What the Electronic Forum can Teach us about Learning and Community
Karen Schwalm, GCC

Over the past seven years, I have watched students and teachers use the Electronic Forum (EF), both to support learning connected with their classes and learning on their own. In addition, I have participated in similar activities on the Internet: as a visiting "virtual" lecturer in a graduate course on computers and writing; as the manager of three electronic conferences related to professional meetings; as an occasional participant in discussions at the Techno- Rhetorician's Bar and Grill, a multi-user space for communication researchers at MIT's MediaMOO; and as a member of far-too-many Internet discussion lists. These environments are endlessly fascinating to me -- their vitality, unpredictability and flexibility embody, to my way of thinking, some of the best elements of effective teaching and engaged learning.

Of course, not everyone shares my enthusiasm for these computer-mediated communication (CMC) environments. Admittedly, they are frequently raucous, fractious, bumptious, contentious, and boisterous. These spaces, and the way people use them, continually force questions we might rather leave unasked, questions about how teachers and students should spend their time, about the connections between work and play, about how power and authority are worked out in educational environments. These important issues don't seem to be raised by the "conventional" classroom. I wish they were.

What follows are five observations -- highly personal, unscientific, and probably controversial -- about CMC and its relation to learning in groups.

1. Community is more compelling than content; interaction is more important than information. This is a hard observation to accept, especially for teachers whose first loyalty is to a discipline. But our students aren't always as enamored of the content of our courses as we are, and when the going gets tough, social interaction -- the connections students make with others -- may make the difference in whether they stay with us or drop out. Research into retention and persistence consistently supports the importance of social and academic integration. A student who is burningly interested in the course content probably can learn in isolation, but the student who is disengaged academically might stick with a class where there is a strong sense of community.


Since the creation of the first electronic environments for the exchange of information, participants have consistently nudged the tools towards greater interactivity. As we can see with the development of the Internet, especially the Web, the true power lies in the individual's ability to change the environment rather than just "receive" it, to publish rather than merely subscribe, to participate rather than just observe. CMC environments count on writers as much as readers; audience response -- the quick answer, the witty rejoinder, the ubiquitous page counter -- has tangible value to those writers.


2. Even the most meager mastery has value to newcomers, so everyone can teach, even while they are still learning. Perhaps the most exciting messages I see in class forums occur about the third week of the semester, when someone asks a question and a "newbie" pops up with the answer. Or, when a student drags a friend into the High Tech Center and very efficiently teaches the essentials of IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Or, when a classmate observes someone else's screen and asks, "How'd you do that?" The ability to answer a single question, no matter how rudimentary, seems to give us permission to ask many more. And because these environments are sprawling, with many nooks and crannies, no one can know it all. What I like most about EF, and about other CMC spaces on the Internet, is that I find myself saying frequently, "I don't know." That seems to spur us towards "finding out." To my way of thinking , this is a much more valuable activity than "knowing."


What develops is a meritocracy based on willingness and friendliness. Speedy commiseration with someone's frustration may be as important as information that solves the problem. If we can get both in the same message, so much the better!


3. Lest I be accused of always wearing rose-colored glasses, the larger the electronic community, the more it comes to resemble society at large. This is the hard lesson of the growth of the Internet and of our little corner here. Eventually the thugs arrive. So what did we expect?



4. What repels us about CMC has as much value as what engages us. Discomfort with CMC, especially when we poke at our own feelings a bit, can be especially productive. On-line environments strip off and isolate important features of communication (facial expression, tone of voice, gesture, body language) and critical elements of the classroom (space, movement, demonstrations, decor). Whether we fall in love with CMC or hustle in the opposite direction, we will learn something important by examining our reasons, especially if we are moved to articulate what we value about face-to-face interaction. I think this may be the most important lesson of all: the appearance of the virtual -- whether it be a communication environment, library, classroom, concert, or shopping mall -- forces us to re-examine the value of its real counterpart.



5. And the most difficult lesson of all, no matter how tempting, we must resist using technology to control human behavior. The trappings of technology (new tools, powerful machines, and talented programmers) make it easy to deny what makes us human. Because we can (and because it is efficient to do so and tiresome not to), we may fall into the habit of using machines unnecessarily to regulate activities that human beings can control very well for themselves. Technology must protect human choice, even the power to be bad, to offend, to disrupt, to make ill-considered decisions, to use poor judgment, to be selfish. All of these occur on a daily basis in the Electronic Forum and in other CMC environments, but people learn as a result, the community adjusts, and we all benefit.

-t h e   l a b y r i n t h-

URL: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/
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