Negotiating a New Culture of Doing Learning?A Study of Interaction in a Web Learning Environment withSpecial Focus on Teacher ApproachesL. Kuure 1, M. Saarenkunnas1
and P. Taalas2
University of Oulu1 University of Jyväskylä2 Abstract The article examines aspects of interaction, learning and teacher approach in an international, web-supported learning project, which was organised between three universities as part of their programmes in teacher education. The study focuses on interpretative resources which may contribute to how students perceive teacher interventions and presence in web-based learning activity. The roles and actions of teachers and students in a web-learning environment are not merely interpreted on the basis of intentional verbalised moves. The negotiation of the presence and role of participants is also guided by a variety of visual and linguistic cues on the web as well as the discourses around the learning activities. From a research methodological point of view, the article emphasizes the importance of data-driven research paradigms and a wide scope of data-collection in mapping the complex context in which the participants act. As for pedagogical implications, it seems that developing successful pedagogies is not a matter of developing particular kinds of designs for learning environments, new task types or interaction patterns alone. What is important is to involve teachers and students alike in assessing the collaborative processes of learning, aware of the complexity of meaning-making in web-supported study. 1. Introduction
This article examines interpretative resources which may contribute to
how students perceive teacher interventions and presence in web-based
learning projects. The study wishes to shed light on the nature of the
negotiation of meaning in web-supported teaching and learning contexts in
higher education. The research interest arises from our observations on the
complex dynamics of teaching and learning situations when connected with
web-based activities. The research approach
is primarily data-driven and follows the lines of discourse studies. The
approach assumes that the ways in which language is produced and interpreted
are shaped by the resources that participants have available to them and
which they apply through their social experience (cf. van Dijk, 1997, pp. 1 -
37). The study is located in higher
education in the context of an international web-supported teacher-education
project and focuses especially on mentoring.
The data include written and spoken records of interaction throughout
the course. 25 The importance of interaction is widely emphasised in networked learning projects following the principles of socio-cognitive (cf. Resnick, Levine & Teasley, 1991; Resnick, 1989; Salomon, 1993) and socio-cultural (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 1990) perspectives to learning. There is an abundance of research that focuses on interaction in learning with computers (cf. Littleton & Light, 1999). However, we suggest that there is still a need for research which would relate web-based study more strongly with its surrounding educational contexts, in its official and informal arenas. Furthermore, there seems to be a lacking body of data-driven research which would shed light on the participant perspective. The voice of the students reflecting their learning experiences and conceptions is crucial when making pedagogical conclusions, but also in confirming our interpretations of the data. This particular study is part of wider research collaboration called SHAPE (Sharing and Constructing Perspectives in Virtual Interaction), which is a cross-disciplinary research project on learning/teaching interaction in web-based environments (cf. Saarenkunnas, Järvelä, Häkkinen, Kuure, Taalas & Kunelius, 2000; Järvelä & Häkkinen, 2000). 2. Theoretical framework
2.1 Learning and interaction
The socio-cognitive (cf. Resnick et al., 1991; Resnick, 1989; Salomon, 1993) and socio-cultural (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 1990) views to thinking and learning argue that most knowledge is an interpretation of personal experiences and also social in nature: in other words, knowledge is jointly constructed in interaction. Lave and Wenger (1991), among others, have put forward the idea of cognitive apprenticeship (see also Collins, Brown & Newman1989). According to this theory, learning is a process of participation in communities of practice, at first legitimately peripheral, working its way to the more central positions. Learning occurs in interaction through cognitive apprenticeship in real contexts, in authentic learning tasks. What becomes essential from our point of view is that this learning theoretical framework puts forth interaction, i.e. the meaning making and knowledge construction process, as a focal point for developing new educational solutions and redefining the role of teachers and students. The fact that the roles of teachers and students are asymmetrical from
the perspective of power relationships alone cannot be denied. The teachers
as more experienced participants are the “gate-keepers” of communities of
practice and engage in evaluating the students, for example. However, as Lave
and Wenger (1991) point out, if learning is seen as an increased ability to
participate in a community of practice, for newcomers the purpose is to learn
to talk, not to learn from talk. This implies that teachers need to arrange
opportunities for students to fully participate in learning interaction. In
fact, Morrison & Collins (1996, p.108) regard epistemic fluency as a
bridge to sharing knowledge frameworks. This ability helps participants to
understand different ways of knowing and their forms of expression and thus
to take the perspective of others who are operating within a different
epistemic framework. 26 Student-initiated discussions are also an important resource for the
teacher. By listening to, for example, how the students conceptualise the
topic of learning, the teacher will be able to engage in negotiations of mutual
understanding: to compare his/her experienced understanding of the object of
learning to that of the students. This view is supported by research on
collaborative learning (cf. Dillenbourg, 1999), which accentuates the role of
negotiating a common ground as an essential part of the learning process
(Baker, Hansen, Joiner & Traum, 1999). The traditional classroom
interaction pattern of IRF exchange (initiation, response and feedback) as
observed by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), among others, and discussed
thoroughly by van Lier (1996), seems not be fertile soil for these
negotiations to occur. Shared knowledge, shared understanding and shared
goals are built when all parties initiate and close conversations.
Negotiation of common ground becomes even more central, when the life-worlds
of the interlocutors differ, in this case the experienced teacher and the
apprentice student. Gutierrez, Rymes & Larson (1995) provide an
interesting interpretation of this through the concept of third space, which
is created when the students and teachers step out of their scripts and
engage in true dialogue. Therefore, a more symmetrical distribution of turns
is desirable in learning interaction between the students and the teachers. There is evidence of teacher discourse style affecting the kind of
discourse created in learning situations. Ahern, Peck & Laycock (1992, p.
307) point out, for example, that the conversational approach by the teacher
in computer-mediated discussion increases peer-peer interaction and the quality
of responses. This seems to be the case even though the institutional context
of study sets certain requirements upon the teacher to fulfil (e.g.
responsibility for the process, encouraging all the students in the study,
contributing to the communicative atmosphere so that the participation
threshold is low enough). In other words, the whole context of the
learning/communicative environment should be considered from the point of
view of what kind of interaction it allows and encourages. Silverman’s (1997)
observations in his treatment of the discourses of counselling seem to fit
the framework of pedagogy as well. He suggests that focusing on particular
counselling strategies may lead to the adviser ignoring the communicative
resources of the other interlocutor. We claim that this situation is
transferable to the learning context as well. Still, this does not mean
neglect of focused teaching but proposes that the practices, framework,
goals, etc. of the interaction situation should consciously be renegotiated
together between those who are involved in the action. 2.2 Towards diversity in patterns of
teacher-student interaction
Current learning theoretical advancements, together with the emergence
of new learning environments suggest a need for a change in how we perceive
the relationship of the teacher and the student. The roles of teachers and
learners are seen as flexible. Following the idea of legitimate peripheral
participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991), we cannot truly talk about learners
and teachers, but, instead, of diverse identities along a continuum reaching
from “newcomers” through “journeyfolk” to “oldtimers”. A teacher may be an
expert of his/her specific area, but the students also have different kinds
of expertise. This principle becomes clearly visible in computer supported
learning projects, where the students are, in fact, often the masters of the
medium, instead of the teacher. 27 There are several ways of talking about teacher roles in modern
learning settings. Teachers are referred to as facilitators, tutors,
participators, resource people, learning consults, to mention a few
descriptions (cf. Nunan & Lamb, 1996, pp.137-142). An important goal for a teacher is to
become a reflective practitioner (Schön, 1987) who critically examines
his/her teaching practice and develops it further. Teachers could also be
seen as co-learners. This metaphor suggests that instead of delivering
content to the students from
an expert point of view, a teacher should engage in collaborative research
projects with the students,
all the participants assisting each other throughout the process and learning
from it as equal participators. As authenticity and originality of the
learning process are essential for successful learning projects and good
learning outcomes, the students should also be engaged in planning the
learning tasks, processes and environments. In a sense a new working metaphor
for a teacher could be a co-designer: an expert of learning and content area
who designs learning tasks and processes together with the students. When the students are involved in planning
the process and contents of learning projects, their motivation and
engagement increase. New learning environments, or the learning applications of information and communication technology (ICT), are demanding for teachers and students, especially in distance learning. Students need to be autonomous, independent and self-directed agents of their learning. Teachers have to be able to support the learning, without the aid of face-to-face interactions, relying in most cases mostly on written communication. In reality, web-based learning projects rarely consist of web-based instruction only. These projects are usually also supported by small-group meetings, lectures and other more traditional forms of contact teaching. At the same time, pedagogical applications of ICT allow collaborative
or team teaching, which is one of the most powerful benefits of networked
learning environments. In Internet-based courses, for instance, it is
possible to bring in several different kinds of experts and novices to a
single course (cf. Saarenkunnas et al., 2000; Bonk, Malikowski, Angeli &
Supplee, 1998; Bonk, K. Daytner, G. Daytner, Dennen & Malikowski, 1999).
It is a noted fact, supported by the theories of distributed cognition
(Salomon, 1993; Hutchins, 1991) and socially shared cognition (Resnick et
al., 1991), that the power of a group in building new knowledge and solving
problems, is more than the sum of its individual members. Students are
entitled to this opportunity of shared expertise, which is now easily
available via networked environments, in projects where several teachers and
their students collaborate. In a sense, the demands for redefining our roles in web-based
environments are no different from the demands we meet in traditional
classroom teaching. However, new web-based environments and ICT provide us
opportunities to reshape instruction by forcing us to design new teaching
practices. Involvement and commitment to a collaboratively built process is a
key issue in this respect. A teacher has no way of knowing whether students
are attending the course, let alone learning, if you cannot encourage them to
interact and express themselves. A silent student in a classroom may give the
teacher feedback by extralinguistic means while a web-based environment does
not yield this possibility. Therefore, the equal opportunity of and
responsibility for initiating discussions becomes a vital issue on web-based
courses. 28 3. Research procedure
3.1 Context and pedagogical approach
In the following, the overall course design including practical and
pedagogical choices of the present study will be explained. The data
discussed in this paper come from the initial phase of the NINTER project in
the spring of 1998. The pedagogic framework joined the three international
partners, the Universities of Oulu and Jyväskylä in Finland and the
University of Indiana in the USA, together for a period of two months. Each
of them had their own educational contexts with topics varying from language teacher
education to educational psychology. The shared issues of interest for all
the participants in these different study contexts were learning and
teaching. The total number of participants in the joined web-work was 136
students (106 from the USA and 30 from Finland) and 13 mentors (7 from the
USA and 6 from Finland). The mentors of the project came from different fields of education
(educational psychology, learning research, applied language studies, field
schools) with theoretical and practical knowledge on learning and teaching.
The aim of the project was to apprentice students into the culture of
teaching and learning through engaging them in joint problem-solving
concerning issues and questions in everyday educational work together with a
variety of professionals. The mentors (experienced teachers, researchers,
peers) were instructed to give feedback and to provoke the discussion by
taking different roles: e.g. a devil's advocate, pessimist, supporter. Their
task was not only to support the ongoing discussion by expert knowledge, but
also to guide the process (a more detailed discussion follows below). Electronic conferencing on the WWW was used as the shared contact
space during the course. The conferencing software was an asynchronous
web-based tool called Conferencing On the Web (COW), which is a typical
electronic conferencing environment. In order to strengthen the feeling of a
virtual learning community, also other means of communication were used. The
web-work was supported by two international ISDN-based videoconferences
between the two Finnish sites and the American counterpart. At the opening
videoconference, the students introduced themselves and at the closing
conference they discussed the cases and their experiences concerning the project.
The idea behind these videoconferences was to build a shared view of the
learning process at hand, as well as to support community building. Group meetings were also arranged on a weekly basis on each Finnish
site to ensure that the students had a possibility for face-to-face support
from their peers and instructors. These occasions had two additional
purposes: Firstly, to make sure that all students had access to the Internet
and the technology they needed to complete the project, and, secondly, to engage
the students in a discourse of sense and purpose of the project. The
activities in the Internet were designed according to the following pedagogic
approach.
Picture 1.
Case-work procedure in the COW-environment. 29 The students’ assignment was to collaborate in creating joint
theory-based cases in different areas of teaching and learning. The case-work
procedure (see Picture 1 above) started with an opening phase in which a
student described a success story or a problematic incident from a real-life
educational situation. The construction of these cases was often based on the
students' field-experiences. After the opening phase, a reflection phase
followed. The students and the other participants in the COW environment
started constructing the cases by adding comments, agreeing and disagreeing
with the others, sharing experiences, referring to a theory, providing help
for each other etc. The cases were closed with summaries by their authors. (Bonk,
Malikowski, Angeli & East, 1997; Järvelä & Häkkinen, 2000;
Saarenkunnas & al., 2000). 3.2 Research approach and data
In the following, the main theoretical underpinnings of the research approach
of the study will be described. The research approach adopted for this study
combines quantitative as well as qualitative elements. The validity and the
reliability of the study were addressed through the following methods along
the lines of Silverman (1993, p.165). Firstly, to test initial
interpretations in the whole pool of data,
various types of records or instances of data were simply counted,
e.g. the number of postings by mentors, and the number of questions by
students and mentors. Secondly, the analyses and interpretations were
discussed and compared by the three researchers. Thirdly, different types of
data were accessed in order to crosscheck interpretations. The study is also
interested in 'multiple realities' rather than one truth. In other words, we
believe that discourse data do not directly display external realities but
express interpretive procedures of people in their talk and actions (cf.
Silverman, 1993, pp.106 - 107, see also Alasuutari, 1995, pp. 63 - 68). At the beginning of the study, the applicability of various approaches
into the analysis of interaction was weighed. A structural analysis, for
example, was tried out (see chapter 4.2.). Regarding the complex nature of
studying human activity and meaning-making processes, a data-driven approach
proved suitable since our aim was to gain a deeper understanding of the
interaction at hand. Special emphasis was put on trying to let the data
“speak” and avoiding imposing the researcher=s categories on it (cf. Alasuutari, 1995, pp.67 -
68). As for the relationship between theory and empiria, it is assumed here,
however, that theory is always present in interpretation in one form or
another through our preliminary knowledge. In other words, even in a
data-driven approach it is possible to utilise data and theory in interaction
for a better understanding of the phenomenon under scrutiny (Alasuutari,
1995; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Yet it is especially important that the
researchers take a conscious effort in avoiding premature theorising when
collecting data (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). In the chosen data driven approach, the research material was examined
several times in the course of the study narrowing down and readjusting the
research questions. In practice, this procedure was followed in several
data-sessions during a six-month period in which the observations made by the
researchers were put into test. Such a cycle is illustrated in the following
example: 30 a) Observation 1: Student X's Case development
shows quality (data source: web discussion). Interpretation: The
student has been successful in the learning process. b) Observation 2: Student X expresses discontent
with her Case (data source: peer interview). Interpretation: The
criteria for quality in learning are not necessarily the same for the
teacher/researcher and for the student. Therefore direct conclusions about
the quality of learning cannot be made on the basis of one source of data
alone during restricted time span. Sarangi (1999) discusses the multilayered nature of context through
Goodwin (1992). In addition to the physical and social frame of activity,
also the behavioural context should be examined: how the social space is
being used and how the deictic relationships are formed in it. By examining
the language context, it is possible to see how we use language to define, to
use, and to get in and out of the context. There is also the
extra-situational context encompassing the social, political and cultural
dimensions as well. Following the chosen research approach, the research questions where gradually narrowed down in the course of the study. The initial focus of the study was to find out "What kind of mentoring it is that seems to be effective?" By examining the interaction during the course through different kinds of data we concluded that there is a complexity of subtle meaning-making going on in exchanges between participants. Consequently, mentoring does not only consist of active interventions by the teacher, as implied in the initial research question. We are dealing with a more complex concern, which cannot be explained by solely looking at the intentional actions of the mentor. The research question was then reformulated as "Which are the interpretative resources available in the whole learning context that may contribute to how participants in web-learning projects perceive mentoring?" The data consist of video and audio recordings of communicative
situations (collaborative work at the computer, peer discussions, videoconference
situations) and written material (Internet discussions in COW and in e-mail,
pre- and post-collaboration questionnaires) (see Table 1 below).
Table 1. The Data of this
study (italics) in the framework
of data-collection in the NINTER-project. 31 The range of data for the whole project was wide, largely because we
wanted to make sure that the data would yield possibilities to check the
initial analyses the web-discussions suggest from a wider context of student
activity. In this paper, the analysis is focused on the web-discussion,
altogether 342 postings and 25 threads[1].
These data were, however, examined in the light of the information provided
by the other data sources in the project. Here we utilized the unstructured
peer discussion and the videoconference situations as resources for checking
interpretations. First the web-discussions were read through several times
concentrating on the postings by the mentors. The early interpretations were
then crosschecked against the transcribed peer-discussion data. The following
chapter describes the process of analysis in more detail. The sequence of
presentation follows the sequence of the research procedure. 4. Analysis and discussion of the data
4.1 Mentoring moves and strategies
In the initial stages, an attempt was made to apply a structural
discourse analysis on the data along the lines of early studies on exchange
structure (e.g. Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975; Edmondson & House, 1981).
The idea of analysing the discussion according to mentoring moves
(linguistically articulated intentional interventions with the aim of guiding
the process in question), however, proved to be problematic. The original aim
was to classify the data according to three categories (e.g. Bonk, Appelman
& Hay, 1996): process move (the mentor prompts the student to provide
further details of his/her case), content move (the mentor provides theory or
an expert opinion), interactional move (the mentor's comment is directed
towards involving the students in the interaction and work). It became evident in the analysis that the above kinds of mentoring
moves overlap to the extent that almost every explicit mentoring comment
could fit more than one category. Another problem from the point of view of
this kind of analysis was the specific kind of sequential structure in
asynchronous communication in comparison to the adjacency-pair sequence of
face-to-face interaction (cf. Sacks, 1987, p. 55). The moves that the mentors
made were seldom explicitly referred to in the later stages. Thus, it was
often impossible to trace how the intended audience had interpreted the
comments. In order to achieve a satisfying picture of mentoring and
instructional interaction in a web-based learning environment, a fuller
account of the whole institutional and interactional context was needed. The
initial structural analysis clearly showed the complexity of the phenomenon
at hand. For this reason, we turned to the more data-driven approach covering
a wider range of data. One of the verbalised starting points for mentoring in our project was
based on Bonk and Kim’s (1998) twelve forms of learning assistance. Using
their list of mentoring strategies, guidelines and instructions for teachers
were produced. Students had access to these documents as well. These
guidelines illustrated possible mentoring actions through a list of phrases.
Mentors were encouraged to reflect upon their own interactional roles and to
expand their repertoire of interventions. In addition to direct instruction,
other kinds of electronic assistance were discussed. These included social
acknowledgement (e.g. ‘I agree with everything you say’), cognitive task
structuring (e.g. ‘Ok, now summarise your case’), encouraging
articulation/dialogue prompting (e.g. ‘Does anyone have a counterpoint or
alternative to this situation?’), and fostering reflection and self awareness
(e.g. ‘Describe how your teaching philosophy will vary from this...’)[2]. 32 This list certainly served as a good point of
departure when trying to explore the different sides of mentor roles and
teaching/learning interaction. It focused attention to the variety of
possible strategies for action and was thus a good tool for developing
teaching practices, for example. However, we also noted that developing
successful mentoring practices cannot solely be based on a strategic
approach, for several reasons. Firstly, if teaching strategies are focused
too forcefully, the importance of negotiation of meaning may fade. We easily
forget that true reciprocity in interaction also involves listening.
The more the teachers give students space to communicate and elaborate their
thoughts and conceptions publicly, the better they can take into account
their perspectives in guiding the process (cf. Silverman 1997 and related
discussion above). Secondly, since interaction is a process of meaning
negotiation, it must also be observed that feedback given by the teacher may
be interpreted in several ways depending on the addressee. For example, a
comment meant as social acknowledgement could be understood as criticism.
From the teacher=s
perspective, it is thus impossible to find out what kind of thought processes
individual mentoring moves evoke in a student. This becomes crucial in
web-based asynchronous communication because of the delay in the pace of
exchanges and the lack of most extra-linguistic means for communicating and
interpreting pragmatic meaning (cf. Stubbs, 1983). Therefore, we wish to
emphasise the teacher's interaction skills especially in terms of listening
and contributing to the learning environment so that it supports such an
approach in interaction. 4.2. Strategic and collegial mentoring
From the data-driven research perspective used in the analysis, two
different mentoring approaches seemed to be discernible in the COW
environment. These were labelled as strategic
mentoring and collegial
mentoring. By strategic mentoring we refer to the mentor's active
intervention to guide the process of study. As the mentor thus positions
him/herself as the teacher in the interaction, the orientation of support or
guidance could be termed as vertical. By collegial mentoring, on the other
hand, we mean an approach in interaction, which focuses on co-participation
instead of “teaching”. The orientation of mentoring in this case is
horizontal. A similar observation on the same data has also been made by Bonk
et al. (1999). The strategic approach is identifiable in the Case discussions
through expressions of the type listed in the "Twelve forms of
electronic mentoring" (e.g. ‘You might want to write to Dr. X for...’).
Such interventions often attempt to direct the students towards the process
vision represented by the teachers on the course. An example of such guidance
is illustrated in the following data excerpt: … As we trying to connect with theory with
the practice of teaching, I'd like to know a little bit more about portfolio
assessment from the point of view of your learning/teaching experiences. Have
you ever used portfolio assessment /seen it used in schools? Where? Could you
describe a concrete situation…
(Mentor S in Finland_Cases) 33 The collegial mentoring approach is exemplified in the following
extract from Case discussions. Here the mentor shares personal experience
with the students and relates the comment to theoretical discourse around the
topic. This is a very difficult issue. I
have personally thought about these kinds of problems and talked about them
among some university staff who were, like me, attending a course on personal
tutoring of students. I felt relieved when the teachers said that we should
recognize the fact that we are not therapists and we should therefore not try
to take responsibility for something that belongs to "expertise" of
some other field. of course, we can act as human beings Y This is not an issue only in
relation to psychological problems, but also in terms of any guidance and
tutoring, academic or personal. (Mentor K in Finland_Cases) During the project, the issue of mentor approach seemed to be of
importance to us as teachers, and the nature and consequences of different
mentoring approaches were dealt with in planning and executing the COW
course. Our concern with this issue became visible in the e-mail discussions
and project meetings. We paid special attention to the first approach as we
felt that it would not be sufficient on its own, and, moreover, would easily
work against the effort for equal-power discourse by producing asymmetry
between participant roles in interaction. 4.3 Textual resources for interpreting role
and presence
In our data analysis, we found out that also seemingly insignificant
texts, such as address forms and definitions after participant names and
signatures on web pages, contribute to our interpretations of particular
roles and social rank conventionally implicated by them (cf. Levinson, 1983,
p. 53). Levine, Resnick and Higgins (1993, p. 593) point out that people anticipate
the interactions they are engaging in on the basis of the mental
representations they have of others. The teacher role, for example, is easily
associated with particular kinds of interactional patterns, which are
culturally bound. In addition to anticipation, the explicitly verbalised
teaching philosophies in the interaction itself contribute to the complexity
of aspects related to studying and working in new learning environments. This
is echoed in the conflicting discourses through which participants seek their
roles and identities as learners. Students might, for example, express a wish
for independence in learning, but elsewhere express a need for being
“taught”. B: Y and come here to hear
"All right, go the library!"
We'll never get so deep in these issues in that half-hour compared to
listening to a person who has done research and would let us have a little of
that C: I don't mean that we would need
to go back to one person delivering knowledge from above and put it into our
heads B: but it is that we go from one end
to another C: from one extreme to another Y (Students in peer discussion,
translated from Finnish) 34 In the talk around the study experience one of the mentors (referred to as M from now on) was reconstructed as having strong presence in the web environment. This became evident in the transcribed evaluation discussions among students, for example (see the excerpt below). I think it could have gone somehow
differently so that M would not have been so quick to answer comments because
as far as I am concerned it happened that when I wanted to comment something
s/he had already been there and then I did not bother any more because s/he
had said it already (Student in peer discussion, translated from
Finnish) Initially, we assumed that a high number of postings would be the
reason for the students seeing M as strongly present in COW. Counting the
actual postings we, however, noticed that M had visited the space reserved
for the Finnish students only six times, whereas the most productive mentor
had visited the same space 19 times (average number of postings by mentor was
8.5). In conclusion, the impression about active and powerful participation
was constructed by other factors than the frequency of postings. Firstly, some of M's visibility was due to the features of the
conferencing system. M was visible in different locations at the conference.
The software required assigning certain administrator functions to those
responsible for putting up the web-environment and creating the conferences.
M was assigned the function of “instructor”. Other responsible people were
called “fair witnesses”. They had access and control rights over the whole
environment, which was stated on the opening page of the Finnish conference.
This was the page, which had to be accessed each time at entering the Finland
Cases conference (see Picture 2 below). 35
Picture 2. The opening page
of the Finland Cases conference 36 Secondly, the authorial choice in producing various textual elements
such as Signatures, Profiles or conference descriptions and instructions (how
to proceed) carry meaning. Signatures would appear with each posting and
typically include a participant name together with a login name (e.g. Author: Jane Smith (jsmith)). The
login name was created by the Unix administrator, but the participant name
area could be designed and modified by the participant him/herself. Thus the
author could include indicators of status or academic rank (e.g. Dr. M - Project MOO Supervisor (userid))
in the Signature according to his/her wish. In the Profile, the author had
the opportunity of giving more personal details about him/herself. It could
be accessed through the hyperlink on the login name in the Signature. Most
Profiles included minimal information such as name, university and study
subjects, or no details at all (see Picture 3 below). Few participants had
designed a more extensive homepage or homepage webonry. Conference descriptions
and instructions were welcome messages placed by the instructor on the
conference opening page.
Picture 3. An example of a
user profile. These authorial choices, partly constrained by the conference system, are
raw material for interpretations on the hidden and explicit structures and
practices of institutional culture (cf. Fairclough, 1989; Peräkylä, 1998).
How strong presence is perceived by different people is dependent on their
own background, beliefs and values. From the Finnish perspective, M could be
understood as an experienced academic with clear institutional power. Thirdly, the nature of actual mentoring discourse, i.e. the text
produced by the mentors offers a further explanation for M's strong presence
in COW. M was one of the driving forces in planning the activities and
improving the environment. M was also very active in the International Café,
a conference area set up for socialising. Out of M's ten postings two where
also topic-opening turns, and others otherwise posted in the initial phase of
the discussion. In addition to this, M positioned him/herself in the role of
the host by invitations and welcomes thus conveying ownership of the
environment. The following data extract from COW café opening discussion
illustrates this. Author: Dr. M (Project MOO Supervisor) ( xxxx) Date: Feb. 3 4:18 AM 1998 Hello, Flower Power
people. Welcome to COW! COWs do their part for fertilizing plants and making
them grow far beyond what was expected. I hope you will all learn and grow in
COW as well. We have had more than 350 preservice teachers discussing in COW
here in Indiana during the past year and there are lots of interesting
stories that they have created. We saved 4 of their case discussions in the
practice cases in the Cultural Immersion conference--go there and read some
interesting stories in the US about paddling, drugs, motivation, and so
forth. That is all for now as the Project MOO Supervisor needs to go to bed.
Suffice to say, we are glad to have you in the COW conference this spring. It
is Spring in Finland, right? Very warm winter we are having here in US this
year. Not much snow at all (have yet to shovel). Have a barnful of fun in
COW. Bye. 37 The centrality of M's role was reinforced by talk in other related learning events, such as small group meetings and videoconferences, which M chaired. This suggests the importance of social discourse in shaping the participant roles. 4.4
Interpretative resources for constructing mentor role and presence
The following table summarises the interpretative resources the
students have available in constructing role and presence in web-supported
study.
Table 2. Interpretative
resources available for constructing mentor role and presence. The examples in the previous analysis illustrate the complexity of
constructing interpretations and drawing conclusions around teaching and
learning, especially in electronic learning environments. As Table 2 above
illustrates, the participants in web-supported learning projects have a range
of resources available for interpreting the activities going on during the
working process. These resources are not restricted to the web-environment
itself. Rather, the students relate these events to the whole educational
context they are part of. Furthermore, it is not only the official but also
the unofficial stages of action that provide opportunities for meaning-making
and elaborating the shared understanding concerning the goals of learning and
desirable learning and teaching actions. The observations of Sarangi (1998, pp. 90, 106) and Nunan & Lamb
(1996, p.134) support the above interpretations. They point out that there is
a multiplicity of social and interactional relationships negotiated in
pedagogic situations, which shape the practices of learning, and of which
teachers and students rarely are aware. On one hand, there are the
institutionalised statuses of teachers and students with their expected and
predictable behaviour patterns, and, on the other hand, the variety of roles
and tasks, negotiated by speakers and hearers in natural conversation. From
the teacher's point of view this requires constant research and challenging
of his/her teaching practices and pedagogical choices. 5. Conclusion
This study focussed on examining the interpretative resources
available in the whole learning context that may contribute to how
participants of web learning projects perceive mentoring. The data of the
study came from an international web-supported learning project and the
research approach adopted relied on the notion discourse as situated,
constitutive use of language in social settings and was thus primarily
data-driven. The analysis singled out four different types of interpretative
resources: constraints of the conferencing system, authorial choices in
frequently appearing textual elements, sequencing and the contents of web-discussions
as well as participation in other related learning situations, formal and
informal. 38 The results imply that understanding web-based learning requires
careful consideration of all the fora on which learning activities are
performed and negotiated. It is the hidden and outspoken rules of the
learning community that are at play in developing a new learning culture.
From a research methodological point of view, we wish to emphasize the
importance of data-driven research paradigms and a wide scope of
data-collection in mapping the complex context in which the participants act.
As for pedagogical implications, it seems that developing successful
pedagogies is not a matter of developing particular kinds of designs for
learning environments, new task types or interaction patterns alone. What is
important is to involve teachers and students alike in assessing the
collaborative processes of learning, aware of the complexity of the
meaning-making process. To reach the students= learning experience teachers need sophisticated
tools or methods for analysing the studying process while it is still in
progress, for classroom and web-work alike. In other words, we need to
develop such pedagogical practices, which enable negotiation of a new culture
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