Teachers’ Presence  |  November 18, 2009  

Having studied at an online university for the past couple years and now in a class where e-learning is a main theme, I'm becoming increasingly familiar with the challenges of engendering successful learning via online mechanisms. e-Learning can take many forms, but it seems to often rely heavily on peer and teacher interaction via discussion boards/forums. 

Crucial to the success of such online interaction, I believe, are students projecting identity and presence. Researchers Shea and Bidjerano found that without the affordances of face-to-face interaction, e-learners found it important to "be able to address the challenge of projecting themselves as 'real people'" (Shea & Bidjerano, p.545). Without a sense of classmates’ individual identity, interacting regularly online becomes difficult.

Granted there are benefits to online anonymity in that it shifts focus from judgments based on personality or physical features to the quality of one’s ideas – and writing. Researchers have found this allows some people to escape bias associated with disability, appearance, race, and gender.

Still interacting with generic strangers on a frequent basis can be rather flat and distant. When I first started my online program at Royal Roads with 45 classmates, none of whom I had met or been introduced to, I found it bewildering and overwhelming. Adding to this, I found that most classmate posters did not sufficiently differentiate themselves. The medium, and to a lesser extent, the communicators’ (lack of) actions resulted in postings that seemed like overhearing the din of multiple simultaneous speakers and unable to hear any one sufficiently to join in. Royal Roads' model also addresses this challenge by requiring two on-campus stays.

For purely online programs, however, what technological mechanisms, norms, or individual mastery of existing devices could help students project identity?

I try to include a sense of (bad) humour and to mimic my conversational way of talking I’ve noticed some classmates adopt academic jargon online, peppering their postings with words like hegemony or epistemology that they don’t otherwise use in-person discussions. (Frankly, this behaviour seems like an identity contrived to please the teacher master, aka brown-nosing.)

I do think that there could be more that e-Learning platforms, particularly Blackboard, could do to enable identity to be projected (as desired). For example, the e-Learning platform Moodle includes a picture of the author and a links the name of the author of every forum post to a bio page that students tailor. But unfortunately some students didn't fill it our or did so in a generic manner. Still it's a good start.

In a discussion on this point with a classmate, she felt that such identity issues were not unique to the medium: “I agree that these are challenges facing technology in education, but students are faced with these challenges in traditional classes also. Moreover, there are students who are deathly shy, and must overcome barriers of social interaction.”  She also shared an example of a class with a rather hostile teacher and climate where people were personally attacked for straying from the professor’s agenda.  Rather than expressing herself in class, she “felt that my personal identity, open for all to see, needed to be hidden. Based on how quiet many students were, they likely felt the same.” Clearly, a respectful, welcome climate is essential for any type of learning, but even if judgments are not overt, some students are still wary of personal expression.

Andrea adds:

I think this experience shows me that strong classroom management, teacher scaffolding, and respect, either online or off, is vital. As Brett says, “A community that provides a sense of safety and in which one feels a legitimate contributor may provide a supportive learning context. However, the degree to which community involvement pushes people towards conformity or stifles discussion because of a subtle press towards adopting community norms needs to be considered” (p.6).

My point is that the technology is an additional challenge to the learning environment, but no less so than the myriad of other factors facing both teachers and students in traditional classrooms as well. I think that the issue of personal identity online can be overcome, insofar as students must be willing to share of themselves, be accepting of others, and look to teachers for support. That's challenging offline as well.