Does Indigenous Culture Affect One's View of an LMS Interface: A PNG and Pacific Islands Students' Perspective

Abstract

Developing countries may have strong indigenous cultural practices that are not accommodated by western education and its associated technologies. This study investigated university students' perspectives of Learning Management Systems (LMS) when the interface design considers the culture of its intended users. An LMS prototype was designed incorporating rich media into a learning module with cultural elements of Papua New Guinea (PNG), namely local language option, cultural icons and cultural motifs into a learning user interface. A user study was conducted on university students from PNG, Pacific Islands and other nations with English as a second language (EASL) evaluated the prototype. The findings suggested a strong preference for an appreciation of the cultural components of the interface.