Knowing what Learners Like – Developing a Cultural Sensitive Peer Assessment Process in MOOCs

MOOCs attract learners from various cultural backgrounds with differing educational beliefs and learning preferences. Research has long acknowledged that culture has an impact on the adoption and use of information technology. Cultural differences can cause conflicts, especially when learners provide each other with feedback during the peer assessment process. With this paper, we use a design science approach to create a cultural sensitive peer assessment process in MOOCs. Based on Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory we derive design elements and evaluate them in a qualitative and comparative study with Swiss and Chinese students. Our results show that different cultures prefer different designs. Consequently, our key contribution is the practical elaboration of design elements, which can be integrated in MOOCs to provide a better learning experience. Further, we contribute to cross-cultural theory by using an existing framework and adapting it to a new and relevant phenomenon: MOOCs.