March/April 1999 |
This article was published in Educom Review, Volume 34 Number 2 1999. The copyright is copyright is shared by the author(s) and EDUCAUSE. See http://www.educause.edu/copyright.html for additional copyright information. |
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Creating Community Online
Negotiating students' needs and desires in cyberspace
How do students' expectations of instructor support in an online learning environment differ from the instructor's idea of what support students should be provided in learner-centered education? What assistance do students actually require in the transition from a classroom setting to an online environment? Our experience of transforming an upper-level, traditional education course with a technology-infused, learner-centered format brought us face-to-face with the realities and significance of these questions. In the September/October '97 issue of Educom Review, Stephen Ruth described the mechanics and process of converting an undergraduate course to a technology-based, online format. In "Getting Real About Technology-Based Learning: The Medium Is Not The Message," he explained the course as "an undergraduate requirement . . . aimed at introducing pre-business students to the concepts and the tools of computer-based automation in a business setting . . . using every possible new technology available." Motivated by Ruth's enthusiasm and creativity, we decided to adapt a traditional graduate course to a similar online format. We reviewed our repertoire of previously taught courses with an eye for a subject area that would lend itself to such an experiment. We chose EAHED 6003, Educational Ideas, a 3-credit hour, graduate course aimed at exploring diverse educational philosophies and practices. We launched wholeheartedly into re-designing EAHED 6003 to an online format. We wanted the course to emphasize decision-making processes currently used in modern educational systems and help practicing educational leaders become aware of the value and caveats of modern technologies.
We noted the similarities and differences between our course and Ruth's model. Several similarities were evident. For instance, Ruth's course and ours were required, mainstream courses. Like Ruth, we wanted students to use all technologies possible, or "everything . . . [but] the kitchen sink." We encouraged the students to make use of the variety of media available through the World Wide Web for education exploration and delivery, such as: the thousands of copyright-free texts available through Project Gutenberg, various libraries associated with both private and government institutions, new organizations with World Wide Web addresses, and online journals, dictionaries and encyclopedias. Another important likeness was that both Ruth's and our delivery modes were "asynchronous." The differences, however, allowed limited transferability. Ruth's subject area was in the field of business; ours was in educational leadership. Ruth's focus was on "introducing pre-business students to the concepts and the tools of computer-based automation in a business setting"; ours was to explore a variety of issues relating to technology and education in the global community. His students were undergraduates; ours were doctoral students. His course was more content bound; ours was more process oriented. And, while learner-centered education was a new concept and end result for Ruth, it was a philosophical commitment with which we have approached all our classes.
The students in EAHED 6003 were required to work on individual answers to a general question: "What constitutes good education in a global, information society?" Each student was instructed to select a particular focus area, according to individual research interests, through which to answer this question. For example, an individual might choose to answer the question in terms of family, environment, culture, politics, technology, curriculum, science, equity, vocational education, special education, change, human rights, ecology, religion, spirituality, values, communication or any one of a host of other preferences. The important factor was that each individual choose a particular area and stay with it the entire semester. We gave the students three rules for answering the question: 1) Use all available technologies except traditional library methods for researching the question. 2) Turn in all your assignments electronically. No hard copies of anything will be accepted. 3) Turn in all assignments on or before the due date designated in the schedule. The assignments included interactive journal responses to readings from the two texts: W.J. Mathis's (1994) Field Guide to Education Renewal and Schrum and Berenveld's (1997) Teaching and Learning in the Information Age. The objectives of using the interactive journal component were to sharpen the students' awareness of past experiences and understandings, link these with newly learned concepts, and thereby pave the way to new understandings and appreciation. In the journal, the student would respond critically to each reading and answer the questions: "In what ways have I changed in the process of reading and responding to this reading assignment?" and "How does this relate to other areas of my life?" We would use the journal submissions as an opportunity to interact with each student on an individual level. The students kept a second journal dealing exclusively with their research project. In this journal, each student was to keep a running reflection on the process of his/her self-selected research project and document their decisions, sources and actions during the development of their projects. The individual project component of the course requirements was meant to accommodate the student's special talent and interest regarding the course question, to reflect a predominant use of electronic resources, and was to be presented by the student to their classmates electronically. To do so, they could, for example, establish and monitor a chat room, develop a Web page, conduct interviews with experts and post the transcripts online, etc.
The class was to meet on campus only three times during the semester, so one of our concerns was how to create a cohesive community of class members and encourage online dialogue among them. One of our solutions was a Lotus-Notes threaded discussion group supported by OSU Computing & Information Services. We envisioned a dialogue between the class members about the readings, through which they would become acquainted with each other and explore diverse ideas. We made a conscious decision for the instructor not to participate in the discussion. This decision was based on the belief that the traditional education experience of our students probably had socialized them to look to the professor's interpretation of the readings for guidance in their own interpretations. We suspected that the instructor's participation in the dialogue would hamper their willingness to explore their own interpretations and those of their peers.
Most of our students were baby boomers and novices in computer technology. Many had never used e-mail. They approached the whole process of logging on to the discussion group and using e-mail to send their assignments to the instructor with dread and apprehension. This was aggravated by frequent problems, both with their own computers and personal servers at home and with the university server system. Many of their early e-mail messages to us were frantic or resigned: "Help! I posted my intro and it disappeared!!" "Despite the frustration of attempting several times to retrieve my user I.D. with no success . . . " ". . . experiencing major computer malfunction . . ." In sum, the common sentiment was, "Houston, we have a problem." Early in the semester, several students expressed discomfort at not having the instructor's input to guide them. One student commented, "If he doesn't get in the discussion, how will I know how he thinks? How will I know how to direct my answer to the big question or my journal responses to the readings? How will I know what he wants?" Another student sent a chastising e-mail message stating, "You're the teacher. It's your job to tell us what to do!" Seeing the discomfort of our students, we agonized over our decision. We asked ourselves, "Does 'learner-centered' mean supporting the student in whatever way he or she interprets the instructor's role? Why were doctoral students disturbed at the thought of constructing their interpretations of the text without the instructor's input? Would they have the same reaction if they were sitting in a traditional classroom in which the instructor did not enter into the discussion with an opinion?" Although we favored respecting the students' personal experiences as fertile ground for creating knowledge, did we sometimes subvert this in a traditional classroom setting by stating our opinions? Did we do this without realizing that the traditional learning environments out of which our students had come prevented them from seeing their opinions on equal ground with ours? The discomfort voiced by several students assured us that the instructor's input would be regarded by many students as the marker by which they would shape their own understandings of the readings. So, we stood by our initial decision for the instructor to remain outside the discussion group but correspond more frequently to them by phone and e-mail. We also offered assurance that the instructor was not looking for interpretations that aligned with his personal opinions and was interested in the students' crafting their own interpretations out of their personal experience alongside that of the community of learners. As the semester progressed, the discussion group submissions grew more thoughtful. Students looked to themselves to construct meaning and then queried their own thoughts as they juxtaposed them against those of their peers. Since there was no marker of power to shape their thinking, they each brought an individual interpretation to the readings, crafted out of their experience. Often their submissions affirmed that this diversity gave them pause to consider another possible meaning for a text they had thought so clearly said just one thing. In the end-of-semester anonymous evaluations, several gave this experience as a primary reason they valued the course.
We checked our e-mail frequently during the day and even at home at night to get back to each student as soon as possible. As the semester progressed, the technical problems and student frustrations diminished. We received fewer desperate communications and more that expressed elation over personal technological triumph. Many of the students expressed joy at one time or another during the semester at their success with the technology as it related to their project or work. As early as February 24, one student who threatened to quit the class because of her distaste for technology wrote, "Here's my Web page address . . . This probably isn't a big deal to anybody else but me, but I'm pretty proud of myself." We had given the students license to present their projects to their class members in any way as long as it involved using technology. We had thought they might make Power Point presentations, produce a video or any number of other options. But, in the end, they all constructed Web pages to display the results of their exploration and answer to the big question: "What constitutes good education in a global information society?"
The orientation process was insufficient for many of the students to use the threaded discussion format for interaction. They began the class nervous and unsure about their ability to connect to the class site. Their nervousness with technology was compounded by the standard frustrations of passwords that sometimes failed and technical difficulties with specific Web browsers. The threaded discussion platform proved to be unsatisfactory for promoting a sense of community online. The process necessary to access their classmates' comments was unwieldy and frustrating. And the options for online participation were restricted to posting responses or comments in a single format. The online give-and-take discussions in which students were to debate issues and find new ground for understanding did not develop to the degree and depth we had envisioned. From our success and failures we offer the following advice to those embarking on an initial online instructional adventure: 1) Course Planning and Development
2) Course Orientation
3) Course Instruction and Management
We, unlike Ruth, did not walk away from this experience with the gratifying sense of having our vision exceed all expectations in its real-life inception. Much of what we did, we now know needs to continually evolve to better serve the interests of the learner. We are, however, motivated to continue to explore the vast treasures of cyberspace and have taken specific steps to improve. We have redesigned EAHED 6003. During the summer one of the students in the initial class played a primary role in this redesign. We have enhanced the orientation experience, provided more technical assistance to students, and incorporated our own advice listed above. We have been educated in the Lotus application, Learning Space, which gives many more options for student participation and instructional creativity. This application also offers a platform for instructor interaction with the class and with individuals, which will help abate the sense of isolation from the instructor many students experienced previously. Students' expectations and our commitment to learner-centered communities in our classroom continue to be challenged in new ways as we are immersed in the Information Age. And we are increasingly aware that learning communities are always negotiated spaces, perhaps even more so in technology-infused cyberspaces. Sharon Solloway is a graduate assistant at the College of Education at Oklahoma State University. [email protected] Edward Harris is an associate dean at the OSU College of Education who has taught a variety of courses in educational leadership and research. [email protected] |
