We've only identified (as of 4 p.m., USA CS time) one message that has come since yesterday and deals with the paper. It was a thoughtful piece by Michael Jeffries. He brings up a good point about the need for power-neutral (our term) scholarly discussions among teacher and students. We assume that the context he is thinking about is one in which people know each other; just insisting on the use of first names would not hide the identity of the teacher--the one who owns the position of authority. More about that below.
But first, Karen wants to contribute an anecdote about such unequal power relations. She and her class were participating in a Global listserv conference (7 universities, 8 classes). Instructions were to use first names only, and not to divulge who was student and who was faculty. This was a deliberate attempt to equalize the power. Even so, one of her students reported (on a class-only listserv) that he always read her messages first, since he knew she was faculty--and HIS teacher at that. However, other discussion indicated he was probably the only one in the class who did that. In this case, it was not the teacher who tried to maintain the power relations but the student. His personal construction was not like that of others in the group--and was not what the teacher had sought. The point: There is always the possibility that individual constructions will be different from those which the teacher is trying to have the group construct.
On a different track, Michael's [Jeffries, 25 Jan 95] comment caused us to think about the fact that some indicators of status/power are invisible in this environment. When we don't personally know the people, use of first names (or names without status descriptors) does lessen the power differential. We also can't tell if the person speaks the language of the conference with an accent, or has a physical handicap, or belongs to a specific ethnic group. Sometimes we may not even know the person's gender. In such contexts, we might be more likely to judge the worth of the person's comments for the comments alone.
Now back to Michael's point: We think he makes good points about the possibility of the teacher using even the e-mail method in a way that maintains the unequal power relations, that keeps up "the artificial barriers ... and make electronic communication a cold and almost rude art form." [Michael's words] Do any of you have suggestions about how to sensitize other faculty to this if they are operating in such a way? (We assume none of us would do that!)
Several people so far have discussed the unilateral role of the teacher in determining the tone/culture of distance education exchanges. Michael is among the ones who suggest that we need to take into account the needs of the students when we plan for such media. We (Karen, Lauren, and Adrianne) would like to ask you to reconsider the solution we suggested in the paper, as one way to meet the needs of students: Guide them in consciously and jointly constructing a culture that does meet their needs--and those of the teacher as one more member of the culture. That is different that the teacher taking their needs into account and deciding how to meet those needs.
Would you be willing to consider how this might be done? Even if you decided later (or in individual situations) that this is not practical or necessary or profitable, we still might come up with some ideas for culture building by having this discussion.