Engagement+and+Communication+-+Learners'+Identities+and+Stories


 * Tools of Engagement & Communication -- Learners' Identities & Stories**

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Former chapter synopsis
This chapter addresses theoretical and practical issues surrounding collaborative and other collective endeavours, and introduces a number of tools -- digital stories, e-portfolios, blogs and wikis -- and their uses in fostering and facilitating communication among learners, engagement with course content, and development of various modes of online participation. An underlying theme of the chapter is our view that learners establish online identities and then extend those identities to interact with other learners, and we present a number of activities to work through this spectrum of identity creation, a spectrum which ranges from the creation of narratives in the form of stories, through personal narratives in the form of blogs, to the creation of group knowledge in the form of wikis. A further extension to this is the notion of a portable narrative in the form of e-portfolios. When taken as a whole, this spectrum presents a unified view of learner identity as it develops online. This notion of learner identity crystallizes the challenge of online engagement, and the activities that we adopt to work through identity creation can also serve to foster this engagement. [185 words]

Chapter updates
Chapter mayors (Paul Beaufait, Rick Lavin & Joe Tomei) received detailed feedback and suggestions from David Harper in Aug. 2007, and have reworked the chapter accordingly. The chapter was put together according to the original conception of a kind of umbrella for a number of contributions, more akin to a book part itself containing chapter-like sections, and thus came in at around 100 pages. The main thrust of the reworking was to bring that down to the chapter average of about 30 pages. One way we've done this is to move a long section on collaboration along with another with narratives on collaboration to their own chapter (currently following Ch. 5 in the Book Outline). The remainder we have revised repeatedly, as it appears that CoL editors are intending to be fairly ruthless about editing. This chapter has several contributors, who will of course have a keen interest in any changes. As soon as we, in conjunction with David and Sandy, have come up with coherent proposals for presentation to CoL editors, we'll be contacting contributors for comments on proposed changes. [Rick Lavin, 20070920, edited for clarity 20070924; updated by Paul Beaufait (ltdproject), 20071108]

Hard divisions
After struggling with various options involving drastic cuts in virtually every section, an option that we very much wanted to avoid, and after further consultation with the editors, we eventually opted to split the chapter into two more. The first (called Chapter 21a for now) focuses on identity and features Tod Anderson's piece on Students' Participation in Online Learning Environments, Lynn Kirkland Harvey's piece on Online Learners' Identities, and Karen Barnstable & Kathryn Chang Barker's piece Introducing E-Portfolios. The second (21b for now) focuses on tools of engagement and features a Tomei and Lavin piece on Blogs, another Lavin and Tomei piece on Wikis, and David Brear's piece on Digital Storytelling. Note that this is just what we have opted to submit to the editors to discharge our duty as chapter mayors, and we feel that both chapters represent coherent wholes despite the variety of contributions. We understand that editors whose duty it is to put the whole book together may well choose to reverse some of these decisions, or move sections around into different configurations. At the very least, chapter numbers will surely change. Thanks to contributors for your continuing patience. We submitted Chapters 21a and 21b to Sandy and David (20071103). We expect the editors will be contacting you shortly to tell you what they have decided and to seek your approval for any changes. [Rick Lavin, 20071101; updated by Paul Beaufait (ltdproject), 20071105]

21a. Learners' identities in online education
In this chapter, we revisit identity-related issues beginning with Lynn Harvey's discussion of identity. Given that educators have a measure of control over, and vested interests in, how they represent themselves online, we suggest that learners' online identities, over which educators exert quite limited control, deserve special consideration. The importance of identity-related issues looms even larger when we embrace the notion that identity is the base from which learners' engagement with content, as well as communication with others, begins. As students establish their identities, they have to negotiate and engage with other students, and in online courses channels for negotiation and engagement are necessarily different from those in traditional classrooms. The power of online classrooms does not simply arise out of their time- and space-shifting potentials, but also from the potential for diverse sets of many-to-many relationships as students engage with each other. Many of the lessons that we aim to teach students are not simply to do with mastering course content, but also involve understandings of issues involved in working with others and collaborating towards shared goals. Deliberate appraisals of learners' identities in online environments can help us realize these aims. This is supported by Tod Anderson's summary of secondary student participation in online learning, a summary which provides a snapshot for technological understanding from a locale that might represent a best case scenario - or at least a fairly advanced one - in which the technologies in use have to a large extent been adopted from higher education. We note that secondary schools face many of the same issues that tertiary and adult educators began grappling with years ago, and continue to face. These observations provide a springboard into a wide-ranging discussion of online learners' identities, underscoring the necessity for considering learners' identities from the very beginning of online work, rather than just as a concern of secondary and tertiary educators. The chapter concludes with a concrete example of identity construction and a possible end point to online education in the form of Kathryn Chang Barker and Karen Barnstable's discussion of e-portfolios. [Paul Beaufait (ltdproject), 20071105; edited by Rick Lavin 20071105, edited by Joe Tomei 20071220; edited by Rick Lavin 2071221]

21b. Tools for online engagement
This chapter combines two sections on relatively new technologies, blogs and wikis, with a third on digital storytelling, not only to introduce the possibilities of creating sets of many-to-many relations within classes, and potentially outside classes as well, but also to encourage educators to challenge themselves to take up blogs, wikis, and digital storytelling in their classrooms as a way of returning to a state of beginner's mind. These tools are not only powerful in and of themselves, but may have an even greater potential when used together. The first section on blogs argues that they may be the best all-round tool for computer-mediated communication (CMC). Blogs can serve as an ideal tool for learners and educators getting their feet wet with online learning, and allow learners and educators alike to build their online identities in a semi-enclosed space from which they can venture out on their own terms to engage with others. The following section on wikis points to possibilities of using these powerful tools for collaboration, suggesting that in general wikis work better when learners and educators already have a solid foundation in blogging. This section outlines work that attempts to merge the functions of blogs and wikis, and highlights issues associated with usability and flow. The third section takes up digital storytelling, to walk educators through the process of planning and creating their own stories, and to prepare them to teach their students how to do the same. Digital storytelling takes one of the oldest urges of humankind and places it firmly in the technological present. The process of assembling various media and pieces of information into a story encourages deep learner engagement, and can be a wonderfully effective way to master curricular content, while helping to encourage development of computer literacy. Blogs, wikis, and digital media are but a narrow selection of the tools for online engagement, but we feel they cast a wide enough net to familiarize readers with some of the options that now exist. [Paul Beaufait (ltdproject), 20071105; edited by Rick Lavin, 20071105]