A model of online education effecting holistic student formation appropriate for global cross-cultural contexts

Abstract

Factors associated with globalization and unprecedented technological advancement have facilitated the opportunity to take education beyond the boundaries of the physical classroom and geographical borders to serve a global context. While this exponential growth has resulted in more convenient access to learning, increased possibilities for potential consumers, and new and lucrative opportunities for providers, many traditional educators and institutions pose valid questions and concerns about online education. An individualistic culture, if coupled with a geographically and pedagogically isolating learning environment, threatens students with greater levels of individualism and social alienation, which pose detrimental consequences beyond personal well-being to the broader society. Therefore, a model of online education is needed that facilitates, supports, and achieves outcomes not only desirable for education but also congruent with healthy human development fostering a formative process within a community of committed adult learners.

This research is bifocal. It firstly assesses an online masters degree that uses a cohort design to effect students' formation and then examines this program referenced to historical communities and contemporary collaborative learning theories, transformative learning theory, and cultural factors. Secondly, this assessment provides a platform for a guiding teleology upon which a model of online education can be proposed that is appropriate to serve culturally diverse students in a globalized world effecting a holistic formative "process of becoming."