The Intercultural Approach to the Teaching and Learning at Digital Business Management

Abstract:

The attention to cultural diversity through education is governed by the principles of integration and normalization. At business schools, the interest of the student to another countries is linked to the teachers hability and the institution capacity to identify specific educational needs and establish aid mechanisms (Koschman, Suthers & Chan, 2005; Hua, Handford & Young, 2016).The online higher education must to meet challenges related to working at environments with people of different nationalities. Online education in higher education allows a unique setting to support the coexistence between people of different cultures based on interpersonal relationships and at the same time supports the intercultural dialogue. The intercultural dialogue at the online classroom is essential for learning. The educational experience can be achieved if sustained dialogue remains in the teaching-learning emerging between cognitive presence, social presence and teaching presence (Garrison and Arbaugh, 2007; Chen and Tsai, 2014; Yu & Richardson, 2015). Sustained dialogue about interculturalism has been analyzed after interviewing 30 people, 15 professors and 15 students participating in Master at Digital Business Management. The results show high values in the indicators of social presence and cognitive presence linking higher levels of depth of content with sustained intercultural dialogue. It is therefore important to consider the intercultural factor in the teaching-learning management online.