Cultural Diversity of Faculty: Impact on Student Perceptions of Online Course Delivery at African Universities

• In Event: Changing Higher Education Through International and Comparative Perspectives

Abstract

E-learning has facilitated the availability of post secondary education to students in underdeveloped African countries. As a result, the need for faculty increased and was meliorated by the employment of faculty from outside of Africa. An explanatory sequential mixed methods approach was implemented to investigate the ways in which instructors’ cultural orientation was manifested in their course delivery. A multi-level sampling technique included 1,430 graduate students enrolled in research courses offered at four universities and 9 professors of varying cultural orientation who taught the classes in which the students were enrolled. Results revealed that students perceived differences in the elements of course culture related to Hofstede’s power distance and individualism/collectivism dimensions based on the cultural orientation of the participating faculty.

Authors

• Irene S. Mbarika, Ph.D., ICT University

• Kim D. MacGregor, Louisiana State University