Writing Classes in the Virtual Age

He Said, She Said: Exploring Identity and Community in an Online Learning Environment
By Zach Waggoner

As the number of distance education courses continues to increase each year, so too do the pedagogical concerns about how online learning affects notions of identity and community. Do online courses provide a forum in which all are welcome to participate, or do they instead reinscribe existing ideological boundaries? What determines membership in a discourse community, and how does a community help or hinder the creation of individual identity? In an attempt to illuminate the problematic nature of these issues, this paper examines the communication that took place in a graduate online seminar during the fall of 2001, Writing in the Virtual Age (WVA). By analyzing the discourse produced throughout the course of the semester, I hope to determine how the members of the class formed a community, and how their individual perceptions of this communal identity impacted their level of satisfaction with the course as a whole. Nancy Allen identifies one major concern for students in online courses, and it is one that drives the interests of this paper. In her essay "Gaining Electronic Literacy: Workplace Simulations in the Classroom," Allen identifies what can be a major barrier for those who are entering an electronic discourse community for the first time: negotiating the conventions that exist for and are created by that community. Allen is primarily discussing established electronic mail lists, but I believe the notion of community (and the conventions established by the community) is just as important when examining students' levels of satisfaction in online courses.

What exactly constitutes a community, and what allows students to feel like they belong to one when taking an online course? Why is it that some students experience this communal feeling in distance education and others don't? I will examine the WVA class discourse in an attempt to provide some answers to these questions. However, central to this discussion is the concept of identity: how do we form identities for ourselves, whether in virtual space or not? To help answer this question, I turn to Kenneth Burke's explanation of the principle of identification. For Burke, identification is formed both by what one is and what one is not: "In being identified with B, A is 'substantially one with a person other than himself. Yet at the same time he remains unique, an individual locus of motives. Thus he is both joined and separate, at once a distinct substance and consubstantial with another" (21). In this Burkean sense, when we identify the similarities we have with others, we are experiencing merger. When we identify the ways that others are not like us, we experience division. Both terms, merger and division, contribute to the creation of our identities.

Identification [top]

With these Burkean terms providing the focus, did the WVA graduate course provide students with the opportunity to experience a strong sense of identification with the other members of the community (the teacher and their virtual classmates)? Marcy Bauman, in her essay "Online Learning Communities," identifies five guidelines for teachers to follow to help create communities in online classes: communicate frequently with the class, make as much interaction public as possible, create space for non-classroom-related interaction, understand the limitations and strengths of the technology being used in terms of fostering interaction, and ask questions often of your students in the forum established for class interaction. Did the WVA environment meet these five guidelines, thus providing an appropriate forum in which the class community could grow?

An examination of the course content suggests that almost all of the guidelines Bauman advocates were met. The teacher, Dr. Webb communicated frequently with members of the class not only during the once-a-week asynchronous discussions but also throughout the rest of the week via Email as well. She encouraged students to post questions relevant to the course to the class WebBoard site, thus making the interactions public. Dr. Webb asked for continual feedback about the course in this forum as well over the course of the semester, attempting to find out what problems students were having with the course. The synchronous chat feature of the class Blackboard site allowed small groups of students to meet and talk in a less formal atmosphere if they wished. To be fair, members of the class were forced to discover some of the limitations and strengths of the technology as the semester progressed: there were nuances of both Blackboard and WebBoard that required a learning curve for many members of the course. Theoretically, though, the WVA online course provided all the merger ingredients necessary to allow for an online community to flourish.

Community [top]

However, not all members of the class had a positive communal experience in the WVA course. Of the eighteen students who originally registered for the course, nine of those dropped out over the course of the semester. Those students who remained in the class experienced widely different levels of satisfaction with the course. Not coincidentally, these remaining students also had different answers as to whether or not a real community was formed in the class. Of course, the word "community" is a slippery term at best; numerous definitions exist. An examination of some of the competing definitions is in order to attempt to discover which ones seem most applicable to the members of the WVA environment. If members of the WVA class had different notions of what being part of a "community" meant, then this might explain why some students were satisfied with the course, and others were not. In Burkean terms, the lenses through which one looks limit the way the world can be seen. What definitions of "community" informed students' attitudes in the WVA course? With the assumption that virtual communities can be studied in ways similar to non-virtual ones providing the lens, it seems that most definitions of "community" manage to fit into notions of Burkean identification quite well. Many allow for both merger and division. For John Perry Barlow, several criteria are necessary to establish a community. First, there needs to be suitable diversity among the members of the group. This diversity can and should take many forms: age, gender, class, and so on. Barlow also identifies two other elements as "essential to the formation and preservation of real community: an absence of alternatives and a sense of genuine adversity, generally shared" (167).

When considering Barlow's definition of community, the WVA class did in fact generally meet these criteria. The nine students who completed the course consisted of six women and three men, covering a wide range of ages and professional interests. In the sense that all members of the class were governed by the same class procedures, reading assignments, etc., it could easily be argued that to be a member of this community did mean an absence of alternatives, in the same way that any class limits in some way the possibilities for what a student who is enrolled in that class can and cannot do. It is in this manner that all the students shared the same adversity as well: following the "rules" laid out by the instructor and completing all the assignments in order to pass the course. The WVA class was a community in Barlow's definition of the word. Despite the fact that the WVA class met these general criteria for community, not all the members of the class felt this connection. Of the nine students who finished the course, at least three expressed overt dissatisfaction with some aspect of the class community either during the course or in post-course Email interviews. What features of this online course kept all members of the class from having a positive communal experience?

An examination of the WVA WebBoard transcripts helps to answer this question in large part. The WVA course covered sixteen weeks, meeting once a week. All of the weekly meetings/discussions took place asynchronously in WebBoard with four exceptions: two synchronous discussions in Blackboard (weeks four and fourteen) and two face-to-face class meetings (weeks five and sixteen). Thus, the majority of the communication in the course took place via WebBoard: over 1100 messages were posted there throughout the course of the semester. As Teryl discusses in her paper "Getting On ," one major frustration encountered by students in the course was related to technological access/usage. Students accessed the WVA course from a variety of locations: on the university's main campus, in either labs or offices, or from remote home terminals. This flexibility, one of online education's greatest strengths, can unfortunately be a weakness as well. The conversations produced by members of the WVA seminar illustrate this point. In week two, Kate (logging into the university's WebBoard site from home) complains, "our connection is really slow tonight" (20). Nettie replies: "Yes, I keep having problems with the server kicking me off, so I am having first-hand experience at one of the weaknesses of online learning…" (20). Anne goes even farther in her complaints: "Stuck and frustrated is hardly what I'm feeling. I now know supreme frustration. I had several messages typed and couldn't post them. Have been booted off at least 10 times, and have not been able to get back on more times than I can mention" (1). Later, in week six, Kate again complains of access problems, as she posts her first message of the night after one-third of the allotted time for discussion has already gone by: "For whatever reason, it has taken me this long tonight to get a response to work (If this one does)" (25). Kate experienced consistent difficulty logging into and posting to the course WebBoard site from her home computer over the first six weeks of the course. Members of the class community who were accessing the course site from terminals on the university campus experienced very little difficulty interfacing and posting messages. Kate ended up dropping the course after the sixth week; it is likely that her frustration over the technological limitations she experienced played a significant role in her decision to withdraw from the WVA community.

Connection [top]

Of course, not everyone who accessed the course from home computers experienced this high a level of frustration. Nettie was also working at home, and despite the difficulties mentioned above, she had an overall positive experience accessing remotely: "I save time from [not] having to drive to school or sit in class for three hours" (week six, 15). Here, the temporal flexibility outweighed the nagging technological issues. Inevitably, as more and more courses move online, comparisons are made between distance education and traditional face-to-face classes. These comparisons are often counter-productive, as they often assume that online learning techniques need mirror those of traditional classrooms. Several students in the WVA seminar seemed to embrace this notion, which led to a lower level of satisfaction with the course proceedings as a whole. Part of the course discussion that took place during week six represents this clearly:

Anne: Usually I get a chance to listen in a class, and that in itself is instructive. I get other people's points of view. Here I get to "write" which is more work. And I'm constantly reading up and down this thread, hoping I'm not missing what is going on "up there." Also I have a lot of reading to do, which is really in isolation.

Kate: I agree. I think in the f2f class and conversation we are actively evolving and forming our position as we interact. I don't think that occurs on the web to the same degree. There is more emphasis on being "heard" and that is impacted by the need to be heard enough times to assure credit.

Derek: I agree with you! For someone like myself who is sort of still shopping for a thesis director, it is very difficult to get a feel for an instructor's personality in an online course. Also, the only basis that an instructor has upon which to judge the merits of a student is the written assignments and the posted comments, which may not measure up to what is achieved in a f2f course because of technology problems or textual misunderstandings that could be easily remedied in person.

Nettie: I have to go with Anne on this. Although I like using the computer and being at home, etc., I really do miss the f2f aspects. For example, a lot of interesting dialogue has taken place tonight, and I want to talk a lot more about it and question particular people. But, there is absolutely no time without keeping us all back on the first topic. In a classroom, I think a lot more would be discussed because we can talk a lot faster than we could type.

Anne: Perhaps a hybrid course would be better for some of us…me, I think. I use computers all the time in my high school classroom, but they supplement the teaching I provide, not replace it. (24-25, 2-3)

These students clearly have preconceived notions about what teaching and learning should be like, and their models are all based on traditional classroom experiences. So many aspects of online learning are unlike face-to-face learning; to expect these two distinctly different environments to operate in the same manner is to invite disappointment in the one that is not the norm, which in this case is distance education. Aside from the technological aspects, what other factors forced division between individuals and the larger WVA community? Additional notions of community to the ones already discussed may help to answer this question. Jan Fernback defines a community as "a bounded territory of sorts (whether physical or ideological)…it can also refer to a sense of common character, identity, or interests. The term encompasses both material and symbolic dimensions" (39). Shawn Wilbur identifies the key ingredients of community development as being "communication and feeling" (7). Finally, and perhaps most significantly, Derek Foster stresses how closely linked ideas about community are to self-identity: "Community is built by a sufficient flow of we-relevant information. The 'we' or the collective identity is structured around others who are seen as similar to 'me.' In this sense community is not fully realized without a conception of self…a person is a personality because he belongs to a community" (25). What aspects of the WVA discourse prevented certain individuals from feeling as if they fully belonged to the larger community?

Division [top]

One variable that helped cause division in the WVA community was silence. In the face-to-face class meeting during week five of the semester, Matilda announced that no one ever responded directly to any of her WebBoard postings. As a result of this perception, she felt alienated and not fully like a member of the WVA community. An examination of the course text over the first four weeks helps explain how this happened. The following message is typical of Matilda's WebBoard postings:

Classmates: I felt moved by Susan's earlier comments on "too much information" and how Levinson suggests that people dislike/fear technological advancements (for instance, that children may be corrupted). I don't fear technological advancements. I admit that I am concerned (a much different word than fear) about ethics and technology at times (i.e. cloning). But, my point here is that we are inundated with information coming from all different directions - coming from all sorts of technology. There are only 24 hours in a day. Quite frankly, I often wonder what to watch, read, listen to and what to believe. Too many advertisements - too much consumerism. In the past, such as in the history Levinson suggest, there seemed to be a lot less information to process and prioritize. My comments relate to the purposes of our discussion and this class because we, as educators and students - and humans - must sift through lots of information. (Week 3, 12)

This posting, while intelligent and insightful, is quite long and complex; it's hard to know how to respond. Even though the course WebBoard discussions were asynchronous, members of the class were still posting at the same time, thus creating a sense of urgency. To respond to Matilda's post would simply require more time than the other members of the class felt like they could spare. Many of Matilda's messages were like this, which no doubt contributed to the lack of responses she received in the first portion of the course. To be fair though, Matilda did ask some specific questions that she never received answers to. In week two, she wrote: "Cindy, I am interested in knowing if you think we should not borrow from traditional classrooms" (17). Cindy never replied to this inquiry specifically. In week three, Matilda asked of the class, "What do we think of the 'ubiquity of noise' or 'distortions' as Levinson terms it? He suggests, 'noise does not usually deform media beyond practical value and benefit to the world.' What do we think of the noise that is created from the 'liberation of text from its fixed position on printed pages?'" (27). Again, no one replied to Matilda's questions. Perhaps her questions were again too difficult given the perceived time constraints of the discussion; it's hard to know for sure. Nevertheless, the silence that Matilda encountered in the WVA seminar kept her from truly feeling a sense of community with her virtual classmates.

Other students felt like outsiders for other reasons. Almost all of the students in WVA were connected in some way to education, either as teachers in the community or as students/teachers in the university itself. As a result, many of the course discussions gravitated towards teaching aspects. Members of the course who had taken other career paths were acutely aware of their "otherness," as this posting from Levi during the sixth week demonstrates: "As the only (I think) person here specializing in a 'hard' subject, I agree wholeheartedly. Even in computer science and engineering, too much emphasis is placed on learning the right answer instead of learning to create new answers" (26). Whether accurate or not, Levi perceived a distinct division between himself and his classmates. Levi dropped the course after the sixth week. Matilda's and Levi's experiences can be partly explained by what Donnalee Rubin refers to as "muted group theory." This theory, first coined by Ardener & Ardener in 1975, examines the relationship between communication and power: "In a society where groups of people live in uneven power structures, the dominant group controls language and norms for its use. Members of the muted group have trouble articulating their experience as there are no terms for it in the language of the dominant group. And when members of the muted group do attempt the dominant language, some element of meaning is inevitably lost" (11). In a sense, both Levi and Matilda's experiences in the WVA community were muted, albeit for different reasons. Rubin applies muted group theory to gendered discourses, arguing that women often represent the muted group in a given community. Did the WVA community follow this pattern? Were any other factors responsible for the creation of non-gendered muted groups?

An analysis of the 1139 messages produced by members of the class in the WebBoard form suggests that gender did not directly contribute to the creation of a muted group in this community. The three men who finished the class (Charlie, Pete, and Derek) accounted for 30 % of the WVA community (ten total members, including the female instructor). However, these three produced only 27.5 % of the discourse in the class. Although Charlie contributed 11.8 % of the messages, the most of any of the students in the class, Derek contributed only 6.5 %, the second fewest. Tricia, the instructor, posted the most, 20.4 % of the total number. Perhaps this fact, coupled with the large female population of the community, prevented stereotypically male discursive patterns from dominating the list.

Anne, in an Email interview conducted after the class was over, identified one aspect that may have lead to the formation of a muted group. When asked if she felt that a communal identity had been formed in the class, Anne responded, "I think the only identity was that formed by those students who already knew each other before that class. Their continual references made me feel like an outsider" (2). Several members of the class did in fact have pre-established friendships with each other prior to the start of the course: five of the nine (Charlie, Pete, Nettie, Cindy, and Sandi) were English teaching assistants at the university, seeing each other regularly on campus. This type of interaction allows for a high level of familiarity that is difficult to attain from simply having class with someone, as was the case for a few of the other students in the course. Also, small groups were formed in the WVA seminar; each group held weekly individual discussions over whatever topics were relevant at the time. The students were allowed to form their own groups of three, and predictably, those students were already knew each other banded together. Charlie, Cindy and Sandi formed one group. Pete and Nettie accepted newcomer Derek into their group, leaving Anne, Matilda and Susan to form a group by default.

It might be expected that these groups and friends would converse primarily with each other during class discussions, but statistically that was not the case. Only 10.9 % of all the WebBoard postings were responses to "friends" or group members; 20.1 % of the responses were to "others" outside of the established groups and pre-established friendships. The majority of the postings, 68.7 %, were either direct responses to questions asked by the instructor or were comments addressed to the class as a whole. Why then did Anne perceive this very clear sense of a community that she was not a part of? What "continual references" was she referring to? A closer examination of the course transcripts suggests that perhaps the key element that prevented Anne from feeling merger with other members of the class was humor. The group of teaching assistants continually teased each other throughout the semester:

Course Transcripts [top]

Week three

Pete: I have no idea who brought the Internet to the public. Was it [Al] Gore? Doh!

Charlie: Petie, I was led to believe you in fact invented the internet out of your basement apartment. Is this not true? ;)

Pete: Thanks for blowing my cover, Charlie! I was told I could make a fortune out of people criticizing movies and trading pornographic pictures back and forth. So far, I haven't seen a dime! (3)

Week nine

Pete: I showed four examples from films - when one of our TA leaders came into evaluate me, she ripped on the fact that I used these materials without express permission! How do you effectively teach without visual aids???

Nettie: Gee, let me guess who that was (initials XX)! I've discovered that that particular person isn't as clear on copyright as she likes to believe. Could you get me copies of some of that stuff to use in my class next week? You can leave it on my desk if you don't mind…

Charlie: From now on, when copying material, I'll just shout out "Fair use! Leave me alone!" That should do the trick. ;)

Nettie: And I'll retain the right to look at you like you're a freak. ;P (22,25)

Week eleven

Cindy: The dominant discourse has set visual expectations of who a professor is. Middle-aged, masculine, wears tweed, glasses, balding perhaps, absent-minded, etc…

Charlie: Okay, Cindy. I know you had a picture of me in your head when you listed these characteristics. I don't appreciate that. ;) (7)

These playful barbs and references to people and situations outside of the WVA community could and did make other members of that community feel like outsiders. When Anne vocalized her feelings to the community about this topic in week thirteen, the "insiders" responded quickly:

Anne: I have found this electronic discourse community difficult. A number of you know each other from other places and that is fairly obvious. Do you recall Matilda saying at our f2f meeting that no one spoke to her? Well, that is me online. So, yes I do understand electronic discourse difficulty.

Pete: That's surprising, Anne. I seem to recall responding to you and referencing your questions/comments quite a few times in the past - by name, even. I suppose it's all a matter of perspective, huh?

Nettie: That's interesting that you feel that way. Not many people respond directly to me, either, but I guess I look at it differently. I always just took every response as if it was to me because it is posted here in our class and I'm expected to read it. Thus, it is made to me.

Charlie: What is interesting for me is, regarding the people I know offline, I tend to respond to them here on our list based on how frequently I se them offline. Pete and I don't see each other physically much anymore (that sounds loaded), so I keep in touch with him by responding directly to him here. Same type of thing with Nettie. Cindy and Sandi I do see regularly, and thus find myself not responding to them as much here. Intriguing.

Pete: The magic is gone, Charlie. (4-5, 10-11)

In this exchange, Pete, Nettie, and Charlie not only challenge the validity of Anne's statement, suggesting that she is looking at the situation from the wrong "perspective," but also continue with their muting behavior; Pete and Charlie proceed to tease each other as they had all semester. Anne completed the course, but expressed dissatisfaction with the experience in her post-course Email interview. Certainly, her perceived lack of acceptance into the larger WVA community kept Anne from experiencing the merger aspect of identification in the course; she seemed to only experience division.

Did those students who ended up dropping the WVA seminar do so as a result of their lack of identity in the course's online community? It's impossible to say for sure. Certainly, technological problems of access and literacy played a role for some, as did issues unrelated to the course such as work commitments and family commitments. However, after investigating the discourse produced by the members of the class, it seems likely that the notion of self-identity in the context of the established community contributed in large part to how satisfied students were with their experiences in the Writing in the Virtual Age seminar. Some of the difficulties stemmed from the pre-established communities embedded within the larger online community. Perhaps this online community would have benefited from having all the students be complete strangers to one another at the start of the semester; perhaps not. At any rate, the role of communal identity in distance education is an important one. What types of discursive patterns foster communal merger, and what types invite division? Much more analysis is needed to determine exactly how and why online courses either succeed or fail in fostering "real" notions of community.

Works Cited [top]

Allen, Nancy. "Gaining Electronic Literacy: Workplace Simulations in the Classroom." Electronic Literacies in the Workplace: Technologies of Writing. Eds. Patricia Sullivan and Jennie Dautermann. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1996.

Anne. "Virtual Age Writing seminar." Email to the author. 3 Apr. 2002.

Anne, Kate, Derek, and Nettie. Limits of Distance Education. 25 Sept. 2001. ASU WebBoard. 11 Feb. 2002 <http://english.asu.edu:8080/~peterson>.

Anne, Pete, Nettie, and Charlie. The Class Community. 13 Nov. 2001. ASU WebBoard. 11 Feb. 2002 <http://english.asu.edu:8080/~peterson>.

Bauman, Marcy. "Online Learning Communities." 8 Aug 2001 <http://leahi.kcc.hawaii.edu/org/tcc_conf97/pres/bauman.html>.

Barlow, John Perry. "Is There a There in Cyberspace?" Composing Cyberspace: Identity, Community and Knowledge in the Electronic Age. Ed. Richard Holeton. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998. 164-170.

Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. London: Prentice-Hall, 1950.

Cindy and Charlie. A Professor's Appearance. 30 Oct. 2001. ASU WebBoard. 11 Feb. 2002 <http://english.asu.edu:8080/~peterson>.

Fernback, Jan. "The Individual within the Collective: Virtual Ideology and the Realization of Collective Principles." Virtual Culture: Identity & Communication in Cybersociety. Ed. Steven G. Jones. London: Sage Publications, 1997. 36-54.

Foster, Derek. "Community and Identity in the Electronic Village." Internet Culture. Ed. David Porter. New York: Routledge, 1996. 23-37.

Kate. More Access Problems. 25 Sept. 2001. ASU WebBoard. 11 Feb. 2002 <http://english.asu.edu:8080/~peterson>.

Kate, Nettie, and Anne. Access Problems. 28 Aug. 2001. ASU WebBoard. 25 Apr. 2002 <http://english.asu.edu:8080/~peterson>.

Levi. Finding the Right Answer. 25 Sept. 2001. ASU WebBoard. 11 Feb. 2002 <http://english.asu.edu:8080/~peterson>.

Matilda. Teaching in Virtual Environments. 28 Aug. 2001. ASU WebBoard. 25 Apr. 2002 <http://english.asu.edu:8080/~peterson>.

Matilda. Technology Concerns. 4 Sept. 2001. ASU WebBoard. 11 Feb. 2002 <http://english.asu.edu:8080/~peterson>.

Nettie. Positive Access. 28 Aug. 2001. ASU WebBoard. 11 Feb. 2002 <http://english.asu.edu:8080/~peterson>.

Pete and Charlie. Who Invented the Internet? 4 Sept. 2001. ASU WebBoard. 11 Feb. 2002 <http://english.asu.edu:8080/~peterson>.

Pete, Nettie, Charlie. Using Copyrighted Materials. 16 Oct. 2001. ASU WebBoard. 11 Feb. 2002 <http://english.asu.edu:8080/~peterson>.

Rubin, Donnalee. Gender Influences: Reading Student Texts. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993.

Wilbur, Shawn P. "An Archaeology of Cyberspaces: Virtuality, Community, Identity." Internet Culture. Ed. David Porter. New York: Routledge, 1997. 5-22.

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