[Air-l] Barriers to participation?

[Denise N. Rall]

Dear Angelina -


Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. 1999. Building learning
communities in cyberspace: Effective strategies for
the online classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

These folks describe some of the barriers to
participating in virtual communities. Here's the gist
of one researcher from my thesis:

"As lessons from the virtual classroom indicate, not
all students who participate in online communities are
successful in developing online personae (see below). 
Pratt describes the considerable skill set required
for online identity formation as the following:
•the ability to carry on an internal dialogue in order
to formulate responses
•the creation of a semblance of privacy both in terms
of the space from which the person communicates and
the ability to create an internal sense of privacy
•the ability to deal with emotional issues in textual
form
•the ability to create a mental picture of the partner
in the communication process
•the ability to create a sense of presence online
through the personalization of communications (Pratt
1996: 119-120).
Pratt, K. 1996. The electronic personality
[unpublished thesis]. The Human Organization Systems
Program, Fielding Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara,
CA.

Old stuff but -- will set up the dynamics for barriers
to learning.

I suspect you are looking at the technology as a
barrier.  Pallof & Pratt look at the personality
attributes of the user/learner as the barrier. 
As lessons from the virtual classroom indicate, not
all students who participate in online communities are
successful in developing online personae (see below). 
Pratt describes the considerable skill set required
for online identity formation as the following:
•	the ability to carry on an internal dialogue in
order to formulate responses
•	the creation of a semblance of privacy both in terms
of the space from which the person communicates and
the ability to create an internal sense of privacy
•	the ability to deal with emotional issues in textual
form
•	the ability to create a mental picture of the
partner in the communication process
•	the ability to create a sense of presence online
through the personalization of communications (Pratt
1996: 119-120).

Steve Jones also noted:  “The extent to which people
use [the internet] as a means to invent new personas,
to recreate their own identities, or engage in a
combination of the two and the ways in which they do
so are issues central to the construction of a
computer-mediated social world” (Jones, S. 1997:156). 


Cheers. Denise


Steve Jones noted:  “The extent to which people use
[the internet] as a means to invent new personas, to
recreate their own identities, or engage in a
combination of the two and the ways in which they do
so are issues central to the construction of a
computer-mediated social world” (Jones, S. 1997:156).  

Denise N. Rall, PhD thesis, "Locating four pathways to 
internet scholarship" School of Env. Science, Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA 
Tues: Room T2.17, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 Mobile 0438 233 344 
http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/rsm/staff/pages/drall/
Virtual member, Cybermetrics Group, University of Wolverhampton, UK
http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/index.html


 
____________________________________________________________________________________
The fish are biting. 
Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing.
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch_v2.php