Online learning preferences: revealing assumptions and working with difference

This paper describes a trial of an online survey that was intended to reveal the online learning preferences of students and staff at a Faculty of Education, and our conclusions to date about the usefulness of the tool and the results it revealed. As part of a wider work in progress, the trial arose from our desire to better understand the learning needs of students from diverse cultures and how best to support online and blended students and teachers in increasingly global communities of learning. Our conclusions to date do not enable us to validate the cultural dimensions of learning on which the survey was based, but they do lead us to believe there is value in using the instrument to reveal and explore difference in online learning preferences