Interview with Leslie at SIT Graduate Institute, May 7. 2010

MISCOMMUNICATION

Leslie: Calif Institute for Integral Studies. PhD.

Many incredible benefits to being an online learning communiity. Three years.

When you go online, you had to bring a quality of presence: suspend judgment. Norms of being as well as of participation.

Benefits: I think just that for me particularly if people are spread out you can actually stay connected. We were all over the world. And our online communication was… I did feel like I got to see a depth of people through what they wrote and had some really wonderful conversations with people. We “were writing intellectual love letters.” When it works — wow — is is extremely powerful.

When you’re spread out… we were directly connecting this to our lives so we’d have our experiences… send in stories of how we were making sense of the theories in our daily lives. Both moving the theory into the real world and moving the real world into the theory.

Professor had almost no role. Used it as instructional to set up tasks and feedback and input. But the dialog was all among the students. I see really good teachers WEAVE the comments together. They often play the role of weavers.

Some Ss couldn’t be online so they’d come in and be weavers. Certain people were the connective threads, who weren’t necessarily saying “I really got this from your posting” and sort of keeping the postings connected to each other. Not in stepping back and weaving but kind of knitting everything together. And the active listeners, rather than putting out their ideas, would serve the group by saying ‘this is what I heard’ and when there were disagreements who would come in and be the peacemakers. And some of the men would come in and raise arguments. Active listeners.

Someone who doesn’t say thing the whole time till the end. Same as real life conversations. Some sensitive people would listen for emotional undertone.. There were some people who were you could see this is what they do.

Huge amount of time. You hear different people’s voices. But the conversation tends to be controlled by people who are comfortable in an online forum and spend time online. Those who couldn’t were in role of online reader.

Level of reflection was often much deeper. They can read and think and compose a response. BUT the prob then can become that there’s a volume of stuff and not reading it all before responding. You can’t just check info because it’s asynchronous. It may not be what that person intended.

When something does come up. E.G. race. Multiple folders. If you didn’t know where the discussion had happened you couldn’t find your way there. Couldn’t find the source. But the benefit is that you have this transcript. Conversations were taking place in different folders. Where you find the conversations. Takes up life of its own.

(INFO DESIGN CONCERN)

No body language. No telling if someone’s uncomfortable.

SMAT: 1st unit together. Then culture piece online. Other Ss investigate an aspect culture and giving feedback to each other. Return: presenting what they’ve learning about that piece of culture and about what they’ve learned about learning.

She told them to get out of each other’s folders this year for first time in 5 years. She divided groups into groups of three. Focus on those, but you can go into other people’s folders.

IN beginning, worked more in shepherding people thru it cuz it was new medium, but less now. BUt people still need it: norms. You have to be constantly mindful. Commit as a teacher to being there all the time.

What does it mean to be present in an online community: those norms: that when you’re online, you’re reading other people’s stuff, trying to get into their world, and see it through their eyes and trying to get behind what they’re saying. And then when you’re responding thinking about “how is this going to be perceived” but also being honest. How will it be clear? How is it gonna sound.

When you’re online you can create who you are. In some ways people are creating their higher selves online.

People seeing disconnects between how they are in person and who they are online. Disconnect/strange when you know the person personally and see a different online persona, which complicates online community.

What happened was that there were certain students who were making comments that were offending other students. “It think this is too important to sort out online. We have to do it face to face.” The whole course is about communication, but she felt that communication is about knowing when to stop communicating.

There were a lot of things where people would come in and say something — a very stereotypical comment about where they were — and as a teacher that seems a good starting point. What observations led you to this? What other interpretations. Trying to walk someone backwards, rather than saying , ‘That’s really offensive. Stop.’

Some Ss thought she should have stopped it rather than seeing it as a teachable moment. Now and a month later, but it seems like now. There’s something about asynchronicity that’s wonderful because it’s always in the present. BUt also the issues are always in the present, even when they’re not. Scabbed over and broken open.

These Ss are learning more about communication and miscommunication than they ever would’ve otherwise, so it’s powerful in that way.

It also has its complexities that aren’t good and aren’t bad, and I’m often made aware that it’s out of my control. I can’t gather everyone together and say let’s sit down and talk. So in the absence of that I felt it was best to say, ‘work on your own, and we’ll come back and look at this.’

She wants people to feel like they’re controlling things, and not open to criticism when they’re not ready.

I would just love to have a conversation about really looking deeply at online communication (and I’m sure it’s happening) because I think it’s important. I think there’s a lot we can learn to function in a space — and to create the spaces — (where you want to put you chairs, etc.). Versus online, you’re very limited in creating space. How to teachers create online systems that they’re using that do what they really.

BY opening it up big was opening it up for big miscommunication. Working in folders of three is easier.

She only would delete what student asked. I do think there is a place for intervention as a teacher, but I also have to be aware that for me, I can pretty much take anything. It’s not my level of being offended. I have a pretty high threshold. I feel it’s the student who’s affended’s responsibilty.

The writing is a lot less like writing: hybrid of speech and writing. Issues about how you look in writing. People don’t want to be judged. And it’s gonna be permanent. More honest online because they have more time to think and reflect, but are they not gonna say something because they’re gonna put it out. Online journals. Each journal became this space, each person created mood or tone or space. They named it: my salon, Bob’s mountain top, kitchen table. Just by naming it as a kitchen table you could feel you were going to a kitchen table.