from a pedagogical point of view that you could have:
- D3a. Course materials are designed for culture-inclusivity
My reason is that education is culturally bounded and per definition cannot be inclusive of all cultures.
So perhaps the capability process is:
- D3b. Localisation procedures are guided by the principles of culture-sensitive adaptation
I have no problem with the capability model as a component of our total QA model. This will be an impressive addition to WikiEducators suite of solutions.
We can measure the capability of our community or sub-sets of projects. But I'm not sure how you measure the capability of content -- if you see what I mean. What I'm thinking here is that in addition to the capability maturity model is that we need a mechanism and supporting processes to say the Article X meets the quality standard -- Almost like an ISO quality standard, however we choose to define it.
