Learning in online communities - some thoughts on face-to-face interaction

One of the insights afforded by ONL171 is the importance of social presence in communities of practice and inquiry (Weller & Anderson, 2013; see also Lave & Wenger, 1991). This is not least important in online environments since the absence of face-to-face interaction in the form of physical meetings (seminars, lectures, workshops, etc) is replaced, if at all, by online synchronous meetings such as webinars and tweetchats. In the following I will discuss the notion of social presence in online courses from a social systems view on learning (Wenger, 2010).

Let me first give you a brief in-road.

The ONL PBL group to which I belong, Group 1, has been successful in many ways: all participants are fully active, we have created a bond of trust between us, and our group is capable of bringing the issues under consideration forward in a fruitful manner. As you say, one thing leads to another, and one strand presented by one of the participants is followed up and developed by the others, thereby leading to a more allround consideration of the issue than would probably otherwise have been possible if the same deliberations had taken place in solitude. This, then, would be an example of learning in a community of practice (Wenger, 2010).

However, what does not happen to the same extent in our online meetings as would probably have been the case if we had met face-to-face, is the social small talk. During the first few weeks we all came online at least ten minutes before the scheduled time to start, but that was not primarily in order to chit chat, but to make sure that mircophones, sound levels and cameras were working properly.

As the weeks have passed, we have become very good at these technical issues and now nobody struggles with them. This means that most of the participants go online just a couple of minutes before the meeting is due to start. We are all very happy to see each other every time we meet, but there just is no space for this small talk. Likewise, when the meeting is over, we all look forward to the next one, but we end the meeting immediately and thus leave the common space.

In campus-based courses participants usually (though not everyone, of course!) arrive a little time before the seminar begins. After the first few meetings, when everyone has got to know each other a bit, there is usually quite a bit of talk before the seminar starts. Even after a few meetings participants arrive in good time for the seminar. This of course may have a purely practical explanation: since most people will have to do some travelling to get to the institution, however short it may be, there is still that uncertainty about exact timing and you don’t want to be late.

Also, campus-based seminars are usually so long that you need to have a break when the participants can go and get a coffee or just relax a bit - and talk. You sit and talk, you walk and talk, you queue and talk. And after the seminar, when the group disperses, you talk on the way out.

The question now is: How important is this kind of talk in relation to social presence? In our PBL group we have not had all these opportunities for small talk typically offered by campus courses, nor have we sought them. We could have discussed it, and someone could have suggested that we go online say ten minutes before the meeting starts just to for the social aspects, or that we stay on after the meeting to round things up a bit and catch up with life. Our PBL meetings are not long enough to warrant a break, and if we had had breaks, we would probably have left the computer to relax; we would not have stayed on to talk. But we haven’t done that, and yet, a clear sense of community has emerged in these few weeks.

This begs the question of one of the often-raised objections to online courses, the absense of face-to-face social interaction that is supposed to be so important for sustainability and sense of community (REF). Maybe there are other aspects that are more important? During our discussions about our experiences of the course and of our online journey, certain features have emerged:

• curiosity
• opennes to learning
• supporting climate with respect for each other’s contributions
• a gradual increase in sharing a common goal

We seem to have established a “regime of competence” (Wenger, 2010) without really being explicitly aware of each other’s competences. With this I mean that we function as a community of practice, and as a system for learning, and that we do this in spite of the fact that we have not been brought together because of our individual competences, but rather randomly, possibly with an idea from the course organizers to make sure that each group has participants from more than one country.

So, what have been the catalyst for this successful online community? At present, I really cannot say for sure. There were frustrations initially, both owing to technology and to the perceived absence of structrue to the course. However, one thing I think has been of importance is our facilitator, who has been very careful to scaffold us, but not to control or lead. He has trusted us, he has allowed us to try things out and to evaluate them, to retrace our steps and try again.

In addition to this important factor, I suggest that our synchronous online face-to-face meetings have been crucial in establishing social presence. Social media in general puts considerable emphasis on personal and even private expression. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and all the other platforms offer endless possibilites, both constructive and destructive. What most of these encounters have in common, however, is that they are asynchronous. People very seldom meet in synchronous, transient meetings online for personal reasons. I don’t count in here such forms as FaceTime or the prototypical use of Skype. These are for maintaining bi-directional relationships between friends and colleagues, but their primary use is not to build communities of learning.

In conclusion, there is then a lot to be said for the visual encounter, and based on this current experience, synchronous online face-to-face meetings can be just as effective as physical meetings face-to-face, at least for builidng communities of inquiry.

“Remaining on a learning edge takes a delicate balancing act between honoring the history of the practice and shaking free from it.” (Wenger, 2010:3)

References:

Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.

Weller, M. & Anderson, T (2013). Digital resilience in higher education. European Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning 16(1):53-66.

Wenger, E. (2010). Comunities of practice and social learning systems. the career of a concept, In Social learning systems and communities of practice (p. 179-198).