Pre-Publish version of invited keynote at: Richter, T. (2012). Educational Resources for E-Learning in Urban Life-Long Learning. In: Yangpu Society Construction and Life-Long Education Promotion Committee Office (Eds.), Proceedings of the Forum on Construction of Urban Lifelong Education and Learning Community, Shanghai, Oct. 2012, pp.59-80.

1. Educational Resources for e-Learning in Urban Life-Long Learning: Does
One Size Fit All?
Thomas Richter
University of Duisburg-Essen
Information Systems for Production and Operations Management
Germany
thomas.richter@icb.uni-due.de
Abstract: In this paper we summarize our research on international educational contexts and transfer the re-sults
to the context of urban life-long learning. We will show that a collection and provision of relevant data
can help instructors as well as learners to raise their awareness regarding contextual differences, to develop a
higher level of acceptance regarding differences, and thus, in the long term, avoid frustration in educational
processes and reduce drop out-rates.
Introduction
In e-Learning scenarios, learning is understood as a self-directed process (Rey 2009, p.33). Schwartz
and Bilsky, (1987, p.552) describe “self-direction” as referring ’to reliance on and gratification from one's in-dependent
capacities for decision-making, creativity and action’. Lenartowicz and Roth (2001, p.311) write that
‘self-directed individuals rely on themselves for achieving desired outcomes; they place great importance on
logical and intellectual-based reasoning as a basis for behavior.’ Konrad and Traub (1999, p.13) introduce
„self-directed learning“ as a form of learning, in which the learner (depending on the kind of his motivation)
decides himself which methods are to be taken in order to check, control, and evaluate the own (metacognitive)
learning process. Ehlers (2004, p.181) lists the support of the learners’ skill in self-directed learning as one of
the five major quality goals, which proper e-Learning should achieve.
In such a self-directed educational context, motivation is the most crucial success factor (Richter &
Adelsberger 2011, p.1603). If learners lose their motivation in a face-to-face scenario, the educator still has a
chance to recognize it and, to intervene and/or support the regain of motivation (Rothkrantz et al. 2009, p.1). In
e-Learning scenarios in contrast, this chance is rarely given; without recognizing the learners’ mimics and ges-tures
as tools to communicate satisfaction or frustration (Sandanayake & Madurapperuma 2011, p.72), the edu-cators
depend on the explicit communication of threats against the motivation of the learners. However, learners
from Eastern countries, rarely communicate irritations. Within most eastern cultures, in which the educator is
highly to be respected and not to be put into question, such an open confession may even be understood as mis-behavior.
Ways to achieve a bit more control over the level of motivation of the learners are monitoring their ef-forts
(Jain 2002) and keeping their motivation on a high level by providing a learning situation that does not
jeopardize the learners’ pace.
While there is a high number of publications available which theoretically and experimentally in-vestigate
the questions what learners understand as being motivating and which activities raise motivation
(e. g., Dörnyei 1994; Williams & Burden 1997), research of influences that lead to decreasing motivation
is rare. However, Nilsen (2009, p.546) questions if raising motivation should be put above preserving the
initial motivation of learners. In his study (2006), Nilsen found that the main reasons for students’ drop-ping
out were ineffective study strategies, a mismatch between expectations and content in the study-program,
and a lack of motivation. Bowman (2007, p.81) even claims that strong efforts should be made in
order not to ’destroy’ the initial motivation by confronting the learners with unnecessary conflicts.
Following Haberman’s statement (1995, p.22), ‘whatever the reasons for children’s behavior —
whether poverty, personality, a handicapping condition, a dysfunctional home, or an abusive environment —
classroom teachers are responsible for managing children, seeing that they work together in a confined space
for long periods, and ensuring that they learn’, it is not in the responsibility of the learners to adapt the given
conditions of their learning context, but the educational institutions’ duty to ensure that an environment is pro-vided
which leads to productive learning for any kind and type of learner. This particularly is relevant in the

2. context of e-Learning in order not to jeopardize the motivation of the learners.
The most significant characteristic of urban educational contexts is a very diverse audience, consisting
of learners with different cultural, linguistic, educational, and social backgrounds (e. g., Crosby 1999, p.104).
Brighthouse & Fullick (2007) describe the related diversity for Londons’ urban school context as follows: ‘With
a population of 7.5 million, London is the largest city in Europe and has emerged as a global city of unprece-dented
diversity, where 360 home languages are spoken in the London schools and 75% of inner London’s
school population and 50% of outer London’s school population are from an ethnic group other than White
British’. We think this description is stereotypic for any urban educational scenario. As ‘culturally responsive
teachers use communication processes that reflect students’ values and beliefs held about learning, the respon-sibilities
of teachers, and the roles of students in school settings’, the main challenge for institutions is to edu-cate
teachers to respond to the cultural and ethnic characteristics and to the needs of the children and adoles-cents
who attend urban schools’ (Brown 2004, p.268). However, not just educators need to cope with this diver-sity
but also the learners need to be prepared: Learners who come to the cities in order to receive higher or adult
education often are biased with fears of social rejection ‘due to some cultural, racial, or economic difference
from the majority of the student body’ (Gibbs, Huang, and Associates 2003, p.17). Assumed that instructors
generally use culturally responsive practices (within their cultural understanding), related social problems in the
traditional classrooms (face-to-face) mainly occur in situations of group-work where learners from different so-cieties
have to work together and produce common results. In e-Learning scenarios, it technically is possible to
generally masquerade the learners’ social or cultural background, their names, gender, race and/or religion by,
e. g., giving neutral names and treating them equally. However, there still remain specific sensibilities that
might lead to serious conflicts, be it because of particular statements of the instructors or through the design of
the learning resources.
We think that the first and most significant step to avoid/solve related conflicts in educational scenarios
is making the learners’ contextual differences understandable to the instructors (those further instruct the learn-ers
in case of necessity). Only if instructors are aware of the learners’ contextual differences and sensibilities,
they can provide reasonable education by picking them up from their context and pointedly foster their abilities.
Further, awareness of possible differences may improve their teaching in terms of cultural responsiveness and
social equality. We developed a model to describe e-learning contexts and investigated learning culture amongst
various countries in order to determine which aspects might particularly be relevant to be taken into considera-tion.
Even though, in our research, we focus on international e-Learning scenarios, urban educational scenarios
are not so much different. However, some contextual influence factors, which we defined to describe e-
Learning contexts (Richter 2012) play a minor role in this context. In the following, first, we briefly introduce
our model of the e-Learning context. Afterwards, we discuss selected contextual influence factors, which we
consider being particularly relevant for the context of urban education. In the end, limitations and yet unsolved
problems are introduced. In the Annex, a list of those contextual influence factors is presented, which we think
are relevant in the context of urban education.
The Context of e-Learning
The learning context, as a whole, consists of any aspect affecting learning scenarios that cannot be in-fluenced
by the learning design. We analyzed the literature for documented conflicts in international learning
scenarios on a holistic level and searched for possible reasons/sources for those conflicts. Such conflicts were
caused by the specific characteristics of the involved entities, which on the one hand are the actors (in Figure 1:
Learners, Authors/Educators, and Tutors) and on the other hand the societal context they belong to (in Figure 1:
Country/Region, Company/Society). We grouped the single determined influence factors along their reasons for
conflicts within influence factor classes (the entities, displayed in the outer ring of Figure 1). In our research, we
found out that aspects from various fields were involved, such as history, politics, technical infrastructure, or the
legal system within a country.

3. Figure 1: The context of e-Learning
Please note, that those Fields to which we related the influence factors need to be understood as con-tainer-
structures: The field ‘Culture’, for example, contains a high number of distinguished influence factors in-cluding
aspects like the learners’ relationship to instructors and their expectations regarding instructor-based
services, their attitudes in group work situations, and diverse aspects related to feedback. Even though all those
defined influence-factors may cause conflicts sides the learners, it still is unclear to which extent learners can
deal with situations that differ from what they expect. Further on, between the influence factors, there are yet
not fully understood cross-effects. It seems that when accumulating, they differently affect the learner’s reac-tions
than each single occurring influence factor would do, even if extremely differing from the expected.
The Learning Context for Urban Life-Long Education
In our research, we focused on a holistic model of the e-Learning context with the purpose to foster the adapta-tion
(Pawlowski & Richter 2010) of Open Educational Resources. In several pre-studies we found out that the
biggest challenge for educators in order to reuse learning resources is the lack of understanding which aspects
need attention and how to implement the adaptation process (Richter & Ehlers 2011). We developed an adapta-tion
process model (Richter 2011b) and focused our investigations on the most significant group of influence
factors; the culture-specific expectations and attitudes of learners. As for urban life-long learning, we realized
that from the 175 contextual influence factors within the holistic model, just 54 remained relevant after exclud-ing
the specific national characteristics, like, legal and geographical issues, politics, state of development, and
Internet security. What finally remained were the whole set of cultural aspects, some aspects on religion and
history (sensibilities), some technical and financial issues that describe the expected state of the art of the urban
learners and their ability to finance education, and some general issues regarding the actors in the educational
system, which mainly are related to previous knowledge and didactical background. Even though life-long edu-cation
includes adult education, we did not consider the contextual influence factors related to companies. Re-lated
influence factors revealed specific for each company and just occur when related to internal training on the
job (vocational raining). Further on, for vocational raining, we found out that the educational culture differs be-tween
higher education and companies. We briefly focus on this topic in the section ‘Limitations’.
What actually remained as major issues in the context of urban life-long education were cultural as-pects,
namely, the way how students like/expect to receive feedback and when, how they organize their work
related to time, how they work in groups and which types of tasks they believe are suitable for being completed
in group-work scenarios, how learners understand the role of their instructors, and how they think their instruc-

4. tors should support their learning processes. We briefly summarize the results of the related studies, which by
now, we conducted in seven countries. We focus on the two contexts Germany and South Korea.
In terms of feedback we found amazingly little differences, even between Germany and South Korea,
where we strongly expected such. The students of all investigated national contexts wanted to receive qualified
feedback; explanations on what they did wrong and how they could have achieved better results. Almost no stu-dents
stated that receiving just the evaluation results would suffice. However, the point of time and the scenario
differed in their answers. While German students did not care if they receive their feedback in front of other
students, South Korean students preferred receiving it in privacy. Further on, German students preferred receiv-ing
feedback already during the ‘production process’ (in case of seminar works or a thesis) while Korean stu-dents
seemed to understand a task as a whole and preferred their feedback in the very end (Richter 2012b).
Regarding the role and tasks of the instructor extreme differences were found between the German and
the South Korean context. German students do not expect anything from their instructors but being experts in
their fields and delivering a reasonable and well-prepared course. The South Korean students, in contrast, ex-pected
their instructors to build up a personal relationship and a situation of trust. They understand the instruc-tors
as an idol, a person who it is worth to follow. While German students do not see any trouble putting the in-structor
and his/her contents into question, this seems to be a no-go for the South-Korean students. According to
the survey-results and different to the German students, the South Korean students also expected support re-garding
technical problems, study organization, and literature research. (Richter 2010; Richter 2012d)
In terms of group work, German students are used to form groups and controversially discuss the work
within the groups. They would like not having to do group work and instead prefer doing their work individual-ly.
They communicated that memorizing is nothing that could be done within groups. From the South Korean
students, we received almost opposite results. South Korean students memorize in groups, they seem to like do-ing
everything in group-work situations, and believe that group work is helpful in any educational situation.
However, least of the South Korean students reported being used to form or manage a group by themselves and
those who did, where remarkably older students (than the average in the samle). (Richter & Adelsberger 2011b)
Regarding time management, the German students stated to start their work very late but deliver it in
time. Actually, if they do not deliver their work in time, it is not accepted for delivery anymore (so they must
repeat the course). The South Korean students, in contrast, reported that they experience difficulties in deliver-ing
their results in time and tend to be late. Here, the educational systems seem to be very different: The South
Korean System appears to be more caring, which could be related to the fact that German universities are free of
charge and public while most South Korean universities are privately financed; thus, South Korean students are
much more understood as customers (Richter 2012c).
Gender related differences between the South Korean and the German context were quite small. It
seems in both contexts, a certain level of emancipation is common and students of both genders more or less
support and respect each other.
At this point it gets obvious that conflicts are preprogrammed if a South Korean student comes to the
German context (or vise versa) without being informed on the differences he/she has to expect. The South Ko-rean
student will feel abandoned and quickly loose motivation and the German student may insult his/her in-structors.
A preventive collection of related context-data could help to avoid such situations.
Limitations and Further Research Need
Most of the culture-specific data on e-Learning context are defined by the outcomes of our standard-ized
questionnaire on learning culture (in the Annex referred to as ‘Survey LC’) that has the purpose to better
understand culture-related attitudes and expectations of learners and to collect related data in various national
and regional settings (Richter, 2011b). A first version of this table, which exclusively based on data that derived
from the literature (without any metadata regarding our survey on learning culture), was published in 2007 in
the proceedings of the eASEM conference in Seoul, South Korea (Richter & Pawlowski 2007). In the meantime,
we verified the usefulness of the influence factors, modified the original list of contextual influence factors by
deleting aspects that were not collectible or finally did not describe what we hoped for, improved their descrip-tions,
and collected data in various contexts. The recent version is still being further developed. As for almost
all listed aspects, we were able to collect datasets for Germany, South-Korea, Austria, Switzerland, Great Brit-ain,
Ireland, Turkey, Ukraine, and Bulgaria. Collections in Ghana and Cameroon are still running. Apart from
Germany and South Korea (where we collected the data ourselves), university students have completed the da-tasets
in the context of their thesis. Each of the students came from the contexts, which they analyzed. They

5. were familiar with and able to do the research in each of the specific national languages. In Germany and South
Korea, the data have already been verified and in both contexts. Even though the data, which our students col-lected
still need to be verified, the fact that they were collectible in all those contexts implies that it can be ex-pected
that those data at least can be collected for most countries in the world. As for the survey, the number of
participants in the students’ investigations was to low to speak about representative results but the results so far
were sound. In the German context, where we had over 1800 completed responses we were able to prove that a
small amount of responses (30+) just in exceptional cases led to extreme results. What made the difference was
the spectrum of possible answers, which we understand as a possible indicator for the level of acceptance.
Our so far collected culture-related data cannot be generalized to all learning scenarios within a certain
context. In Germany (which is a language-homogenous context), we conducted the survey in the fields of Adult
Education and Higher Education. In contradiction to the general national culture approach of Hofstede & Hof-stede
(2005), we found occasional disparities between different company-contexts (company culture seems to
affect learning culture) but significant differences when comparing university- with company-results (Richter &
Adelsberger 2012). We did not yet try to implement our survey on school level, as this revealed extremely diffi-cult
within the German context. However, there are hints that pupils in schools below the age of twelve years
are not yet culturally biased at all (Buehler et al. 2012). Although in Germany, the results from all three investi-gated
universities were similar to each other, we recommend against a generalization on national level as soon
as different languages are spoken in the country (see Leonardi 2002, p.314) and/or different societies/tribes
have been merged. As for the later case, we investigated students in the French and the British language parts of
Cameroon and found significant differences between the two contexts. However, the data collection yet is not
completed and the numbers we have achieved are far from being representative. In order to approve such phe-nomena,
we need to investigate further countries in which different national languages are spoken or former po-litically
distinguished regions were merged in the context of colonization.
Conclusions
In this paper, we first have shown that a high level of motivation is essential for successful e-Learning
and that particularly the initial motivation should be preserved. We presented the current state of the art of our
own research on e-Learning context. Our results provide evidence that it is possible to draw a picture of particu-lar
learning contexts on different levels, be it holistic, as our research approach is designed, or limited to, e. g.,
the particular context of urban education. In order to reach the best possible success with education on whichev-er
level, we consider it is crucial that instructors are aware of the contextual situations of their learners. In urban
contexts, learners from many different regions and societies come together. Thus, also many different expecta-tions
and attitudes are merged which an instructor has to cope. We believe that already the awareness that such
differences exist enables instructors to provide culturally responsive education and thus, preserve the learners
initial motivation. With our approach we provide a tool that institutions can use to describe the influence factors
of particular learning contexts. However, it yet is unclear to which extend particular differences lead to educa-tional
conflicts. In order to reach a higher level of understanding, reports of instructors are needed in which the
specific educational scenario is described together with the particular conflict situation. We would like to en-courage
every instructor to write short reports and send those to us. As for collecting data, we like to invite in-dividuals
and institutions to provide support. We provide the platform for online surveys and have designed the
standardized questionnaire. We have verified (back translated) versions of the questionnaire in the languages
German, Korea, English, and French. We have further, not yet verified versions in Russia, Bulgarian, and Turk-ish.
Help is required in the context of (back-)translation work and data collection. In return for the support, we
analyze the data and freely provide a report. In the longer term, all data will be published in a freely accessible
database. For further information or offers for support, please, feel free to contact us. With our research, we are
at a point where we strongly need the support of and cooperation with institutions from other countries.
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8. Annex
All contextual influence factors in the following table are defined as Context Metadata, following and extending
the requirements of the international standard for quality assurance in e-Learning, i. e., ISO/IEC 19788-2 2011.
The complete list of contextual influence factors related to international contexts can be found at Richter 2012b.
Influence Factor Name Description
Instructor's Role How do learners understand the role of the instructor (Survey LC)?
Instructor’s Tasks What services do learners expect their instructors to provide (Survey LC)
Value of Errors Are errors in the learning process understood as a chance to learn or as a disas-ter/
face loss (Survey LC)?
Acceptance Level for New Technologies Is new technology seen as good or as threatening?
Cultural Meaningful Symbols A list of symbols that have a particular meaning within a certain context and
which could be threatening if used in the wrong context
Culture Related Heroes Historical persons who symbolize a particular positive stereotype
Culture Related Anti-Heroes Historical persons who symbolize a generally negative stereotype
Communication Style Is communication direct or rather indirect? Is it common to directly point at
problems?
Media Types Are there preferences or animosities regarding particular technologies?
Gender Differences Are learners with different genders equally treated? (Survey LC)
Behavioural Gaps Through Gender Dif-ferences
Are there behavioural differences between females and males? (Survey LC)
Motivation and Ability to Self-Motivate Do learners need motivation support or can they motivate themselves? (Survey
LC)
Feedback What kind of feedback do learners expect and when? (Survey LC)
Emotional Stability How do learners react on unexpected influences (acceptance level)?
Pedagogical Approach Are particular pedagogical approaches implemented that influence the expecta-tions
of the learners?
Ability to stand Critics Is critic comparable by learners? (Survey LC)
Relationship to Authorities Are authorities being put into question? Who actually is a person of authority?
Expectable Attendance for Volunteer Co-operation
Is volunteer work expectable? To which extent?
Expectable Training Level concerning
Group Work Are the learners used to do work in groups? (Survey LC)
Expectable Group-Behaviour Are group members emancipated or is a single group member responsible (Sur-vey
LC)
Type of Interaction Within Groups Who does the work and who is responsible (Survey LC)?
Expectable Learning-Goal Which are the targeted learning goals (e. g., degree, knowledge)?
Need for Written Rules Do the learners prefer clearly defined and unchangeable rules?
Learning Preferences Are certain learning styles preferred (Survey LC)
Laud for Motivation Needed (How)? What kind of motivation is expected (Survey LC)
Level of Necessary Control How much control is needed and expected by the learners?
Self-Determination Do learners want to have influence on their course management system and
content (Survey LC)?
Time Management How do learners manage tasks (Survey LC)?
Cooperative Learning Do learners work together to reach aims or do they rather work besides or alone
(Survey LC)
Number of Inhabitants per Age-Group Absolute value, maybe regional differences
Population Development Population development over time
Education Achievement National divide of education
Ethnic Makeup Ethnic groups (in population), divide & density
Main Religion Name of religion
Religious Conflicts List of existing conflicts that could jeopardize educational scenarios

9. Common Religious Rules Rules related to religion that may inflict education
Ownership of PC Is it expectable? divide?
Private Internet Accounts Is it expectable? divide?
Television at Home Is it expectable? divide?
Cell Phone Is it expectable? divide? technology?
Common Computer Technology Which is the computer technology (MHz, graphics accelerator) that can be ex-pected
being available for all learners?
Power Supply Infrastructure Is power supply given everywhere or limited to congested areas?
Communication Technologies Which communication technologies are available for Internet?
Mobile Technology Infrastructure What is the quality of mobile access per region: is it everywhere possible to use
mobile learning?
Network Coverage Internet Is Internet available everywhere or only in congested areas?
Point of Historical View What’s the society’s point of view concerning its own history and historical
events?
Spending Capacity in Private Households
for Education
Capacity in private households to spend private money for education (common
amount/year)
Relation Internet Cost / Private Income Common costs for Internet access
Common Expectable Kids Education Cost Amount of money a family commonly spends for their children’s (and own) ed-ucation
Cultural Sensitivity Is additional help needed in order to introduce cultural differences or exists
xenophobia regarding particular societies?
Expectable Skills What skills can Learners be expected to have before entering a program?
Known Assessment Forms Which types of assessment are the learners familiar with?
Instructional Strategies & Methods Familiar strategies and methods didactical models)
Computer Literacy Expectable computer literacy of learners