by Katie, Dean and Zach (a.k.a The Disruptors)
The identities formed by online and face to face learners can be a direct result of the medium in which they are engaging in the community. The medium in which your message is communicated changes the message slightly and impacts your identity within the community. This would imply that those engaging in online courses will communicate slightly different messages than those in face to face courses, developing slightly different identities which can then cause marginalization of members or fracturing of communities. In I used a robot to go to work, Vincent relates his trials with a robot to join the community. “The bot you’re inhabiting shapes how people relate to you. It might sound silly, but think about the rolling ball robot that appeared in the new Star Wars trailer: that thing was onscreen for all of two seconds, but it was long enough for us to think, ‘Oh my, that’s a cute robot’” (Vincent, 2015). Does this then mean that utilizing physical representations of virtual participants may be less than we the authors have dreamed? “A telepresence robot may give you the ability to move around and explore in a remote environment, but you’re still beholden to all the usual social conventions of the 21st century office” (Vincent, 2015). However, Vincent also communicates that his particular environment was already using electronic media to communicate in the office. Could there be different results in an arena where community members have not already migrated to electronic participation?
Through our interviews we have determined the importance of social interaction in both classroom and workplace communities to feel like full participants in the given communities. Childress and Spurgin (2009) surveyed students who participated in an online and face to face instructional design technology degree programs. Those students who did not participate in the face to face communities were less likely to feel as if they were part of the school community. Lack of physical cues are cited as a possible cause, where students felt anxious and confused by lack of feedback and discordance with tone in online communication. Online users felt there was not anything for them to get involved with. Rovai (2004) found that students with higher SAT scores were more likely to be dissatisfied with their online educations, likely due to discordance and lack of community, in addition to issues with time management.
The idea of designing the online course to facilitate learning is found as far back as 1999, when Mellander and Mellander first introduced 11 Steps with which to design online education. “Interaction does not simply occur but must be intentionally designed into the instructional program” (Berge in Rovai, p. 85, 2004). Possible solutions for diminishing the discordance online education users felt, including:
- faculty modeling
- centralizing training on technology tools at the department or university level, instead of course level
- synchronous physical and virtual gatherings of faculty and staff
- websites that maintain a persistent online profile, rather than rehashing the information in each course (suggested community formed prior to coursework) (Childress & Spurgin, 2009)
Additionally, throughout our interviews, research, and this week’s readings a recurring theme appeared as a lack of community, or a feeling of isolation from online learners. One brainstorming idea that our group kept coming back to was this idea of creating some form of an online “water cooler” for both online and face-to-face students to communicate with each other, which was found almost verbatim in Rovai’s writing. “Online instructors can promote socializing by creating a discussion forum devoted to this purpose. Use of the name Water Cooler Forum seems appropriate as the water cooler in the workplace is an area where workers often engage in socializing” (Rovai, 2004).
Moving forward, our design challenge will have to focus explicitly on the goal of creating a community in which all members are equal participants, regardless of medium used for communication, and does not marginalize participants. Challenging to this will be that we can foresee synchronous communication being critical to foundational building of community, however it does not always align with the reasons students elect to participate in online education (i.e. time and location constraints.) A system in which that freedom is allowed, but still creates communities in which all participants are full members.
References
Childress, M., & Spurgin, D. (2009, December 22). Effects of University and Departmental Community on Online Learners. Retrieved March 27, 2015, from http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/effects-university-and-departmental-community-online-learners
Mellander, G., & Mellander, N. (1999, June 1). Community Colleges and Online Education. Retrieved March 27, 2015, from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED460735
Rovai, A. (2004). A constructivist approach to online college learning. The Internet and Higher Education, 7(2), 79-93. Retrieved March 25, 2015, from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1096751604000144
Vincent, J. (2015, March 26). I used a robot to go to work from 3,500 miles away. Retrieved March 26, 2015, from http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/26/8294855/telepresence-robots-double-robotics-remote-skype-office
Isaac Jason Bretz says
I like the idea of multi-modal water cooler opportunities. Some people may really come alive in an asynchronous environment where they have more time to think about what they want to say, being able to edit yourself in a stressful academic environment is nice too. Maybe a dedicated video posting platform with a comments function could work as an alternative to F2F. A lot of people use YouTube as a kind of video Facebook.
Brandon says
I think back to Wenger’s insurance office CoP. There’s a strong argument that jobs like that, and many more besides, are done just as well through telecommuting (indeed, how many of those insurance jobs are in India now?) So what is lost when we telecommute? This goes deeper, I think, than the classroom. It extends to broad changes that are happening in the way we live our lives, working, learning, and playing.
Adam says
I love the idea of a digital water cooler. But I wonder if you would allow the type of off topic conversations (like about TV shows or how some people like Taylor Swift and some people think she’s a giraffe in disguise) that happen around physical water coolers? If you limit it to conversations related to course material I’m afraid you might weaken the idea because students could stop seeing it as something social and see it more as some thing they have to do for class.
Zach Lonsinger says
Exactly. These are our thoughts too and we were aiming for more unrelated topics than the course material. We were imagining conversations similar to what we have during class or on break- about our upcoming plans for the weekend or a friendly debate over what color is the dress. Course discussion would be held in a different forum designed for course discussion. This “virtual water cooler” would just be a safe place to basically procrastinate…(:
pul121 says
I agree that it’s harder for online students to form a community. However, the new question occurs to me that if online students want to form the community and commit to benefit each other. Do online students want to make efforts and contribute to an enterprise that they all agree? If the community of practice is just a concept we impose to have but no engagement is enforced, the lack of community will always be the excuse.
Zach Lonsinger says
I agree and this is where the following comes in to play: “Interaction does not simply occur but must be intentionally designed into the instructional program” (Berge in Rovai, p. 85, 2004). The instructors and program faculty would have to intentionally design a way for students to interact- both on course related topics and non-course related topics. But I question the reaction we would receive if we “require” students to talk about their weekend plans…
Leah Bug says
It would be interesting to see how people participate in “non-class” discussions, such as their weekend plans. Is this type of conversation such that can be intentionally facilitated by the instructors, or does it need to happen organically? It would be really interesting to see how you could structure this “break time” conversation and have it feel authentic.
Priscilla Taylor says
“Interaction does not simply occur but must be intentionally designed into the instructional program” (Berge in Rovai, p. 85, 2004). I think this is something important to keep in mind as we move forward with our design challenges as they all wrestle with creating or restructuring interactions in communities. I think it can be easy to overlook this and assume interaction will take place for the simple reason that you’ve built something.
While I see the value in synchronous communication in an online environment, I also would agree with Isaac that asynchronous communication can allow for more thoughtful reflection for students that need the time to do so. In online courses that I have taught in the past, we used both but made the weekly synchronous chats optional and those students who had the time would come.
Koun says
I sometimes meet students in online degree program in a conference or in campus, and they say the most difficult part of it is feeling isolated. I really like your idea and look forward to seeing how your group come up with idea on “water cooler” for both online and face to face users.
Audrey Romano says
I’ve been thinking a lot about the balance between an online community space in combination with F2F for our challenge. We have a couple staff who telecommute, but basically we only interact with them online in Slack and Google Hangout. It’s isolating for them to not be present for the “water cooler” discussions, but some of that does occur in our “random” channel in Slack. When I meet over Google Hangout, our one staff member always remarks how nice it is to talk to us “F2F”. But of course there’s no replacement for them coming to visit the office in person. But online-only doesn’t mean that a real CoP can’t evolve organically. They do all over the place, around a range of topics. I think for something like this to work, a core group needs to be invested in it. From there, they can find other means to network and draw others in — whether that’s connecting with faculty to design interactions from within their courses or through even more classic means of marketing. I think forcing off-topic social interactions would be weird, but having a space for that is a great idea. Like in our unit’s Slack… we have channels specific to our projects, keeping those areas focused on a topic. But there’s the “random” channel too — no one has to use it, but it’s the perfect place to share the random animated gifs and links that only our peers would appreciate.
Michael Sean Banales says
I don’t really have much to add here. I think this is a pretty interesting idea and hope it works out well. My only question would be what motivates students to join this discussion. I’m sure many who feel isolated would be happy to do this, but I doubt that necessarily applies to all students in such situations. It seems like you’ll have a lot of technical challenges to work out as well, but I look forward to the final product.