ETEC 565G

Hands- on- Assignment #5

Eric Bankes
Part A:

In my professional context, I am a teacher in the Surrey school district. I teach robotics and work
with a hybrid model of a traditional classroom that uses online resources including using chat to
discuss topics around moral and ethical considerations with world use of robots to automate, in
warfare and to replace. Many of the courses ive taken in the MET program me reflect on my
own pedagogy. But this course specifically has had me question the culture of my learners, my
eurocentric culture and how my biases impact learners. During this course, I gained valuable
insight into the nuances of culture. On my first seminar, I picked a article focused around
aboriginal learning and how collectivist cultures are impacted by the use of online learning
techniques. The discovery that the internet is not culturally neutral but “aggressive/competitive
individualistic behaviour” (Reeder et al. 04) made me wonder how this was effecting collectivist
learners such as Aboriginal learners. Reeder allowed me to gain a greater understanding of why
some “individuals from cultures with very different communicative values and strategies might
be less successful communicators according to cyberculture standards”. (Reeder et al. 04).
Historically when going teaching these students would have lost marks for a failure to
communicate online, when in reality the student may have felt this form of communicating
student learning did not fit inside their values. Other parts of this course that stuck with me was
stereotypes and how ethnocentrism affects my learners. Not does my learners suffer from my
own biases and stereotypes developed by “exaggerated pictures we create about a group of
people on the basis of our inflexible beliefs and expectations about the characteristics”
(Ting-Toomey, 2012) of others and their culture but how the student feels that others may have
those stereotypes and hinders them in online communication. This leads students“to an
avoidance tendency that obstructs the reduction of uncertainty” (Neuliep, 2012). There is also
the issue of the “written word” (Feenberg. 1989) and its tendency towards miscommunication.

To solve this Belz can give some advice on techniques that can be taught to students to cut
down on miscommunication. As Belz, 2003 describes “the text-only medium of email did not
allow them access to additional non- verbal cues that might have aided them in the identification
and interpretation of these same interactions” (Belz, 2003). He describes the “importance of the
teacher increases rather than diminishes in internet-mediated education precisely because of
the electronic nature of the discourse.”(Belz, 2003) It makes sense that the teacher's direction
needs to not only be stronger in a online classroom but the need for teachers to “be educated to
discern, identify and model culturally contingent patterns of interaction in the absence of
paralinguistic meaning signals (Belz, 2003). To solve some of these issues in my professional
context I would like to create opportunities for students to communicate so that there is a shared
understanding through a cognitive presence. In a hybrid classroom model, this can be done
through not only a text-based communication but classroom discussions giving students an
opportunity to speak about their feelings on a topic before discussing through online text-based
communication giving students a greater ability to understand each other. Without having that
hybrid model having a online face to face meeting between classroom students would be the
next best thing. Also having the conversation with the class about Metacommunication and how
people talk through the use of body language and how to use reflective metacommunication in
order to prevent misunderstandings. This is not only valuable in order for students to feel
comfortable communicating in the classroom but is also a important life skill. What I would like to
learn more about outside of the course is gaining a greater understanding of
metacommunication before talking to my class about it. Also, there is a need for a greater
reflection on how my own culture is affecting my practice and how to modify a system set up by
anglo-Americans to better facilitate the needs of minority cultures in the classroom.

Part B

The discussion posting that made the greatest impact on me in my professional context was the
assignment posted by Michael Tate on Assignment #4. Is Assignment actually lead me to read
the article as I have a autistic student in my classroom. The article describes how students with
difficulties with social cues actually do better in the online discussion forum. From my
experience, I have found something similar to high functioning autistic students. I found the link
to the artistic style of communication and online text gave me a greater insight into how these
tools can be better used to help make the classroom more of a inclusive environment. It
expanded the horizons of the course in relation to culture and made me also reflect on
neurodevelopmental differences and how online communication can affect students. A feedback
comment that I made during M1U2 about time and symbolism was a important contribution to
some of the verbal cues we make during conversations and how important it is to interpersonal
communication. I asked the question about how the use of time and pauses during conversation
can derive meaning. How these pauses can mean things about what someone is thinking and
how we learn these cues through face to face communication. When this face to face
communication is lost we fail to read these symbols and can misunderstand the meanings or
importance of written communication. Although I made some comments about generational
gaps and how that effects communication Marcus made a great point about how someone may
not be aware of cultural sensitivities of a group and may inadvertently cause conflict. This not
only made me think of time as a culturally related factor but also peoples geographical
background and how a word used in a different culture may mean something completely
different. He made a great point about how although this conflict can be easily resolved in a face
to face conversation, online tempers can flare and people can say things without understanding
the full context of that person's background.

As a learner, I have discovered that I need face to face interaction and immediate feedback in
order to feel a sense of belonging with the class. My favourite form of communication during the
course was definitely the online seminars. I felt I was the most prepared in these discussions
and that the immediate questioning from others spurred a greater and more in-depth dialogue
from my own reflections on articles. Often the permanence of online posting makes you feel like
your analysis of articles needs to be correct and without immediate teacher responses, you feel
conflicted. When speaking during the seminars having the social cues from the instructor gave
you a greater sense of encouragement to add to what you normally would have discussed. Just
like the discussion I had with Marus and Michael having the limited about of social cues made
written online communication difficult. Compounding the issues of not having adequate social
cues being a middle-class Caucasian male made the conversation around culture very difficult. I
constantly found myself taking considerably longer to write essays and postings thinking about
how others might have ethnocentric thoughts about my own biases. It caused me to read and
reread my sentences to find any possibility that someone could misunderstand a post and make
me look belligerent or uninformed. Being in a classroom of random strangers did not feel like a
comfortable environment to have some of these very sensitive conversations. I was also always
worried about using outdated terminology that I learned at UBC over 10 years ago. It did make
me reflect how diverse learners might feel when written postings and are constantly thinking
about how their postings might look and how students preconceptions can influence how they
think about them. When it comes to collaborative practices a lot of conversations I have with
peers happen outside of the Canvas website. For example, I communicate with Zale on a
regular basis and we often work together when reading articles in order to help each other gain
a better understanding. I do reflect on articles and on peers assignments especially when I find
them specifically pertinent to my own practice. However, improvement needs to be made when
responding to others after they have responded to my own posts. However after posting the
tendency is to move on to the next topic.

References

Reeder, K., Macfadyen, L. P., Roche, J., & Chase, M. (2004). Negotiating cultures in
cyberspace: Participation patterns and problematics. Language, Learning & Technology, 8(2),
88-105.

Neuliep, J. W. (2012). The relationship among intercultural communication apprehension,

ethnocentrism, uncertainty reduction, and communication satisfaction during initial intercultural
interaction: An extension of anxiety and uncertainty management (AUM) theory. Journal of
Intercultural Communication Research, 41(1), 1-16. doi:10.1080/17475759.2011.623239

Belz, J. A. (2003). Linguistic perspectives on the development of intercultural competence in

telecollaboration. Language Learning & Technology: A Refereed Journal for Second and
Foreign Language Educators, 7(2), 68.

Feenberg, A (1989) ​The written world​, in Mason, R and Kaye, A R (eds)(1989)