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intro
feeling the walls
non-participation :
blogging & lurking
learning styles
summary
| Why I looked at non-participation? | I had now completed the foundation reading and had a grasp on the relative merits of blogs and wikis and how they were being used in learning and teaching. I was however hindered by A-M's absence of contributions - and I noted that the wiki was thus rendered useless, whilst my blog thrived [see: no-one to play with]. My attention was naturally drawn to non-participation - and ultimately the question of 'what value do technologies offer when they aren't being interacted with in the way they were intended?' Blogs evidently hum along quite happily if no-one visits or comments, yet discussion boards grind to a screaming halt. I posted a question on this topic in the wiki [see: wiki - no one to play with] and proferred an answer. |
| Online silence is a learning strategy? | I then focused on a discussion board case-study in which there was little lateral interaction [see: discussion board case study]. The students' questions were always answered by the tutor, and student-student interaction was minimal. The discussion board was regarded by the students as a success, so clearly their learning needs were being met. The students, it would appear, were content with being read-only participants (lurkers). This suggested that failure to contribute online may be a learning strategy - so I next wanted to look for reasons to explain absence of contributions. This led me to an interesting article by Greg Benfield which explored the meaning of online silence [see:online non-participation]. This was perfect as it provided me with a teacher's perspective on what constitutes online silence and why these behaviours might arise. |
| Benfield article on online silence: | There were points made in the Greg Benfield article [see: online silence paper points] which helped me understand the internal conflicts students may experience when using online discussions. I learnt that they are nervous of posting contributions to online course discussions as they afforded them a greater gravity than the spoken word. Consequently students believed that the making-of-mistakes and the tossing-in-of-ideas were not welcome. So unless they were sure of what they are saying the easiest thing to do was... nothing [see: online silence]. Going slightly off-topic, I looked at how a couple of his suggestions applied to blogs [see: communication is critical and it's OK to make mistakes]. These emphasised blogs' positive (they are autonomous) and negative (mistakes may be reinforced) attributes. |
| Online silence and lurking: | I do recognise the difference between lurking and failing to make online contributions - and I acknowledge it is a conceptual leap to bundle the 2 together. However I felt I needed to know firstly why people lurked online and secondly if lurking was not an opting-out but a deliberate choice? |
| next: blogging & lurking |
| blog references: | no-one to play with |
| discussion board case study | |
| online non-participation | |
| online silence paper points | |
| online silence | |
| communication is critical | |
| it's OK to make mistakes |