This will be the wrap-up comment from us on our paper and the ensuing discussion, as two of us are off to AECT, as many of you are.
To review the purposes of our paper, we intended to raise the issue that mini-cultures are being formed in various distance education (DE) environments, that cultures don't exist but have to be created, that teachers may be deliberate in facilitating the formation of useful cultures.
By "useful," we mean that a culture facilitates the greatest amount of learning possible, that it facilitates the kinds of learning we desire, and that the culture disappears into the background.
When we say, "the kinds of learning we desire," we envision the kind of understanding that can be used to accomplish physical or mental work. Rote learning doesn't qualify. Surface processing won't do.
When we say that we should facilitate the formation of culture that "disappears into the background," we recognize that long-standing functional culture is a climate in which people don't think about the culture. It is just there--or rather, here. We walk in it, breathe it in, use it for our purposes--but we don't think about it.
That time of adequate supply of clean-air-like culture doesn't exist yet in any form of DE, for any large group of persons--at least as the three of us experience the world. Clean-air-like culture is described by the term "transparent." That term is often applied to the technology, but we choose to say it describes the culture within which the technology operates.
We believe--and assert in the article--that teachers who use DE technologies can hasten the formation of transparent cultures by making them more apparent while the cultures are forming.
With this perspective, we'd like to emphasize what various ones of you have said, without necessarily resolving differences of opinion.
Barbara Martin [private communication] emphasizes the multiplicity of cultures (we picked up the term "mini-cultures" from her. She believes, "For some purposes, it is easier and perhaps more beneficial [for the teacher] to establish protocols (top-down) rather than letting them form (all time spent establishing the culture)."
Merle Vogel [21 Jan 95] says, "I am convinced that anyone who has some insight into the development of a culture can have a profound influence on it if they want to. Some persons will have a profound influence on the development whether they give it any thought or not." He points out that some of the culture will be absorbed from the larger culture that surrounds the smaller and that more than one person participates in forming a culture, but that teachers each see something different that they create in their own classes. In another context, he deliberately worked to create culture by exemplifying some behaviors and by working with others to set standards of performance. He also points out that, "Norms that benefit the group are much easier to establish than ones that do not." He suggests that we "identify the problems, devise effective solutions and communicate them to the group. Members of the group will willingly adopt norms, behaviors, and conventions that make the group intercourse more effective and pleasurable."
Michael Jeffries [25 Jan 95] points out the need to establish computer-mediated-communications cultures that take advantage of the potential for eliminating power relations in order to produce power-neutral scholarly discussions. "Electronic communications has the potential to open doors of respect and understanding between teacher and student--if that's what the teacher wants." He also suggests that we take into account the needs of students--as well as the goals and objectives of a course.
Several of you dialogued about how much off-task communication you want and how much is needed in order to establish atmosphere. While that was, on one level, focused on our own ITForum communications, it seems you saw a carry-over to the developing cultures used for DE. Mike Spector [31 Jan 95] suggests that there may be times allotted for serious discussion and other times when more informal discussion is OK.
In terms of such dialogue as we all have experienced, let us (Adrianne, Lauren, Karen) insert the idea that perhaps the openness of dialogue about establishing climate is a way to lead into openness of dialogue in dealing with course content. And perhaps we will need to consider how much we, in the teacher role, are willing for some students just to listen and not actively speak in DE contexts.
Another specific that might influence a developing culture was mentioned by Peter Jamieson [31 Jan 95]. He points out that people who expect to have regular contact, either face-to-face or electronically, will moderate their displays of negative emotions in order not to be alienated from the group. Ongoing discussions may elicit more favorable emotional environments than one-shot discussions. Peter also raised the issue of whether we mean the same thing when we DE professionals talk about distance education. He wonders too what we believe about the difference between teaching and learning in these formats and in classroom situations.
We were pleased to receive Lloyd Rieber's communication [30 Jan 95], telling the story of his establishing this forum and what he had hoped to accomplish. We won't try to review all of his good points here. But this communique is an example of something we can do to foster culture formation: As the teachers who planned for a given DE technology to be used, we can share with students the story of our decision and what we think the technology can do that some other delivery method cannot do (even if that is chiefly to make education available in locations where it would not otherwise be available). We also note in Lloyd's response that a teacher who asks for help in building culture does not have to give in to every demand/request made by students. To ask for negotiated meaning does not mean the teacher has given up the right to participate in the negotiation. In his offer to find out whether a daily digest of transmissions is possible, he has illustrated another way that teachers can facilitate without either resisting or surrendering: He has an idea that could be helpful, if it proves to be practical/possible; he will do the research to determine possibilities.
We applaud Linda Gilbert's [31 Jan 95] expanding on the multiple cultures that exist even within computer-mediated communication. This is the kind of thought that will help us continue to discuss culture formation--even though space/time limits and stated purpose of the original paper would not have allowed us to do that.
Thank you for letting us try our paper out on you. This has been a fun and profitable discussion for us--and we hope for you. Other discussions are already underway.