Cultural concerns


Speaking at a recent eLearning Network meeting, Rob Edmonds, a senior industry analyst with SRI Consulting Business Intelligence, explored the impact of corporate and national cultures on the success of e-learning. He differentiated between 'personality', which is specific to an individual, 'culture', which is specific to a group or category of people, and 'human nature', which is universal.

Culture is multi-dimensional, as Edmonds explained: "Any learning project involves a number of groups. These groups will demonstrate a corporate culture, a national culture and a host of sub-cultures. You may work with more than one national culture - notably, if you are introducing e-learning materials throughout a multi-national firm. You may work with more than one corporate culture - such as where company mergers and acquisitions are involved. In each case, you need to think about the implications of the learning for all these cultures."

Case study: Roche

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Roche is one of the world’s leading research-oriented healthcare groups, with approximately 64,000 employees, marketing its products in over 170 countries. In March 1999, Roche began working with CMG, the ICT services company, on a genetics education programme to help all those involved in the drug development cycle within the company to understand the facts about genetics, and to see how the genetic make-up of individuals could impact effectiveness of differing pharmaceutical treatments.

Steve Uttley is project director for CMG’s Training division: "Although a large proportion of the target audience are able to speak English, there are many benefits in supplying the programme in local language. Chief among these is improving the comprehension of users when learning about a complex subject. When we developed the original CD-ROM, we took into account the fact that it would be translated into other languages at a later date. So, for example, we positioned the English text on screen to accommodate languages with longer words, such as German.”

"We worked closely with Roche employees on the translation project. Where possible, Roche employees were used to translate the script of the CD-ROM into the local language. The script was then sent back to the UK where Mandarin, French, German and Spanish speakers worked to make sure that phrases conveyed the correct meaning and were not inappropriate or even offensive to the local culture in any way. Words accompanying graphics and animations also had to be translated and voice-overs re-recorded. Synchronisation then had to be adjusted to make sure that commentary corresponded to the pictures on the screen.”

"Working together with people with local language skills was key to the project. When we were testing the Mandarin CD-ROM, we had to run a Chinese version of Microsoft Windows. Of course, the instructions on screen were in the Mandarin character set. Without local advisors it would have been extremely difficult for us to complete this."

Roche and CMG developed the translated versions of the Genetics Education Programme CD-ROM for internal use and to distribute free-of-charge to colleges, universities and museums around the world. The programme has been very well received by users around the world and it is this success which has led to many new requests for local language variants.

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National culture may impact on the form that the e-learning needs to take: "Increasingly, e-learning is being used to deliver programmes across national boundaries," said Edmonds. "While the same e-learning programme may be made available to people from different countries and cultures, each e-learning programme may need to be altered if it is to have the maximum positive effect in each national culture.

"In Japan and countries with similar cultures, blended learning and virtual classrooms are proving effective and popular means of e-learning," he said. "France, Italy and Spain prefer a prescribed curriculum aided by mentoring; while the UK, Germany and the USA find learner-centred, personalised learning the order of the day."




E-Learning's Greatest Hits
E-learnings Greatest Hits
ISBN: 0954590406
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 198

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