Learning, Culture and Community in Online Education:
Research and
Practice
Caroline Haythornthwaite, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Michelle M. Kazmer, School of Information Studies, Florida State University
2004
Peter Lang Publishers
Overview of the Book
In 1996 the
Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) began an Internet-based program that allows
students across the U.S. and indeed across the world to earn a MasterÕs degree
at a distance from campus and from each other. The program option is known as
"LEEP" – Library Experimental Education Project. It has been an
outstanding success, with a 97% retention rate of students, faculty commitment
to the endeavor, and a general recognition of delivering a high quality
education. In 2001, the program was awarded the Sloan-C Award for Most
Outstanding Asynchronous Learning Network (ALN) Program.
The program
has been more than just an educational project. As an early innovation in
Internet use, the effort that has gone into making this program a success
represents early lessons on how to engage in such activity – how to
exchange information, build a distributed learning community, manage new
technology and new ways of teaching, operate in an online environment, and
change the face of educational practice. Since its inception, LEEP has been
evaluated and assessed for its pedagogical and online practices. The research
on this program represents a wealth of information about new online practices,
including teaching, learning, managing projects, maintaining relationships,
building community, and developing a culture. While reports of the ongoing work
of LEEP and research presentations have been made and published, their
diversity means they can only be found in many different locations, addressed
to many different audiences both academic and professional.
As the body
of work has reached critical mass, it is time to bring the work together into
one place to show the diversity of questions raised when creating this kind of
environment, as well as the diversity of perspectives that have been brought to
it. We believe it is important, and of interest to many readers, to bring
together in one place these many works. We find that as these kinds of online environments
are used more for teaching, learning, and business, they cannot be well
understood without considering the many impacts they have on all aspects of
life and learning. Indeed, our purpose with this book is to show how important
it is to consider the many ways in which adopting and implementing an
environment of this sort affects the lives of the individuals involved and the
milieu they come to live in. Moreover, this kind of coverage is important
because this array of work has created new interesting questions for
environments like these, such as: How can we use online modalities to enhance
the feeling of personal contact, and make individuals in a course feel closer
to the instructor than in a traditional classroom? How can we increase and monitor
participation online? As we create these environments, are we re-establishing
goals of traditional education or creating new ones?
While the
book focuses on studies of the LEEP environment, we believe the work included
in this book extends to online education in general. The content of the
instruction is not as prominent as the means of delivery, the kind of bonding
and community generated, the new interaction patterns emerging among online
learners, and the way this Internet presence has come into the home and work
lives. As one of the few environments that has been studied from multiple
perspectives, and as a real example of success in online education, we believe
that this collection of studies will be of great interest to readers in many
fields, including academics and students in education, library and information
science, communications, sociology, and social studies of technology;
university administrators engaged in creating or maintaining such programs; and
computer systems developers engaged in interface design and the development and
management of online education environments and of online environments for any
application.
Caroline Haythornthwaite &
Michelle M. Kazmer, Editors
Peter Lang Publishers, NY, 2004
Foreword
Reflecting on Best Practices, Amy Bruckman, pp. ix-xi
Introduction
Multiple Perspectives and Practices in Online Education, Caroline Haythornthwaite & Michelle M. Kazmer, pp. xiii-xxviii
Education Online
1 Navigating the Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Pedagogy, Nicholas C. Burbules, pp 3-17
2 Maintaining the Affordances of Traditional Education Long Distance, Bertram C. Bruce, pp. 19-32
Exploring Community
3 Community Development among Distance Learners: Temporal and Technological Dimensions, Caroline Haythornthwaite, Michelle M. Kazmer, Jennifer Robins, & Susan Shoemaker, pp. 35-57
4 Catch a Cyber by the Tale: Online Orality and the Lore of a Distributed Learning Community, Betsy Hearne & Anna Nielsen, pp. 59-87
5 Juggling Multiple Social Worlds: Distance Students Online and Offline, Michelle M. Kazmer & Caroline Haythornthwaite, pp. 89-109
6 Disengaging from Online Community, Michelle M. Kazmer, pp. 111-126
New Challenges and New Features in Online
Settings
7 Affordances of Persistent Conversation: Promoting Communities That Work, Caroline Haythornthwaite & Alvan Bregman, pp. 129-143
8 Affording a Place: The Persistent Structures of LEEP, Jenny Robins, pp. 145-161
9 Changing Patterns of Participation: Interactions in a Synchronous Audio+Chat Classroom, Karen Ruhleder, pp. 163-176
10 Over-the-Shoulder Learning in a Distance Education Environment, Michael B. Twidale & Karen Ruhleder, pp. 175-194
Teaching and Learning Online
11 Teaching and Learning Online: LEEPÕs Tribal Gleanings, Pat Lawton & Rae-Anne Montague, pp. 197-213
12 Faculty Perspectives, Rae-Anne Montague & Linda C. Smith, pp. 215-227
13 The Virtual Classroom as Ludic Space, Christine Jenkins, pp. 229-242
Management and Administration
14 The Distance Education Program from the Management Perspective, Leigh S. Estabrook, pp. 245-254
15 User-Centered Support and Technology in LEEP, Jill Gengler, pp. 255-266
16 Reshaping Traditional Services for Nontraditional Learning: The LEEP Student in the Library, Susan E. Searing, pp. 267-282
17 The View from Campus Administration, Lanny Arvan , pp. 283-290
LEEP Bibliography, compiled by Rae-Anne Montague, pp. 291-296
Contributors, pp. 297-301