Cultural issues in the design of technology-enhanced learning systems

The pervasive influence of culture should be regarded as a significant conc ern in the design of technology-enhanced learning systems, In fact, it has been included as one of the five essential foundations of effective student -centred learning environments (Chen and Mashhadi, 1998), The other foundat ions are psychological, pedagogical, technological, and pragmatic. This art icle will focus mainly on the cultural and pedagogical considerations in th e design of student-centred learning systems with particular reference to t hree cases in Singapore. The experiences will illustrate some of the challe nges and problems in designing and implementing learning systems in three d ifferent contexts: local-institutional, trans-institutional, and global. So me of the instructional design issues include those articulated by Collins (1997) in his consideration for building a constructivist learning environm ent. They are related to learning goals such as thoughtfulness vs memorizat ion, whole tasks vs component skills tasks, breadth vs depth of knowledge, diverse vs uniform expertise.