Designing Web-Based Training: How to Teach Anyone Anything Anywhere Anytime

11.1. THE CHALLENGE OF GLOBAL TRAINING

Designing training for the whole world is difficult, expensive, and risky. We must surmount barriers of language, culture, distance, politics, habit, and technology. It is easy to get discouraged before you even start. But the task is not impossible. Let's begin by considering what global training requires and what difficulties we must overcome.

11.1.1. Problematic provincialism

WBT courses and materials designed for one culture or country can fail when used by people from a different background than anticipated.

Here is an admittedly concocted example that shows many of the cultural gaffes, goofs, and gaps that plague Web pages developed with only a local focus. How many problems can you spot?

If you only spot a few, return to this example after reading this chapter.

11.1.2. Differences matter

In designing WBT, we must take into account differences among learners around the globe. Differences in language, social values, and accustomed learning styles affect how well training developed for one culture works with a different culture [128]. Let's look at some of the differences among international WBT learners, recognizing that these differences overlap and interact.

11.1.2.1. Language

Language is usually the biggest cultural barrier in training [128]. For each target group, we must consider how well the group understands the language of ...