Cultural Perspectives

Since the globalization of education has been increasing dramatically, the need to consider cultural differences will increase dramatically as well. To teach and study successfully in a global network, online learning systems must be designed to anticipate user choices in different cultural settings. This chapter emphasizes the importance of anticipating cultural perspectives for the global classroom. At first, the terminology is examined and the different levels analyzed where culture occurs. A number of various dimensions of culture-related differences shows how culture can affect the acceptance and use of online learning systems. Upon this analysis this chapter suggests design guidelines to make learning systems culturally appropriate and concludes with further proposals.