Blog Community Analysis

As the influence of Vygotsky and Piaget’s emphases on social contexts for learning has grown, instructors have sought a sense of community in the classroom.  Until recently, I considered dialogue the key to this effort.  Two years ago, however, I moved to a boarding school where I live in a dorm with two other families and 35 teenage girls, eat with a couple hundred neighbors, and walk between my home, my classroom, the dining hall, the post office, and the faculty children’s playground.  Because residential faculty consciously cultivate community, I am now more intensely aware of my own definition of the phrase; I have come to understand it in terms of role-fulfillment and interaction.  In my experience, creating community entails individuals’ being themselves in a social context and finding a way for their actions, beliefs, and interests to contribute to a shared goal.  Dialogue plays a part in such a contribution, but it is not the only signifier of community.

Garrison and Vaughan point out that the “purpose of the community should determine how it is defined and developed” (17); in transferring my concept of community to the classroom, I must refigure my previous assumption that student discussions not only develop but define a sense of community, partly because my experience says I should, but also because a class’s shared goal—learning through cognitive engagement—requires more from its community than dialogue.  Garrison and Vaughan’s discussion of a community of inquiry is helpful in this reconsideration.  As I reflect (anecdotally) on classes with a sense of community, I discover that in them 1) students felt that their individual interests, strengths, and even weaknesses became known; 2) students’ shared experiences provided a common language and reference point; 3) students felt that they offered something valuable to the class, whether  insightful comments in discussion, helpful peer review, accurate notes, reliable understanding of assignments, or other assets; and 4) no matter their relationships outside of class, students developed a shared identity as a class. To foster community, we instructors can present assignments that allow students to develop and display interests and to uncover and foster their individual roles in the classroom community.
     To understand the potential of assignments of this type, I turn to my own experience as a graduate student, specifically to a blog assignment that seeks to create both of these opportunities. In it, students create blogs in which they review articles of their choice. The instructions for the blog posts do not mention reading classmates’ blogs, but the instructor provides their addresses. Blogs are a popular tool for blended and distance courses because they are free, offer the possibility of an authentic audience, allow ownership, and offer the chance for students to enact their personalities and interests. This assignment in particular qualifies as Garrison and Vaughan’s “ideal educational transaction” because the blog’s public nature and comment feature offer the possibility of “social interaction and collaboration,” which “shapes and tests meaning” so that “core concepts are constructed and assimilated in a deep and meaningful manner” (14).  Put more simply, interaction with others allows meaning-making that leads to real learning. 

Source: http://zombiepedagogy.blogspot.com/2012/06/blog-post-4.html

An informal review of comments in these blogs shows the level of community-creation through dialogue.  Many students posted comments to their classmates’ blogs, with a few students offering feedback systematically, a handful of others posting regularly but without systematic coverage, and the remaining students posting only in response to comments on their own blog or not at all.  The nature of the comments varies: some agree with or thank the blogger, some offer commentary on the content, some ask for more information, and some offer further evidence for the blogger’s position.  Few contradict the blogger.  In some cases these comments do represent community-making.  For instance, in the commentary following Mark Blaauw-Hara’s post on June 5, 2012, Eric Sentell agrees and offers further support, Angela Dadak (“amd”) suggests a next step, and Catrina Mitchum simply expresses camaraderie and thanks.  Because all three of these commenters truly interact with Blaauw-Hara (they acknowledge his position and contribute something personal or original), they likely develop a feeling of personal relationship.  It is important to note, however, that these dialogic exchanges show the potential for community-creation through dialogue; in most cases, comments are sparse, and many seem more obligatory than spontaneous.  As such, the fact that a classmate took the time to comment may do more for a sense of community than the content.

Although dialogue is only a small part of what establishes community, the blog assignment builds community in other ways.  In my understanding of community, individuals establish their own roles, which vary (i.e., skill at dialogue is not always one’s primary contribution).  In this blog assignment, blog posts help establish such identities.  For example, Angela Dadak’s focus on students for whom English is a second language helps define her role as the class’s L2 specialist whose input is especially valuable regarding these students' cultural or linguistic concerns.  Further, because the blogs allowed inquiry that was “purposeful, but flexible,” allowing students “to explore unintended paths of interest,” they help create a community of inquiry under the terms outlined by Garrison and Vaughan (15).  As such, personal relationships are not the most important signifier that a community has been created.

The comments, too, establish roles of individuals within the community.   For instance, some commenters ask questions and seek to learn from classmates, some seem obliged to offer comments as good citizens, some post only when strong reactions compel them, and some use their comments as actions in pursuit of their own learning goals. Several students often posted their responses in the form of audio recordings, and a May 30th, 2012, comment from Sarah Spangler revealed why: “Hope you don't mind another audio comment; Trina, Meghan, and I are attempting to pull together some research on audio commentary. :)”. Through such comments, Spangler and others helped establish personas as active researchers and experimenters with new technologies.
      Similarly, the comments allowed students to expand their knowledge about areas of interest. In this course, student comments on developmental composition, multi-modal composition, and other high-interest topics appeared frequently. For example, Eric Sentell reveals his own interest in trying new ways to provide feedback when he responds to Catrina Mitchum: “I studied instructor feedback for my M.A. thesis, but … focused on written response. I read a little about audio response, but I didn't consider it again until Cheri's recent presentation at ODU. She convinced me to give it a try, and your review solidifies that decision as well as offering some good ideas for *how* to do it.” As students know one another and feel known for their individual interests, I see a sense of community growing, even if no artifact proves it.
     Thus, the potential of the blog as a community-builder is twofold: to foster dialogue and to offer a flexible way for students to explore and expose their interests.  To pursue these affordances further, an instructor could consider ways to push students to engage with one another’s posts.  An increase in obligatory comments might make students feel a greater sense of audience, but required comments are unlikely to create meaningful engagement.  A better approach might be to require students to write full posts that respond to, build from, or otherwise engage with a classmate's post.  These engagement posts’ form might be less restricted than the original set.  For instance, Angela Dadak could carry out the suggestion she makes to Mark Blaauw-Hara regarding a more developed rewrite of Pensky’s article.  Or Eric Sentell could reflect on his Master’s thesis and then research audio feedback, as inspired by Catrina Mitchum’s post. Alternatively, students could choose a classmate’s article to read fully and write about, acknowledging not only the article’s content but also that of the original blog post. 

                  An instructor seeking to build community should not consider assignments in isolation.  What students do in each class venue both grows from and adds to what they do in the others. Backchannels and social networks within and outside of the course platform contribute to a sense of community. These tools establish what Garrison and Vaughan call social presence, one of the three types of presence required for a community of inquiry.  They write that “[s]tudents in a community of inquiry must feel free to express themselves openly in a risk-free manner” so that they “develop the personal relationships necessary to commit to, and pursue, intended academic goals and gain a sense of belonging to the community” (19).   In addition to these, lesson planning that includes group work and other student-driven activities create a situation in which “[p]articipant knowledge and expertise is shared and developed through discourse and collaborative activities” (Garrison and Vaughan 17)  so that "academic interests…give purpose and shape to the inquiry process” (17-18).  As we design course assignments and choose course tools, we must not be so dazzled by the idea of community that we fail to put learning goals first; pursuit of a common goal is the lynchpin of community.

                  Jean-Luc Nancy emphasizes exposure of our “being-in-common” as a defining characteristic of community (Qtd in Amy 111), and Garrison and Vaughan insist that “interaction is essential for both a community of inquiry and the higher educational experience” (16).  In distance learning, we should find ways to expose students’ individual experiences of a course so that others can encounter them.  That interaction—not strictly dialogue resulting from it—develops community. 

Eric Sentell.  Weblog comment. Teaching Writing From a Distance.  Twfdsu12.blogspot.com, 11, June 2012. Web.  16 June 2012.

Garrison, D. Randy and Norman D. Vaughan. Blended Learning in Higher Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008.

Sarah. Weblog comment. Zombie Pedagogy. ZombiePedagogy.blogspot.com, 30 May 2012. Web.

9 June 2012.

Weblog comments. Zombie Pedagogy. ZombiePedagogy.blogspot.com, 5 June 2012. Web.

9 June 2012.

Kiefer's "Complexity, Class Dynamics, and Distance Learning"

Kiefer, Kate. “Complexity, Class Dynamics, and Distance Learning.” Computers and Composition 23.1 (2006): 125–38

Having taught anomalously dysfunctional groups of students from time to time, both face-to-face and online, Kiefer wants to understand what causes the widely varying dynamics we see between one (writing) class and another taught by the same instructor.  For answers, she turns to complexity theory, which she uses not only for insight but also for perspective on the teacher’s self-concept.  Complexity theory applies to a system that is complex and adaptive.  A complex system is one that cannot be explained by cataloging its parts and their functions (as a complicated system might be).  An adaptive system is one that changes in response to external or internal stimuli.  The key to a complex system is that it is neither stable nor predictable, but that its functioning does follow some (possibly invisible) logic from which patterns emerge.  Kiefer uses traffic patterns as an example; a wreck or malfunctioning traffic light might not be predictable, but once the complex system adapted to the event, a new pattern would emerge, and that pattern would be caused by many individual decisions (e.g., “I’ll take the surface road instead,” “I’ll change the order of my errands.”).  Key to a complex system is the fact that no individual can maintain control; its behavior is determined by many separate actions or decisions.

Kiefer argues that class dynamics represent a complex system because many individual decisions and efforts make for a pattern of behavior that cannot be predicted but is nonetheless recognizable.  She uses many anecdotes from her teaching career as examples, with an informal case study of one online class offering the greatest insights for the distance instructor.  Among the student behaviors the Kiefer outlines as influencers of the complex system are resistance to course activities, banding together of like-minded students, early posting in message boards, and substantive feedback in message boards.  While as a researcher she focuses on observations of these behaviors and recognition of their relevance to complexity theory, her article brings to mind decisions a practitioner might make.  For instance, students who posted early in the window for message board posts got significantly more feedback and engagement from classmates, which likely provided motivation to engage even more fully in the class, while late posters got little feedback and continued to be minimally engaged; it seems that Warnock’s suggestion of using a two-stage message board assignment might guide more students to have an experience similar to Kiefer’s early posters and therefore allow the instructor to influence the complex system even though she cannot control it. 

Similarly, modeling has potential to influence individual decisions and, therefore, class dynamics.  Kiefer describes the change that occurs when students post non-substantive comments in a message board, then others post substantive comments—comments posted thereafter tended to be more substantive.  Kiefer suggests using teacher feedback to model appropriate interactions, but there may be other ways to influence student-student interactions, such as directing students to a particularly substantive post and discussing its salient features (after obtaining the poster’s permission).  In short, complexity theory brings to light ways that  instructors can find “potential opportunities to influence the emergent dynamic of a class” (137), whether face-to-face or online.

Instructional Tool Review

I have conducted an instructional tool review of the web tools created for faculty at my school.  Below you will find a video presentation and an article on this topic.

Note: This blog post was created in response to an assignment in a graduate course.  While I am an employee of Darlington School, my work here should not be considered an official representation of Darlington policies, practices, or philosophy.

Instructional Tool Review: Darlington School’s Faculty/Staff Pages

When I arrived at Darlington School, the college-preparatory day and boarding school at which I teach, I was taught and required to use functions of our website that help the school run more smoothly.  Unlike many such systems, this one was developed by Darlington staff in response to the school’s specific needs. Garrison and Vaughan discuss the importance of a framework to connect practice to theory, lest practitioners charge forward blindly, not understanding why some efforts succeed and others fail.  Darlington’s development of its own learning management system, while not planned carefully ahead of time, has grown organically from a community of inquiry comprised of IT staff, faculty, and administrators.  When faced with a choice between adopting tools created by others based on presumed needs and developing their own tools based on known needs, the Darlington staff have chosen the latter because their (probably unrecognized) framework allowed them to connect practice to theory.

As I have progressed in my own pedagogy and learned more about distance and blended learning, I have begun thinking of the tools in our system as avenues for instruction, not management alone.  As such, our system has moved me toward blended learning, which Garrison and Vaughan define as “a thoughtful fusion of face-to-face and online learning experiences” (5). Here, I will offer an overview of the system as well as reflect on ways to reap fuller benefits of distance learning through it.

In the management system, the most important features appear in the menu on the left-hand side.  The first of these is the faculty/staff home page.  This page includes links to administrative tools, forms, and information, from work order requesters to the dorm duty calendar to personal leave forms.  Of interest among these is the IT Support Request tool, which allows users to submit a request categorized by type (laptop, software, printer, instruction need, and so on), and then sends an email to the IT staff member who specializes in that area.  The IT department seeks to address and close requests quickly, and they are evaluated based on their problem resolution.  Thankfully, Darlington’s IT staff, perhaps because several of them are dedicated to education as much as to their technical work, actually does work with teachers in the way Brabazon describes as rare at best.

The next three features in the menu to the left are a group email function, a reports page, and access to student files.  The purpose of the first is obvious.  The latter two offer extensive access to data; this resource is very rich but not directly relevant to the use of the system for instruction. 

The remaining tools in the menu relate to courses.  First, the gradebook offers the same functions as would appear in many course management systems, with an important addition: a tool that allows teachers to create a submission form linked to a specific assignment.  For instance, in English 1, I might create a new assignment titled “Writer’s Memo,” then create an online submission form for it, including a due date.  When students in that class checked their assignment pages, they would see a link reading “English 1: Writer’s Memo” that would take them to the submission form.  They could type in a text box or attached a file to submit their work, which I could then access, comment on in my own text box or attached file, and assign a score, all from the same page within the gradebook. The feedback function allows the gradebook to be used as an instructional tool in addition to a performance record, since students can monitor patterns in feedback or easily refer to feedback on a previous essay as they prepare to write the next one.

As in other LMSs, the site offers forums. The current view allows users to read the entire conversation growing from a post, which might be cumbersome in very long discussion with many offshoots (a rare occurrence in most classes).  Because some teachers do not prefer this view, next year IT will offer options for viewing threads.  Forums were the first true instructional tool to be added to the Darlington system, and my first to use, as well.  In the past, my forum prompts have not sufficiently encouraged expression and interaction, essentially inviting (or commanding) students to perform. I plan to incorporate some of Scott Warnock’s suggestions to better use this tool for informal writing and feedback.  I am especially interested in his suggestions regarding progressive prompts and peer review.

The following three functions, comments, attendance, and coach class, operate primarily as ways to communicate with administrators and parents and therefore offer less than other tools in the way of instruction.

Finally, the assignments and links pages offer the most untapped potential as instructional tools.  Because most secondary classes meet daily, teachers rarely distribute a complete assignment calendar at the beginning of the term; instead, they distribute plans weekly or daily, often writing them on the white board for students to record in their own planners.  At Darlington, the online assignment page allows teachers to post daily plans and homework assignments on students’ home pages, eliminating the need for transcription and the excuses that come with it.  Once posted, the assignments roll over from year to year, allowing teachers to tweak their plans without having to retype them. Further, teachers can add links to sites on the web or files placed on a special drive in our network, a function I will discuss more below. 

Thus far, I have used the assignment page as a communication vehicle. The tool allows me to ensure that, despite my forgetfulness about in-class announcements, students know what work is expected of them every day.  I find that I sometimes write more on my assignment pages than other teachers; I give advice, remind students of an assignment’s goal, or explain complex requirements.  Communicating small goals and establishing my teaching persona, the assignment page acts as an instructional tool that reaches every student and can be adjusted quickly in response to student needs. Because students check their assignment pages regularly (unlike email), the page can be used to briefly transmit information not only about expected work, but also about rationale and even theory.  The key word here, however, is “transmit”: the assignment page is useful to make sure that students receive helpful information, but it does not act as an open line of two-way communication; students must still use email or chat for that.

The function that takes the assignment page beyond these limits as an instructional tool is the ability to link and organize resources.  Like the assignment page itself, I primarily use the link function for the administrative task of distribution, and I have done so for two reasons: if the resource is available only digitally (such as a website), and if I have failed to distribute the document in hard copy during class.  In considering my use of the link function, I notice several patterns.  First, I often use digital tools to remediate my own weaknesses, such as a poor memory and lack of time.  Second, the linking of resources to the assignment page hints at this tool’s potential as an instructional tool. 

When adding links to the assignment page, the user can (but is not required to) create custom categories into which to place them (such as readings, assignments, support websites, and so on).  These links and categories appear not only on the specific days on the assignment page, but also on the links page, with the categories as headings for groups of links. Although the links page’s performance has been spotty in the past, next year it will be revised and expanded.  Instead of growing form the assignment page, it will be a repository that the teacher can organize as desired, linking resources to specific days in the assignment page or not, as appropriate.

In a distance course in writing, which may not rely on a content-heavy text, a combination of the assignment page and the more robust links page could operate as a custom textbook creator.  For instance, I could organize my course into units, and then use those units as categories for links to documents, videos, and sites (both on the web and of my own creation), so that my resource page becomes a clickable table of contents.  Further, one link can be placed in multiple categories, creating an alternate index in addition to that table of contents.  For instance, a link to Diana Hacker’s Research and Documentation website might be categorized into “Unit 5: Documenting Sources” but also into the category “Research Resources,” making it appear twice on the resource page, as both an informational site in unit 5 and as a resource to be used on any research project. Hantula and Pawlowicz discuss the book as a technology that allowed greater distance between the instructor-author and his student-readers, but of course in most cases today, the author and the instructor often combine (or compete) to teach a course; this method of creating a custom resources page may actually return to an earlier conception of a single author-instructor.

The beauty of working with an IT department who creates our system in-house is that some of these possibilities have occurred to me, and I’ve then communicated them to IT, while others have grown from the IT staff’s own ideas, and still others, like the digital textbook idea above, have developed during conversations between the two of us.  Thus, what began as a suite of administrative tools has expanded to include many true instructional tools that respond to institutional needs and goals.  Hantula and Pawlowicz, like many others, imply that the goal of technological teaching tools is to replicate the richness of face-to-face instruction, but the varied and synergistic nature of the functions in Darlington’s system implies that the tools can create a richness whose nature is distinct from and in addition to that of face-to-face teaching.

Anderson's "The Low Bridge to High Benefits: Entry-Level Multimedia, Literacies, and Motivation"

Anderson, Daniel. "The Low Bridge to High Benefits: Entry-Level Multimedia, Literacies, and Motivation." Computers and Composition 25 (2008): 40-60.

In the writing classroom, Anderson advocates multimodal composing using "entry-level technologies with simplified interfaces, limited feature sets, and broad availability” because, he argues, they “can ease the way towards innovation" (43).  He acknowledges that foregrounding a particular technology seems to counter good pedagogy, but “putting technology first promotes opportunities for play and experimentation that can lead to new learning” (43), and such experimentation “can facilitate a sense of creativity that can lead to motivation” (44).  In environment where students experiment, play, and become creative through the use of an easy-to-learn technological tool, the classroom becomes a construction site or studio space.  For students, this can mean a flow-like experience as they compose.  For teachers, it “serves as a catalyst…to reconceptualize pedagogies—technical things shed new light on existing paradigms and open possibilities for new methodologies” (42).  This causal relationship between technology, motivation, and innovative pedagogy also acts as the connection to distance learning.  While Anderson speaks specifically about entry-level composing technologies, his claim that simple tech tools can foster creativity as we work to achieve goals within constraints may also apply to some of the simplest technologies of distance education, such as message boards, blogs, or social bookmarking.

Anderson goes beyond these immediate benefits of using entry-level technologies; he quotes Morrow and Tracey as he argues that making choices about modes and composing tasks "’offers students responsibility, and empowers them with control over the situation’” (45).  In turn, this agency makes students able and more likely to engage in "critical, civic participation,” which helps achieve a major goal of education—for students to be “’social critics rather than indoctrinated consumers of material culture,'" as Selber puts it (45).  Thus, Anderson draws a causal chain from using entry-level technology for multimodal composing to motivation to agency to social criticism.

Finally, Anderson offers several examples of multimedia projects using accessible software, including an iTunes playlist in response to a text or topic, a PhotoPlus collage capturing content and themes of a text, and a MovieMaker video using rhetorical appeals.  For each one, he offers his own students’ commentary on their experiences of creativity and motivation.

The use of simple software (especially if it is also free and web-based) has obvious appeal for distance educators whose students may have varying access to advanced software.  If an institution does not offer extensive technical support to distance students, an instructor could consider finding or making a series of video tutorials, which would be sufficient to teach a limited feature set.  If the teacher made such videos herself, she could also model the language of composition and rhetoric and the most relevant features as she demonstrated the functions and possibilities of the software. 

Because distance education already relies heavily on students’ motivation, Anderson’s suggestions to build and then ignite student agency may be a good fit for teaching writing from a distance, not simply because it is practical but because it can help achieve our goals of helping students apply critical lenses to the world around them, in and outside of the academy.

Polman's "Dialogic Activity Structures for Project-Based Learning Environments"

Polman, Joseph L. "Dialogic Activity Structures for Project-Based Learning Environments." Cognition and Instruction 22.4 (2004): 431-66.

Examining a project-based learning unit, Polman discovers activity structures at two time scales.  The larger activity structure uses milestone activities: students develop several smaller products and then revise and combine them to produce the final artifact of the project.  In this case, a science teacher’s project completion process included steps such as a research proposal, data collection, and analysis, which pushed students to negotiate scientists’ tasks and provided structure for students’ progress toward their end goal.

The second activity structure, occurring many times each class meeting, is the repetition of several dialogic structures that are less common in traditional classrooms: 1) action negotiation dialogue, in which student and teacher negotiate the next action that should be taken; 2) student questioning dialogue, in which the student initiates the interaction with a question and the teacher responds; and 3) action feedback dialogue, in which the student's action or report of an action evokes feedback from the teacher.  Unlike initiation-reply-evaluation sequences (teacher asks question with an expected answer; students reply with proposed answers; teacher determines correctness of answer), which is good for the transmission model of learning, these student-initiated dialogic structures allow “a teacher to provide active guidance in the practices and norms of the discipline under study…while demanding and enabling students to remain learners with agency rather than passive receptacles”  (462). 

Because both of these structures support Vygotsgy's "general genetic law" that "learners first participate socially in the use of cultural tools and practices and then individually appropriate or 'take up' the tools" (435), it is pedagogically sound to use them in distance learning.  Because of the larger time scale, the first activity structure seems easy to transfer to a distance format, perhaps having students use a blog to present the pieces one at a time and in order, helping them see how the parts will work together when they are revised and combined to form a final product. But creating environments that evoke the individual, informal dialogic interactions is a challenge at a distance.  The key characteristic of these structures is student initiation—students discover through their project work that they need information or guidance, or their independent action shows the teacher that need.  Thus, one step is simply to establish and maintain lines for communication that not only are open but that students perceive as open.  Communicating regularly through individual email may be one way to open communication lines.  Maintaining a presence in students’ online communities (as appropriate) and holding office hours during which the instructor is not only available by phone but logged in to communication programs such as Skype may also help students perceive the instructor as easily accessible.  While these are good steps, to encourage the dialogic activity structures presented here, instructors may need to recreate the classroom environment in which students work independently while the teacher is immediately present and available for spontaneous, student-initiated dialogues. Using tools such as Google Docs, which would allow groups to work together while the instructor monitors them all at once, might allow students to initiate dialogue through the comment or chat features.  Individual work sessions with webcams, mikes, and chat turned on would also allow quick, student-initiated dialogues.  Whether with these tools or others, student empowerment is necessary for project-based learning.