How Does Chinese Culture Influence Online Education?

Online education is growing and spanning the earth as Internet access becomes more entrenched in people’s lives. The study of culture and its impact on online education hasn’t been studied with any real vigor. According to a study by Zhang (2014) Confucius cultures maintain many of the same attributes when engaging in school online. School administrators should consider the impact of culture on the online education modality and how that impacts learning. 

It is first beneficial to understand what culture is. It can be seen as, “the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another” (Hofstede, 2010). Culture is that which we carry with us from our shared social upbringing uniquely tied to our place of origin. 

When students move online the way in which they perceive the information and how they interact with authority figures isn’t likely to change. Those who were raised in cultures that have a high respect for professors are likely to have wider power-distance relationships. This is certainly different than lower power-distance relationships where students challenge the professor. 

In this case, the professor takes a more profound role with higher levels of societal respect. Students are less likely to challenge the professor or question the professor’s knowledge. This will naturally have an impact on the level of interactivity within the classroom as well as the need for quality instruction. 

It is beneficial for online instructors in those countries to focus on trying to engage such students with their classmates more and allow for specific interventions to help students keep their moving forward. Having a higher perception of status is not necessarily a bad thing if that power is used to step in and move the class forward. 

Likewise, it is also beneficial for professors to provide quality feedback that tries to explain in greater detail ways in which the student can improve their learning, writing, or test taking. Because such students are less likely to ask questions it is beneficial to give them as much upfront information as possible. Asking questions and receiving information on improvement are two different things. 

Moving overseas into Asian countries is an important step for American universities that seek to broaden their reach, encourage sustainable higher education budgets, and use the power of the Internet to enhance learning. The process is not impossible but does require additional research into culture and online learning. Culture will have a natural impact on how information is received ad the level of interaction among students.

Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA:SAGE Publications.

Zhang, Y. (2013). Power distance in online learning: experience of Chinese learners in U.S. higher education. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 14 (4).

Successful College Strategies for Marketing to International Students

A paper by Vik Naidoo and Terry Wu in the Journal of Marketing Management seeks to expand the discussion and understanding of college marketing geared toward international students.  Reviewing colleges in the U.S., UK, Australia and New Zealand they have been able to narrow down their understanding to implementation related outcome variables, commitment dimension, strategy, and role factors. The work adds to the body of literature on key concepts related higher education marketing and its success. 

The trend in global educational services appears to be growing. Educational services range from the actual education to textbooks. It also appears to be growing as an export trend making it an industry with huge future potential. Both traditional and non-traditional education has seen increases in exportation of services to full-paying foreign students due to declining governmental budgets.

Due to the changing nature of marketing from domestic to international education, organizations have been implementing new marketing strategies. Failure is associated more with implementation than with the actual strategy. Conceptually, organizations can find a marketing strategy but often fail to take into account details of the environment when implementing such a strategy. 

Like other marketing strategies the failure to align the internal operations within the organization to the marketing promises can create a misalignment between the message and the actuality. This problem can become even more apparent in large traditional universities where large bureaucratic structures with a large swath of competing interests can slow change. It is this large bureaucratic structure that continues to maintain strategies even though they may not be competitive.

The study used the four countries in their analysis as it represents around 45% of all international recruitment. A total of 570 mid level marketing managers were included in the study in order to assess overall strategy.  To be successful organizations must emphasis strategy, role commitment/performance, strategy implementation success, and fit vision with strategic initiatives. There should be an alignment between the strategy, the behaviors that are needed to achieve that strategy and the ability to implement that strategy within the organization’s vision. 

Marketing managers seemed to have difficulty understanding how the implementation of the marketing strategy fit within the overall vision of the organization. There should be a heavy amount of communication about how the marketing managers and their teams fulfill the strategy as well as how this strategy fits within the goals mission. It is an alignment between vision, strategy, role, and action. 

The overall strategy and vision should be well-known among the senior administrative and college leadership in order to ensure that actions are not obstructed by misunderstanding or poor activity alignment. Administrators may be able to encourage the implementation of the strategy through proper systematic adjustments while deans will be responsible for the fulfillment of the strategy when new students arrive. Without a clear understand actions can be wasted and counterproductive. 

The report does not indicate this concept but like in companies, a successful strategy and its implementation make systematic changes throughout the organization. It is not enough to work in silos as this creates haphazard service implementation. Those who make decisions within the organization should be fully aware of the strategy and how it fits within their operations. The alignment of all of the organizations parts creates a more efficient and consistent production that fulfills the needs of students.

Naidoo, V. & Wu, T. (2011). Marketing strategy implementation in higher education: a mixed approach for model development and testing. Journal of marketing Management, 27, (11/12).