Community and the Loch Ness Monster
I spend a fair amount of time at the beginning of each semester trying to encourage community in my online classes. We also spend a lot of the first week working on gaining familiarity with WebCT. (Most of our student population is nontraditional, and has varying levels of familiarity with computers.) So the first week we do an email, an attachment, a discussion post, and set up a Blogger account. For Comp I students' first discussion post, I asked them to introduce themselves by posting two true things and one false thing about themselves. Mine were:
- I am a redhead
- I speak three languages
- I have looked for both the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot
We hadn't revealed our false statements yesterday, and one of my students wrote an extensive post defending her belief in mythic creatures. She also mentioned that she thought she'd write her first blog post on this subject, and I think she thought I'd protest that. (My students have been great about getting their blogs set up, but only a few have written posts yet. Our class assignments are pretty structured, but I've asked them to write about any topic they choose on their blog. When you're allowed to write about anything, sometimes it's hard to find something, I think.) Anyway, here is my reply:
I didn't go to Scotland or Northern California to look for mythical critters, but I did go to the famous "spottings" sites while I was close to them. I don't necessarily believe that either creature exists, but I do believe that we don't understand (or know about) everything on this little planet. I want to believe that there is still mystery left out there, and that such things might be possible. Part of me wants to believe, and part of me remains highly skeptical.There is an area of research (whose credibility is debateable, depending on who you talk to) called cryptozoology. It's devoted to investigating the existence of "hidden" animals.
This would be a very good topic for a blog entry, should you be so inclined. You can write about anything your little hearts desire on your blogs, as long as your entries are coherent and at least 250 words long. This means that you can write about what you had for breakfast, or you can use it to make notes on research you're interested in - even on schools of thought concerning Nessie. I do not, however, want to read 25 blog posts on The Myth Of Nessie. This is an excuse for you to explore your own interests, so find something that intrigues you and go figure out some stuff about it.
I figure this reply either makes me sound human, or loony, or both. It also goes back to my post about the fact that so many folks seem to think academics are only interested in academic pursuits. In the time that I've taught online, I've learned that the more I let my human-ness show, the more comfortable people seem to be with posting online. WebCT is an inherently panoptic environment, and I find that people tend to be intimidated and reserved within it. If you add a faceless teacher who's teaching through a box on top of that environment, then nobody really wants to say anything at all - including the teacher, usually. I'm making a bigger point of video lectures this semester, and of spending the first week on introductions and how-to and talk about cheesecake and Nessie. It turns out that this class is comprised of pretty cool people, and they've put up nearly 200 posts so far. I'm hoping this will translate into increased online discussions when we start talking about plagiarism and rhetorical analysis next week.
Last semester, I hoped community would develop naturally, and it never did. This time, I'm actively encouraging it. What do you other people who teach online think about building community in these environments? Do you encourage it, or do you just let it develop over the semester? How successful has either approach been?
Comments
I don't teach online, or anywhere else for that matter, but if I did I'd be an advocate for reaching out to build community. Back when I was a grad student several decades ago, I found the tightly knit community around Oxford to be extremely helpful in the development of my thought processes. This went way beyond the obvious social benefits of having such a group of associates, and extended outside of my department as well. I would imagine this to be even more important in the world of online studies, where one might feel very isolated indeed.
Just my two cents for what it's worth.
Posted by: tod | January 20, 2004 4:49 PM
Wait a minute! I thought you weren't even sure if you were a true redhead anymore?! Bah! Trick Question!
Posted by: Chel | January 22, 2004 7:30 PM