Haythornthwaite (2009) and Duguid (2006) discuss the modes and quality of online peer production and the reward systems. These concepts about online peer production help me reflect on the difference between online class discussion and face-to-face class discussion.
The shift from contribution to retrieval
Peer production through computers can be easily stored and retrieved. Haythornthwaite (2009) indicates the value of information resources has shifted from contribution to retrieval. In educational perspectives, the strength of text mediation lies in the opportunities for learners to think, reflect, and revise their ideas (Lotman, 1988; Wertsh & Biven, 1992). For teachers who emphasize the importance of process rather than product, the retrieval of the process of learning can be easily achieved by means of the computer. In a face-to-face class, many bright ideas appear transiently and then disappear. Those ideas could be the precious resources to facilitate learning if learners had access to them every time when they needed.
Engagement
Engagement, the experience of being active, is important for peer production. In online peer production, either lightweight peer production (LWPP) or heavyweight peer production (HWPP), contributors should get involved in the tasks in order to assist a project to be completed. Take Wikipedia for instance, users, based on their own interests, are allowed to contribute to a new or given topic. They are also allowed to remove old comments by providing reasons and expand a topic by providing verifiable evidence. The sense of constantly interacting with others to refine the knowledge in order to approach accuracy is one of the spirits of this open source website. The constant interaction may increase one’s social presence, giving the individual a feeling of being there with others (Haythornthwaite, 2009). The screenshot below shows the three out of five fundamental principles of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia allows disagreement and take care of avoiding unnecessary flaming. The tolerance of disagreement may be absent in face-to-face class, where students may be embarrassed to challenge their peers’ ideas in person. However, some people prefer talking face-to-face because they can easily tell their interlocutors’ attitudes toward an issue by recognizing their facial expressions. In an online environment where these cues are missing, I would say the use of emoticons may more or less compensate for the absence of paralanguage.
In addition, Wikipedia encourages conversation to resolve disputes. It is believed to increase its users’ participation since Duguid (2006) said allowing anyone to make changes to the text without discussion is unlikely to attract people willing to work hard on an entry. The following screenshot shows one part of the talk page of Taiwan independence. The contributor Jiang expressed her thought of the topic and the reason she deleted some content.
In a face-to-face class, class discussion usually focuses on consensus. For example, in a face-to-face reading class, after the group members read an article, they have to discuss with their group members the discussion questions. One of it is “what will you do if you were a patient in the situation?” There are various possible answers. However, based on my course observation most of the time one group member first expressed his opinion and then other group members would agree with him. That’s all. The group conversation ended. Sometimes some other group members would continue the conversation within the frame of the first speaker’s idea. In other words, the group conversation quickly reached consensus, but meanwhile lost heteroglossia. The heteroglossia in group conversation functions as meaning negotiation, which is important in Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development.
The quality of peer production
Duguid (2006) points out a problem of online peer production; that is, the quality of latest post does not guarantee better quality than its predecessors. It is because people work independently may concern little about the consistency of their contribution to the project as a whole. One of the examples is how different Wikipedian contributors summarized how Defoe became famous. The meaning of the posts somehow changes how Defoe became famous from the original post. I think the problem occurs mostly due to the nonobligation to go through the whole posts, so contributors misinterpret the meaning of the previous posts and affect the latter contributors who also do not go through the whole posts. The situation is less likely to happen in in-person peer production because most of the time we cannot actively ignore what our interlocutors are saying or choose only a certain part that we want to listen to. With regard to it, we are less likely to misinterpret our interlocutors’ words, caused by not paying attention to the whole context. Therefore, one of the ways to stop piling errors on top of errors is to ask individuals to read the original post before reading the subsequent posts or before posting their own comments. In this way, each contributor can put his / her comments into context.
Great analysis! I enjoyed the comparison to traditional classrooms. I agree that during face-to-face conversations, most people tend to want to come to an agreement fairly quickly. (This isn't necessarily true among people who are very comfortable together, but in a classroom environment where you are only weakly tied to your classmates it is.) I would expand upon that to say that even if the conversation were moved from the classroom to online, the participants would continue to be generally polite because they know that they will see the person again, but feel a bit more freedom in sharing different opinions. This might be a good balance between the immediate consensus of face-to-face and the brutal flaming of anonymous virtual contact.
ReplyDeleteYour other point about online collaboration remain true though - it is much easier to ignore text on a screen than a person in front of you.
You make a very good point about emoticons acting as a compensating factor in online discussions. I've noticed in some online interactions that people forget they are talking to another person and that their words can have an effect on that person's emotional state. I agree with Andrea about your point on online collaboration and ignoring texts. The sense of urgency to respond to a text message is usually not nearly as great as in face-to-face interaction.
ReplyDeleteHai Bug,
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. I like the way you compare discussion on f2f classroom with the online classroom. I also feel the same like you, while I have not proved it with a research. Some students which are so quite in the classroom in my several classes jump into leader in online discussion. They idea just like flying smoothly through writing. Therefore, with the existing of online discussion forum and online tools, as a teacher, I have to reflect back to the way I assess my students. Silent in a classroom can become a gold chain of communication, when it is turn into a good facilitated discussion in the virtual forum. These two type of classroom, f2f and online, could develop a better learning when them being blended. That's why currently, there are many research try to look at seriously on blended/hybrid learning.
I learned a new word: heteroglossia! The negotiation around the content of Wikipedia entries happens in the comments, and it can be one way to preserve the contributors' feeling of engagement if their edits do not survive subsequent review. I found your point about disagreement in a face to face classroom setting quite thought-provoking; I tend to encourage class discussions, and I remember very few times when there was open disagreement (unless the discussion required students to take opposing sides of an issue), probably for the reasons of politeness you mentioned. That said, education should be about the comparison of often-conflicting ideas, and an online environment can provide good models of how people with diverse ideas can interact productively.
ReplyDeleteIn this session we read the articles about online peer production, social recommender systems, social Q & A websites, etc. By reading other classmates’ blogs, I found out social annotations play an important role in the three concepts mentioned above. Take a Q & A website for instance, the way that some users ask questions and others answer them is viewed as peer production. This kind of peer production is very different from expert production, such as encyclopedia, dictionaries, etc. The quality of online peer production is uncontrolled but the speed of finding an answer is faster than its counterpart. To cope with the quality of online peer production, social recommender systems are created. Gaining points is the most common way of the social recommender system. As one’s points are increasing, her/his contribution has a chance to be put in the front page. In this way, the contribution is more easily to be found, which creates another kind of reward for the contributor.
ReplyDeleteSince reward is an important factor to engage users in the online community, I am thinking how to transfer the strength of the social rewards to either online or offline courses. I think one of the ways is to let students engage in the tasks that they have the chance to interact with people outside the classroom. Through interacting with “outsiders”, students are able to gather more information than they used to have when only interacting with the teacher and other classmates. This kind of interaction can also give students a feeling of connecting what they learn in the class with the real world where they’re living. It is crucial to increasing their motivation in the class.