2005 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference Proceedings

0-7803-9028-8/05/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE.

Technical and Professional Communication E-learning Environments: Establishing Community and “Sense of Community”

Sherry Southard East Carolina University southards@mail.ecu.edu

Christine Cranford East Carolina University cranfordc@mail.ecu.edu

Josh Woods Freed-Hardeman Universityjwoods@fhu.edu

Abstract

What constitutes and what contributes to creating effective academic e-learning communities? We discuss features of online communities as well as important concerns and ways of using emerging technologies to establish a “sense of community.” In studying e-learning environments, we view them as discourse communities containing several types of community that contribute to students’ sense of belonging and participation (community of person, community of support, and community of learning), all based on students’ developing a sense of trust and respect. Finally, the focus of our conference presentation will be initiatives for creating effective virtual learning communities, a complex process that is not always positive: building a foundation, ensuring continual community through interaction, and structuring e-discussions as part of building a community of learning.

Keywords: e-learning, distance education, online communities, sense of community

Introduction

Students will expect us to provide up-to-date knowledge in our classes and programs. However, to facilitate knowledge-creation, they also need faculty to establish community and “sense of community” whether the learning environment is face-to-face, hybrid, or virtual. Since 2000, having taught primarily online classes, I have faced the issues of what constitutes an e-learning environment and what fosters a sense of community. The thoughts that follow are based on an unpublished article “Establishing a ‘Sense of Community’ in Academic E-learning

Environments” being written collaboratively with Christine Cranford and Josh Woods. While teaching methods and activities in face-to-face, traditional classrooms cannot be transferred one-for-one to virtual classrooms, some theoretical approaches or adaptations of those approaches are relevant to both learning environments. Maybe these comments about community in e-learning environments will enable you to view your particular teaching, or more what we aspire to, your learning environments in a new way.

Background

How do you define community? How do you define “sense of community”? And do you distinguish between the two? Community in a broad sense can be a group of persons living/working in the same geographic area and abiding by the same government or authority, as well as a group whose members have similar interests and concerns. Classrooms can be viewed as communities, because, in them, students function in a space (a physical one for traditional classes and a virtual one for online classes), abide by the teacher as authority, and, theoretically, seek the common goal of learning.

Community, meaning “sense of community,” refers to the relationship among members of a community. In classroom settings, it is the relationship between teachers and students, plus that among students. Sense of community describes students’ feeling that they belong to a community of learning, a feeling that develops as the course progresses. In traditional classrooms, sense of community is fostered by nonverbal body language, informal chit-chat among students, and the coming together in a physical place at regular

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intervals. Online classes contain students and faculty whose personal characteristics and values are part of the class, just as they are in traditional classroom settings and learning. In online classes, however, teachers may have to deliberately work to create a sense of community; procedural matters and, more important, learning (the primary purpose of these classes) must be accomplished using technology, often emerging technologies that students have not previously encountered, as opposed to face-to-face interactions.

In considering community in technical and professional communication environments, we found beneficial the term “discourse community” as used in composition studies to indicate a community based on norms that influence writing. Brizzell first proposed the following definition of discourse community:

Discourse analysis goes beyond audience analysis because what is most significant about members of a discourse community is not their personal preferences, prejudices, and so on, but rather the expectations they share by virtue of belonging to that particular community. These expectations are embodied in the discourse conventions, which are in turn conditioned by the community’s work.[1]

Research describing discourse communities existing in traditional classroom and work settings is useful in studying a discourse community existing in an electronic web-based environment. Community in traditional classrooms is generally considered to be place-based. A distance education environment is not place-based, but instead allows for a group of persons living in a variety of geographic areas to share in a learning community.

No longer driven by the place, community is driven by initiation and participation; thus, the concept of discourse community changes in a virtual, distance education classroom. Shaffer and Anundsen believe that communities are built on a person’s sense of belonging and yearning to belong; communities are constructed when people share identities and values.[2] Commenting on that work, Palloff and Pratt explain, “[W]hat they [Shaffer and Anundsen] term as ‘conscious community’ can be created electronically through the initiation of and participation in discussion about goals, ethics, liabilities, and communication

styles … norms.”[3]

Obviously, students have been learning in a traditional classroom a lot longer than in a distance education environment. Students have learned the norms of a traditional classroom and often the norms that aren’t understood are negotiated face-to-face. Norms in a distance education environment have to be negotiated from the start; members of the community have to agree and understand how they will interact and what the goals of the course are. A discourse community in a distance education environment, therefore, possesses some of the fundamentals of a traditional classroom community—modes for communication and shared goals. However, because the members of a discourse community in a distance education class are not learning in a familiar place-based environment, they must establish norms.

Understanding the different types of community (types of belonging and participating) that may exist in online communities helps in knowing how to construct an effective one conducive to learning. In studying e-learning environments, we consider the following types, admitting that categories are not mutually exclusive and others may exist:

• Community of person (as individual student and as class member) involves sharing of personal information relevant to academic matters plus learning appropriate course policies and procedures. This sharing occurs between students and instructor as well as among students.

• Community of support (among individual students and between students and faculty) supports procedural aspects of the online community, but, in addition, furthers learning.

• Community of learning (the totality existing among individual students and between students and faculty) focuses on students as scholars and knowledge-makers; they advance course content by synthesizing content, completing creative problem-solving and sharing ideas, as they apply principles and theories learned.

These types of community existing within virtual class settings are based on those participating in such e-learning environments developing a sense of trust and respect. Interestingly, in their research concerning intranets, a closed system within a

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corporate culture [a community] used to “facilitate sharing of employee knowledge,” Ruppel and Harrington “found that intranet implementation is facilitated by a culture that emphasizes an atmosphere of trust and concern for other people (ethical culture), flexibility and innovation (developmental culture), and policies, procedures, and information management (hierarchical culture).”[4]

The Role of Teachers in Establishing Community and "Sense of Community"

Consider the function of teachers. Distributing education in traditional classrooms, or online environments, does not automatically contribute to, or distract from, building quality learning environments. Decreasing the amount of “transactional distance” between teacher and students, as well as among students, however, does. [We are focusing on learning environments that do not include self-paced tutorials or training units, environments whose organizational structures automatically separate teacher and students.] Note that the concept of "transactional distance" can also apply to face-to-face and hybrid learning environments.

Moore in 1993 describes the theory of transactional distance as a result of “[t]he first attempt in English to define distance education and to articulate a theory [appearing] in 1972.”[5] That global theory involves three clusters of variables, including Dialogue (teacher/learner interaction), Structure (course structure), and Learner Autonomy (self-direction of learner); it “is a continuous rather than a discrete variable, a relative rather than an absolute term.”[5] Moore studied the concept of learner independence and the possibility that distance education could contribute to students’ learning such autonomy. In today’s society, it has become increasingly important that employees be life-long learners because work will require their continually learning new tasks and responsibilities. For students to be successful, teachers need not only to teach students content, but also critical thinking abilities that enable them to learn independently and achieve learner autonomy. Moore and Kearsley, later in 1996, explain, “The more highly autonomous the learners, the greater is the distance they can be comfortable with—that is, the less the dialog and the less the structure …. The theory helps [teachers of distance education courses]

understand the particular instructional problems they are faced with, without providing a recipe for solving the problem.”[6] They can vary course structure and vary the amount of dialog as appropriate for a particular course and student body.

Murphy and Collins, in 1997, commenting on Moore’s work, provide insight about developing a “sense of community” in online communities:

Dialog has been recognized by Moore … as a determining factor in the amount of transactional distance that exists in more, if not all, instructional events: those taking place in a traditional classroom and those taking place at a distance where instructor or student may never see one another. Transactional distance describes not only a dimension of a physical separation but also a communication gap that must be bridged by dialog in some structured fashion so that shared meaning can be constructed, teaching and learning can occur, and the potential for misunderstanding and miscommunication is significantly diminished.[7]

When studying the complexities of and difficulties encountered in online education in The Wired Neighborhood in 1996, Stephen Doheny-Farina examines the relationship between electronic communication technologies and geophysical communities.[8] He discusses the treatment of public access, education, and computers’ potential for enhancing community (geophysical) relationships. Although he doesn’t use the term “transactional distance,” he comments that communities in cyberspace further isolation by removing people from their geophysical place, arguing that electronic communication technologies should be used to integrate people within their chosen geophysical community. Using Moore’s terminology and concept, this integration would decrease transactional distance, thus fostering community.

Having explored the process of technology transfers in Rhetoric, Innovation, and Technology(1992), Doheny-Farina applies the theory of communication discussed in that work to online classrooms. The information-transfer model separates knowledge from communication; thus, in an online classroom knowledge exists independent of the teacher and student. According to him,

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If teaching is merely information transfer, then the most important quality of the teacher is clarity: if objective bodies of information exist in ready-to-communicate states separate from communicators, then successful communication is when the receiver takes possession of that information. The key for the communicator is to make the communication channel into a clean and clear conduit through which facts can travel unimpeded. This view does not explain how information comes to mean something to a student, or why students and teachers may have difficulty communicating. When uncertainty occurs in communication, according to the theory of information transfer, the problem is not one of meaning but one of either the availability of the correct information or the channel’s clarity.[9]

In decreasing transactional distance and in creating an effective communication channel for information transfer, teachers are key both to establishing a sense of belonging (through dialog) and enabling student participation in the learning process (in part, through development of learner autonomy).

So often, we maintain, faculty and students reacting adversely to the concept of “cyber colleges” are reacting to what they view as a loss of the sense of community. Because an online learning environment is an unknown to them, they may fear that they won’t belong and won’t be able to become comfortable in the learning environment.

As Bowman and Klopping indicate, "Although information and knowledge are not identical, the general trend is clear: information and the capacity of the technology required to store, transmit, and retrieve it are increasing at virtually an exponential rate. Nevertheless, as we consider the impact of Information Technology (IT) on communication in general and business communication in particular, it is important to recognize that we have spent far more time communicating nonverbally than we have communicating orally, and we have spent far more time communicating orally than we have in writing . . . . we have been communicating in writing for a mere 3 percent of our existence."[10]

Note that traditional classroom communication emphasizes non-verbal and oral communication. Reading and writing (text-based) tasks are often completed at home. Traditional classrooms may not be associated with written/text communication.

Students and faculty are faced with learning to learn. Community can be an important part of that process. Students may be seeking the comfort of nonverbal and oral communication as opposed to written communication so central to distance education courses or academic e-learning. Traditional classrooms bring with them a ready-made physical community even though that community sometimes may mean that students see primarily the face of the teacher and the backs of heads of fellow students. The social aspect of community must be built, even in traditional classrooms. We suggest that faculty and students are focusing on a “false intimacy” and that the social community developed very much depends upon the teaching methods of the teacher and the personalities of both the teacher and students.

Kostur and Aronovitch state that “much research … shows that online learners expect/want the following from online learning experiences:

• Interactive communication with the materials, other learners, and instructors

• Information presented in a number of different ways (e.g., text, graphics, animation)

• Control over their learning; the ability to access materials non-linearly and track their own progress."[11]

The first expectation is particularly relevant here: that interactive communication sought frequently depends upon and is fostered through community that develops a sense of belonging.

Initiatives for Establishing Community

We have incorporated several initiatives to establish community for these online classes in order to create effective learning communities providing students with quality distance education. The community of learning is the center of a distance education course and sometimes is the hardest to facilitate in an electronic environment. Developing community of person and of support facilitate the community of learning (knowledge-sharing and knowledge-making).

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During my presentation, I will briefly discuss some of these initiatives: start-up activities to ensure that students have an adequate level of technological proficiency; fact sheets, biographies, and photographs; email and instant messaging; peer teaching & learning; structured interactions; news web pages and distribution lists; and weblog, chat rooms and discussion.

Because email is a frequent means of communication between teachers and students, I provide these very brief comments. Email is integral in creating a sense of all three types of community, especially community of person and of support. One question involves how much teacher-initiated email is appropriate. According to Woods, “Regardless of the number of personal emails [two or fifteen] sent to students throughout the semester, a statistically significant difference between groups could not be identified along the lines of perceived sense of community, satisfaction with the overall learning experience, or personal relationship with the instructor.”[12]

Our advice: respond to each student-initiated email and use the suggestions that will be provided at the conference. The amount of email sent by each student normally corresponds with her or his personal mode of interaction and learning style. Students, who will ask several questions about projects in a traditional learning environment, sometimes primarily to brainstorm their ideas orally, will be the ones to email instructors several times in online environments.

E-discussion is a very important part of the community of learning, which focuses on students as scholars and creators of knowledge. In our experience as well as previous literature on the topic, we have found asynchronous threaded discussions to be more effective than synchronous chat rooms for knowledge-sharing and knowledge-making involving all class members. Chat rooms are more appropriate for group collaboration and for group management, involving a small number of class members (community of support and community of learning).

Web-based discussions, whether they occur in a chat room or on a weblog/threaded discussion, provide numerous difficulties for students. As in a traditional classroom, students apply the principles and theories they are learning in order to share ideas, synthesize content, and complete creative

problem-solving. In addition, however, they must manipulate the specific technologies used for discussion, a process normally easily learned by all students, and they must communicate in writing, rather than orally, a more daunting task.

These e-discussions, whether synchronous or asynchronous, can also provide difficulties for teachers, especially when confronted with flaming that may occur and undermine a sense of community; however, they can provide benefits. Teachers must decide whether the purpose of the discussions is to allow students to learn from and teach their peers or to produce crafted prose. Discussions in which students write-to-learn, as opposed to writing-to-communicate, may increase participation. E-discussion may foster equality among participants, and coupled with the element of reflection time, asynchronous classroom discussion thus offers a learning environment in which each student is taught with the insights, knowledge, debates, and perspectives of a diversity of voices, not just the teacher. In such environments, we have also found that students have a frequent tendency to illustrate ideas and theories by making application to their own professional or academic experiences. This kind of discourse not only helps deepen students’ critical thinking skills and understanding and use of language, but it also increases their education’s value on a more personal level--a trait not as easily featured in the more traditional authoritarian teacher-student discourses.

To Conclude

Continual innovation will be required to ensure quality e-learning for students in academic environments. Both administrators and faculty will have to address how to use emerging technologies (and they will continue to emerge) to deliver education and lifelong learning opportunities, while at the same time, offering quality education, fostered by a sense of community, a feeling of belonging to a vibrant learning community. It’s an exciting opportunity as we work to build online communities with a strong sense of community.

Acknowledgment

Thanks to Philip Rubens for his valuable insights.

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References

[1] P. Brizzell, “Cognition, Convention, and Certainty: What We Need to Know about Writing,” PRE/TEXT, vol. 3, pp. 213-243, 1982.

[2] C. Shaffer and K. Anundsen, CreatingCommunity Anywhere. New York: Perigee Books, 1993.

[3] R. Palloff and K. Pratt, Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999.

[4] C. P. Ruppel and S. J. Harrrington, “Sharing Knowledge through Intranets: A Student of Organizational Culture and Intranet Implementation,” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, vol. 44, no. 1, pp. 37-52, 2001.

[5] M. G. Moore, “Theory of Transactional Distance,” in Theoretical Principles of Distance Education. D. Keegan, Ed. London: Routledge, pp. 22-38, 1993.

[6] M. G. Moore and G. Kearsley, DistanceEducation: A Systems View. New York: Wadsworth, 1996.

[7] K. Murphy and M. Collins. (1997). Community Conventions in Instructional Electronic Chats, First Monday [Online]. 2(11), n. pag. Accessed 10 March 2005 at http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_11/murphy/index.html

[8] S. Doheny-Farina, The Wired Neighborhood.New Haven: Yale UP, 1996.

[9] S. Doheny-Farina, Rhetoric, Innovation, Technology. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992.

[10] J. Bowman and I. Klopping, "Bandstands, Bandwidth, and Business Communication: Technology and the Sanctity of Writing," BusinessCommunication Quarterly, vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 82-90, 1999.

[11] P. Kostur and J. Aronovitch, “From Information to Instruction: Transforming Text Books into Online Learning Materials,” in IEEEProc.: Int. Professional Communication Conf.

Santa Fe, CA: IEEE, 2001, pp. 33-52.

[12] R. H. Woods, “How Much communication Is Enough in Online Courses?—Exploring the Relationship between Frequency of Instructor-initiated Personal Email and Learners’ Perceptions of and Participation in Online Learning,” International Journal of Instructional Media, vol.29, no. 4, pp. 377-391, 2002.

About the Authors

Christine Cranford has taught undergraduate courses in English and Communication at East Carolina University (ECU) in North Carolina. She uses traditional teaching methods, blended courses (partial web and traditional instruction), and full web instruction (distance education courses). Her experience includes developing web materials for online courses and using course management systems, such as Blackboard and Course Compass. In addition, her post-masters work was delivered through a web-based environment.

Sherry Southard administers and has been involved in the development of the ECU Technical and Professional Communication graduate programs, including the post-baccalaureate online Certificate in Professional Communication and the MA in TPC (http://core.ecu.edu/engl/tpc/tekkom/tpc.htm), available both as online and campus programs. Before coming to ECU, she taught at Oklahoma State University for eleven years.

Josh Woods works as a writer and editor with the communications staff at Freed-Hardeman University in Tennessee. He has experience with online communities through his web-based graduate studies in East Carolina University’s MA in English, Technical and Professional Communication.

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