6.19.14: Community Analysis –
Blogs: A Tale of Two Communities
I. What is "community" to you?
According to Dictionary.com, one definition
of community is listed as: “a social, religious, occupational, or other
group sharing common characteristics or interests
and perceived or perceiving itself as
distinct in some respect from
the larger society within which it exists" (3). I think this definition is broadly similar to my sense of community. I think a community is created when a number of like-minded individuals come together in order to achieve a certain goal, or simply to share in, experience, and explore the nature/various aspects of that like-mindedness.
Communities, in an
online course, can certainly encompass these aspects, and much more. And while
there’s been a great deal of scholarship written about DL communities, (Danowski,
Boyd, Breuch, Colby, DePew, etc.), I think there’s an extant gap in that scholarship
– one that investigates, what I have experienced to be, two very different discursive communities that
are created in the DL environment. Indeed, this course, I believe, has been a
perfect example of these two different communities in action. Certainly, it can
also be argued that are other subsets of community that can arise in both (more
selective communities within these communities), but due to the limitations of
this initial foray, I’ll discuss the two primary communities I’ve personally experienced
in greater detail below.
II. If we use blogs in our distance learning writing courses, will the interactivity they afford help to foster a community among students?
Blogs can provide a creative way to
enhance learning and are an effective method for fostering a sense of community
for students. In blogs, “students can practice invention skills, take risks and
develop their own authoritative voices” and “as Susan McLeod points out,
students can learn from each other in a more active way” (Warnock 70). Further,
with the wide audience that blogs afford, students are not only exposed to a larger,
more diverse audience, but they are thus also challenged to have greater
plasticity of thought and experience the creation of more flexible, and
precise, responses to the varied voices of the participants. Blogs, then, not
only promote active learning for students, but also provide experience with
interacting in a variety of different communities, in addition to the student/peer-based
community of their DL course.
Broadly, blogs aren’t too different
from traditional CMS discussion boards, and perhaps they can be viewed as
simply a more public form of the same, as both are foundationally a “post,
response post” type of system. Traditional discussion boards, though, tend to foster
a more insular sort of “community,” because they are typically closed-off to everyone
but the students and the instructor, not so unlike some hermetically sealed
classroom. Blogs, on the other hand, are generally produced for mass consumption
in a more public forum and, thus, ultimately, engage with a wider community of
participants which possess diverse backgrounds, cultural knowledges, literacies
and values. So, while both traditional discussion boards and blogs have pros
and cons, they are both valuable pedagogical tools for DL courses and inarguably
have the ability to foster community.
III. Could the assignment have been designed in such a way as to better facilitate the goal of creating community? Try to go beyond, "the instructor could have required us to comment," as your only response. Had the instructor required comments would a community have actually resulted?
I don’t feel that being “required
to comment” would have better facilitated the creation of community in our
course. Indeed, that sort of mandate can often elicit the more generalized,
uninvolved, “just meeting the requirement” sort of responses, which has the
potential to not only foreclose true learning, but also doesn’t contribute
towards fostering a genuine sense of community amongst the participants. It
becomes mere “busy work” or a “grind” to students who only seek to meet course
requirements. Therefore the instructor’s guidelines for participation must be
carefully created and monitored (Warnock).
In our class, while I
certainly had the motivation and the desire to engage with my blog community, the
primary issue I personally encountered was, simply, a lack of time. This was an
accelerated class (6 weeks), and while that makes it quite convenient, it also unfortunately
creates an extraordinary crunch-for-time. I think, had this been a full-length
semester (~ 16 weeks), I would have been enabled to engage more deeply, more
frequently, and therefore, in a more communal manner. Yet, I still experienced
a very supportive and engaging sense of community with my peers in this course.
This, then, is what brings
me to the exigence I see in the academic discourse about online community in DL
courses. There appears to be two very distinct discursive communities that
emerge in contemporary DL courses. As this current project is just an
introductory investigation, I’ll just term them “academic-professional” and “academic-personal”
for ease of use.
The first of these, academic-professional,
is the community which is formed in and focused primarily upon academic affairs,
class assignments/performance, add activities. The discursive style tends
toward a more discreet, monitored and controlled association(s) between the
student, their peers, and the instructor. This community is one that nurtures
the student’s academic-professional persona. It is generally academic in
nature, engaged with the scholarly community on a more intellectual level, and
is generally fostered through course required assignments and communications
mediums such as discussion boards, synchronous meeting chat, peer reviews,
blogs, wikis, etc.
The second discursive
community, the “academic-personal,” while also initially formed based upon, and
typically often addresses academic issues, fosters a more personal level of engagement
and interaction. The discourse is typically less formal, more “chat” or “text” –like,
and is created and used primarily by the students, without an instructor
present (also sometimes called “backchat”).This community is more relaxed, and
while it sometimes addresses academic issues, it tends towards more a personal nature
in the sharing and information exchange. It’s is a space where students feel
safe to express a more genuine persona without regard to adhering to more
formal, academic discursive style.
Both of these communities
are an important component of DL courses and in my personal experience, they
are two distinct communities which support and encourage two very different aspects
of being part of an academic community. And while the blogs tended to support
the more academic-professional, I
personally found the academic-personal community more valuable in that it
allows for the freedom to muse upon assignments, course progression, but
perhaps more importantly, creates a discursive space in which we can support
one another (academic or personal), provide advice, encouragement, or simply
just to laugh. Academia can be an incredibly trying and stressful experience,
especially at graduate level, and having a cohort of like-minded individuals
who are with me both to assist in my academic-professional growth and provide a
shoulder when needed to support my academic-personal needs, is truly the best
of both worlds.
IV. Was there evidence of community in other aspects of the course, other than the blogs? What facilitated this? Why did it happen?
As we touched upon in our
class discussion, I believe the majority of our class felt a much higher and
satisfying sense of community from our academic-personal community interactions.
The blogs, being posted online and submitted for grading, created a more open, but
more academic-professional space. Because of the public nature of this arena,
we’re certainly more selective and cautious in our rhetoric and mostly strive
to maintain a more academic persona, as these words are subject to public, as
well as scholarly, opinion. The academic-personal group we created, however, allowed
us to engage one another in a more personal manner. We would discuss individual
life issues, academic anxieties, share general comments (both related to the
course and not) and perhaps most importantly, we openly supported and encouraged
one another. It gave us a support system that the public blog/discourse
community could not provide.
And while Danowski,
Boyd, and others have noted, “interactions with instructor and peers are
crucial (Boyd 3) for success” in online courses, there’s an important
distinction that arises when we incorporate the notions of community into the
instructor/student framework because, as noted, the two discursive communities and
the interactions they foster, serve different functions. The instructor presence
is indeed necessary in the academic-professional community. This has been
proven time and again, and I certainly do not disagree. However, an instructor
presence in an academic-personal community (with arguable exceptions, of
course), would generally change the dynamic of that community and, it is my
sense, would be counter-intuitive to the community-building that is needed “outside”
of class for the DL student. Indeed, in the transcripts below, it is quite
clear that an instructor being too involved in the academic-personal community
would interrupt and/or change the student perception of that community.
Ultimately, I think this topic
requires greater attention and study – especially considering the continually-rising
popularity of online coursework and the necessity for DL students to have a
sense of community, both with their instructor as well as their peers. My sense
is that encouraging students to have their own discursive space outside of the
academic-professional space afforded by the course itself may in fact support
student satisfaction, student retention rates, as well as facilitate greater student
engagement, which of course, has been proven to foster a space in which true
learning can then occur. Indeed, as Danowski notes, “feelings of empathy between
students and those supporting them are central to learning in
distance-education…feelings of empathy and belonging promote students’
motivation to learn, influencing learning favorably” (101).
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Selected Transcripts from 6.17.14 OWI WebEx Chat Log:
About our academic-personal community:
M: i guess the
backchat always gave me that community sense
L: Right, agreed,
Margie
S: the first rule of
back channel is you don't talk about back channel ...
M: haha
Why our academic-personal community support matters:
M: yeah we throw
journals at each other all the time - weren't you working on something like
this?
C: We have each other's backs!!
C: YUP -- plenty of anxiety -- no need to hurt each other --
we smack ourselves enough
S: why the PhD FB
group is closed and not faculty allowed.
S: we aren't saying
anything bad at all, but just want the space to feel safe and private
C: and supported for
our anxieties
L: Support for
anxieties, yes
L: This commiseration
factor is really important in building community
R: I am not sure how
people could be left out....although I am not 100% sure of the dynamic. I can
say as an outsider, I have not seen that in this class, but this is the only
one I have taken from the english department
Potential Drawback of academic-personal community:
C: I think telling [undergraduates]
about it changes it -- but encouraging it with freshmen? multitasking? they
might not pay attention in class
General Comments on community differences:
S: plus there's FB
during class and FB as an out of class resource
C: but in a class
where the professor "required" facebook and twitter -- they were
furious in my class that this was being forced on them
S: there is the issue
of trespassing into "their" space
K: those classes are
awkward.... you feel like youre being monitored for stuff you post that is not
related to class
C: these were adult
students -- so that was not their space comfort
K: and its awkward
when a professor that you dont really know starts liking all of your stuff
C: creepy
M: haha
General profundity:
S: community will
find a way with no affordances if it wants to exist, but the abundance of
affordances won't invoke community
general profundity might be my new character name
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