Distance Education, Vol 23, No. 2, 2002
The study "explored the connectedness of learners' online lives through an interpretive process and attempted to make sense of those events through the reflective telling of their stories.
Research Question: What influences members' contributions to, and participation in, online learning activities?
Sub-Questions: What factors influence members' patterns of interactions with other members? What internal and external conditions affected members when they were engaged in online learning? What does it mean to learners to be members of an online group?
Lit review:
Community in Online Learning -- According to Wenger, "Learning is perceived as a social activity where learners are 'active participants in the practices of social communities and [are] constructing identities in relation to these communities."
The Virtual Universe -- Conrad contends that the online learning theory does not distinguish between online learning communities and all other virtual communities, and this distinction is necessary because online learning communities require participants to abandon their sense of self while other virtual communities do, and, in fact, this is one of the draws of other virtual communities.
Online Learning: A Kinder, Gentler World --
Discussions of Online Etiquette --
Methodology:
Sample: 7 middle-life adult learners in adult education program using cohort model and distance education delivered via webct.
Data Collection: (1) Interview, min. of 60 minutes; and observations and reflections recorded in fieldnotes; additional reflections requested from students.
Results:
Question -- what influenced contributions to online learning activities? Central factor was learner's personal sense of etiquette. . .
Discussion of Findings:
Conrad conlcudes the lack of anonymity, the shared learning goals and extended committment to the program and their peers invovled in it, and social pressure to be amiable produced in these students an "increased sense of inhibition" whic led to their concentrated efforts to maintain civility through a "heightened application of etiquette."
Conrad explains how we have been socially conditioned throughout years of experience in face-to-face methodologies how to act under those circumstances, and that these classroom dyanamics are mitigated by the presence of others; however, these social mores are developing in online environments in which anonymity is not an option, and thes students' response to this new experience was a focused attention on civility and manners. Conrad describes online community in learning environments as "a fishbowl experience" and that students "demonstrated their awareness of their captivity and its effects by exercising caution and wariness about what they committed, in writing, to their course web sites."
Conclusion:
"Integration -- of learners, their learning, and their environment -- has replaced control as the relationship axis of online learning. . . . Integration . . . is nurtured, shaped, and instigated by learners' responses to the demands of their own lives, to each other, to content, and to instructional presence through interactive and participative rhythyms." ???
What does this mean?
The combination of learners, what they learn, and how they learn it has replaced regulation as the center of online learning. This combination is achieved by students' stated responses and communal presenation of their personal lives and trauma, course content, and the relationship and presence of the teacher within this new paradigm.
I guess what Conrad is saying that online learning is governed to a greater degree than we had imagined by developing rules of etiquette and protocol, and these rules develop because the learners involved in this paradigm are NOT anonymous -- they share a purpose, a space, and a voice -- which contrasts with other online environments. Online environments shove learners together in a far closer, more stressful manner than traditional classrooms do, and this heightened sense of presence creates increased concern for etiquette.
