E-LEARNING, INTERCULTURAL DIMENSION AND DIFFERENCES
E-LEARNING, INTERCULTURAL DIMENSION AND DIFFERENCES

Summary/Abstract: All across Europe, schools and universities have been setting up new training methods in order for students to develop intercultural skills and competence. In multilingual societies the pedagogical assumptions of e-learning environments need to be made explicit. World Wide Web, with the rapid development of Information and Communication Technologies in Romania, has caused changes in the way teaching and learning is viewed, increasing the diversity of the beneficiary population. Romania is a country with a multicultural and multilingual society. In these societies the implicit pedagogical assumptions of e-learning environments need to be made explicit. Two different cultural dimensions of educational practices are more specifically concerned/targeted: the pedagogical culture and the values, beliefs, attitudes, theories and models involved; and the digital culture and the emerging transformations related to knowledge and pedagogical modelling. This article focuses on examining the various effects of cultural factors regarding the e-learning process in Romania. An elearning environment is one where the educational practices are based on information and communication technology. There can be a combination of online and offline, solitary and group learning. As Internet culture existing in cyberspace is not geographically tied, learning through elearning is no longer bound by location (school, training centre) or time, but is actually dependent on technology. Examining the relationship between culture and language we discover that they are closely linked to the issue of national identity. After the Dutchman Geert Hofstede, researcher of corporate culture, national culture is the software of the mind, specific and learned patterns of thought and behaviour, relatively clear limiting potential answers to basic questions of existence, sets the example, modus operandi for survival, and it is necessary for us to be successful persons Overviews of cultural considerations (linguistic, national and individual aspects) can help build and implement effective elearning. After examining the sociolinguistic distribution will explore the learning process in terms of culture-dependent characteristics, and possible ways of customization. The development of intercultural abilities can lead the way to an enhanced experience of learning. Considering that ensuring equal opportunities is important to know what to do with e-learning software - acquired abroad or produced locally - by introducing a limited market (the speakers of Hungarian / Rromani). Finally, the paper analyses the e-learning platforms offered by the major Romanian Universities and the way they respond to the needs of Hungarian and Rromani minorities, taking in account their cultural and pedagogical peculiarity. The aimed scope of this paper is to submit to the universities and to the Ministry of National Education some solutions to increase the access of Hungarian and Rromani minorities to on-line learning

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