Seeing Eye to Eye: Multicultural Virtual Classrooms, Diverse Expectations, and Buddhist Studies Distance Learning Pedagogy.

The MA Buddhist Studies at University of South Wales attracts diverse cohorts of students each year. The distance learning mode of delivery helps account for this, as the course has a global reach and it open to anyone who has occasional access to the internet. While not all students identify as Buddhist, the majority do. This creates a learning environment in which the underpinning pedagogic principles are aligned with those of the UK Higher Education in general and Religious Studies in particular, but the individual motivations of students on the course often extend beyond the cultivation of knowledge, understanding and critical thinking skills relevant to the discipline.
This paper considers the pedagogic challenges of delivering the course; the culturally diverse understandings of what academic endeavour means to students on the course; the role that transactional distance plays; and how feminist pedagogy may provide a framework for harmonising learning and teaching expectations in the Buddhist Studies virtual classroom.