At the conclusion of the blogging portion of our class, I can
see that this medium is effective for distance education courses: they enable
students to reflect on information shared by their classmates, assist in
building that knowledge through encouragement and intertextuality, and continue
the conversation beyond the hours of the class session. In this way, blogs are
an effective community-building tool, but they must be presented with a clear purpose,
and in conjunction with synchronous media, for a true sense of belonging to
occur.
I understand a community to be a group of people united by a
common goal or interest. They inherently turn to communication and collaboration
in order to accomplish their goals and maintain their interests. Those in the
community should feel a sense of belonging, accomplished when individuals
believe they are appreciated. My definition is slightly broader than D. Randy Garrison
and Norman D. Vaughn’s definition, which focuses specifically on an “educational
community”: “a formally constituted group of individuals whose connection is
that of academic purpose and interest who work collaboratively toward intended
learning goals and outcomes” (20). The unifying idea here is collaboration in
order to achieve shared goals. Generally speaking, community is accomplished at
different moments, in different ways, by each individual; therefore, it
represents a challenge for instructors to develop, manage, and evaluate.
For many distance instructors, blogs can be an effective
community-building tool. Due to the nature of the medium, blogs afford
opportunities for reflection and elaboration: one “goal, providing thorough,
detailed reader response, is best suited to asynchronous technologies [that
allow] virtual peer reviewers to insert… ‘intertextual comments’” (Breuch 151).
I used SoundCloud to record spoken feedback, and doing so provided an
opportunity to insert “intertextual comments” that would link students to my
thoughts, but one can also provide links to other scholars/publications as well.
Scott Warnock also points out that asynchronous communication, like message
boards and blogs, “provide a complex audience: students are writing not just to
the teacher but to each other” and the wider public (70). In fact, I
recommended one of my posts to a member of the English department who isn’t in
this class.
I knew I had to eventually write this post, and because of
this knowledge, I approached the blogs as an experiment. In order to create a
community, I made sure to visit each student’s blog at least once, and I used
SoundCloud for audio comments. I initially got some great feedback on
SoundCloud. Both Catrina and Sarah began recording their thoughts, but I saw
them turn to written feedback as the weeks progressed (as did I). I can’t say
whether people felt a stronger connection to me because they heard my voice. In
fact, I came to believe that asynchronous audio communication just isn’t as
strong as synchronous audio communication, when it comes to community-building.
Text comments seem to accomplish as much as audio.
The blog was a useful tool for my own personal interaction
with the topic I had chosen. Unlike the typical annotated bibliography
assignment, blogging felt more informal and allowed me an opportunity to
discuss the fault in my assumptions, particularly in blog post 5; therefore,
when I think of the benefits of the blog assignment, I don’t immediately think
of the feedback I received from fellow students. Other moments of camaraderie
occurred in the WebEx chat function, the Adobe Connect video camera layout,
Google Hangout, and even Facebook.
The chat in WebEx afforded an opportunity for further
support as fellow scholars. When students were speaking through video/audio,
listeners would type in comments of praise, encouragement, or elaboration. It
can be intimidating to have the camera on you during class, but the chat helped
diminish those anxieties by making students feel their input was appreciated.
It also allowed students to play; several jokes emerged on the chat
(particularly in regard to leopard pants), and that opportunity to relax and
interact with each other on a non-scholarly level certainly promoted
camaraderie.
The praise and
encouragement continued in the comments on my blog. Angela wrote of our tool
review, “Fantastic collaboration among the three of you.” Mark said of an
article review, “Fascinating stuff,” while George stated, “Well done!” Each
comment I received had some level of encouragement; it was much needed and
appreciated. As Garrison and Vaughn point out, “students must feel emotionally
secure to engage in open, purposeful discourse,” and my readers gave me that
sense of security (20).
It’s a minor moment, but it stands out to me personally:
when I used the Adobe Connect camera layout to indicate that Cheri should speak
for our group, the class laughed, and I could see their laughter. As I stated
in my definition above, belonging is experienced when an individual feels
appreciated. This class is great at providing support for scholarly input, but
it also has a great sense of humor, showing appreciation for a good joke, too.
Without that camera layout, 1) I wouldn’t have been able to make that
particular joke, and 2) I wouldn’t have received that visual feedback of
laughter.
Google Hangout provided a fluid conversational experience
that allowed us to accomplish on-task conversation as well as off-task
conversation that was just as valuable for community building. We ended up
swapping teaching strategies and laughing over our common failures and anxieties
as instructors. Hashing out shared experiences provided a sense of belonging
that would have been difficult to accomplish in a medium that hindered
audio/visual communication.
As part of my experiment with this blog, I attempted to
bring Facebook and Twitter into the experience. I used the NetworkedBlogs app to
automatically post links to my blog on Facebook and Twitter as a means of
expanding my readership: it wasn’t a complete failure. I can’t say whether any
of my Twitter followers used the links, but I know at least one of my Facebook
friends checked out my blog regularly because of the links. He just never
commented because the material didn’t exactly interest him; I suppose it does
have a limited audience. The bigger community moments occurred when jokes from
the class trickled onto Facebook: the pictures of Kevin and his halo, Mark in
his astronaut helmet, and Cheri in her pirate hat. I wasn’t necessarily a
direct participant, but I was in on the joke, and that gave me a feeling of
belonging.
What limited my sense of community during the blog was time
and assessment. I struggled to keep up with the reading assignments, the
instructional tool review, and the blog posts, and I focused more on what would
translate directly into a grade than I did on reading other blogs and
commenting on them. Requiring blog comments would have motivated me to comment
more, but I don’t believe it would lead to community. Due to my observations of
WebEx chat and Google Hangout, I feel a stronger sense of community in
synchronous media. This sentiment is supported by Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch’s conclusions:
“[synchronous] activities are closely associated with speaking situations; if
instructors and students prefer this faster, interactive dynamic, synchronous
technologies would be more effective” (151). Asynchronous communication feels much
more solitary.
I think a common goal would have strengthened the
community-building aspect of this assignment. As Garrison and Vaughn point out,
students “must be able to develop the personal relationships necessary to
commit to, and pursue, intended academic goals and gain a sense of belonging to
the community” (19). I think it would have been better if, perhaps, we
initially knew the topic each student was studying; students could post their
proposal assignment as their first blog publication. We could, therefore,
choose to follow students with a shared interest, and the articles they review
could then inform our final project. Their recommendations at the end of each
blog post would also resonate more, and writers would feel their work was more
appreciated by their readers.
Approaching the assignment this way would create a “course
design that enables [students] to construct their own knowledge, together”
(qtd. in Warnock 71). And I feel it aligns with Joyce Neff and Carl Whithaus’s
impression that “the opportunity for a community of learners and for the social
construction of knowledge in a classroom is improved when students bring a
variety of expertise to the learning site” (13). As I stated earlier, community
is felt when one is appreciated. By spontaneously forming groups centered on a
sub-interest, students may feel that the knowledge they bring to their blog is
useful to others.
Blogs play a valuable role in creating a sense of community
in a distance education courses because they help ensure that the conversation
continues when the class session is over. I believe blogs are an interactive
asynchronous medium for community-building, but they must begin with a clear
purpose, and they must be coupled with synchronous communication in order to
establish any true bonds.
Works Cited:
Breuch, Lee-Ann Kastman. “Enhancing Online Collaboration:
Virtual Peer Review in the Writing Classroom.” Online
Education: Global Questions, Local Answers. Eds. Kelli Cargile Cook and
Keith Grant-Davie. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc., 2005.
Garrison, D. Randy and Norman D. Vaughn. Blended Learning
in Higher Education: Framework, Principles, and Guidelines. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 2008. Print.
Neff, Joyce Magnetto and Carl Whithaus. Writing Across
Distances & Disciplines: Research and Pedagogy in Distributed Learning.
New York: Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, 2008. Print.
Warnock, Scott. Teaching Writing Online: How and Why.
Illinois: NCTE, 2009. Print.
