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Alisha Sharma
Independent Researcher
Delhi, India
Abstract
In the digital age, educational resources must resonate with students’ cultural backgrounds to foster engagement, comprehension, and identity affirmation. This manuscript explores the design of culturally relevant digital textbooks (CRDTs) by integrating culturally sustaining pedagogy, multimedia learning principles, and user-centered design. Through a convergent mixed-methods study involving educators, students, and instructional designers across urban, rural, tribal, and migrant communities, we investigate how CRDTs influence learner motivation, self-efficacy, and academic performance. Quantitative data from pre‑ and post‑implementation assessments (n = 240) demonstrate substantial gains in content mastery and affective engagement, while qualitative insights from twelve focus groups reveal deeper connections to learners’ lived experiences and local knowledge systems.
Key design guidelines include: embedding culturally resonant narratives drawn from community histories; structuring content in flexible, modular units that educators can tailor to local contexts; fostering community-sourced content co‑creation where students and elders actively contribute multimedia artifacts; and integrating adaptive multimedia elements such as vernacular audio narratives, interactive maps, and context-driven simulations. We further examine strategies for ensuring equitable access—such as offline-capable modules, low-bandwidth media, and built-in digital literacy scaffolds—to mitigate connectivity and device disparities.
Educational implications emphasize the potential of CRDTs to drive equity-centered pedagogy: recommending targeted professional development modules that build teachers’ cultural competency and technical fluency, advocating policy frameworks that embed cultural relevance in digital curriculum standards, and proposing resource-allocation models for infrastructure support. By positioning culture not as an add-on but as the structural core of digital learning environments, CRDTs empower students to see their identities reflected in academic content, thereby nurturing critical consciousness, academic resilience, and long-term engagement.
Keywords
Culturally relevant pedagogy, digital textbooks, user-centered design, multimedia learning, equity in education
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