com125 assignment 7: community

Since I am not really an active member of any online communities or social networking sites, the closest Internet communication technology that I can relate to is UBLearns. I believe that each course, especially an online course, on UBLearns constitutes as a community since structural process that is associated with community is communication (Fernback & Thompson, 1995). Over the past four years I have taken several online classes at the University at Buffalo including Nutrition, Social Psychology and Promotional Writing. I agree with Maia’s statement that taking an online class is an adjustment because students have to be responsible for their own learning. You cannot be dependent on listening to an instructor tell you the material or helping you with problems outside of class. You have to manage your time well and keep yourself in check with following up on the lectures and assignments because there is no one to remind you to do it but yourself.

Initially I was worried about forgetting to check in to the UBLearns site and that I would miss lectures or even worse assignments because I could not depend on a set time each week that the class would meet. In a traditional course you would meet multiple times throughout the week so you would be seated for a lecture and constantly reminded about upcoming projects and exams. This made it somewhat of a difficult transition for me because I was not used to relying on just myself to retrieve the course content. I am also the type of person that likes to establish a relationship with the professor so that I feel more comfortable asking questions both inside and outside the classroom. The problem with an online class is that the communication is very informal and there is no personal contact whatsoever. If I did not understand something in one of the posted lectures it was almost impossible to get an immediate response to clear up the confusion. I would have to either send an email and wait for a reply or call the professor at home, which I feel is rather intrusive.

For my Promotional Writing class that I am taking this semester, the first assignment was to post our own homepage that featured a detailed description of our personal background. The purpose of this assignment was to give everyone a feel of who was enrolled in the class that semester. Reading each homepage was an attempt to mimic the usual first day introductions that a traditional class would have. Having this introduction be computer-mediated allows students the “potential for making connections without regard to race, creed or gender” (Wellman & Gulia, 1997). In addition to our assigned projects we also had to post responses each week to open-ended questions that the instructor raised. We then have to post our responses in a virtual discussion board in an attempt to simulate an “in-class” discussion even though there is no real feedback ever received. We are however allowed to see what other members of the class have posted so we get a feel for other student’s opinions. Unfortunately, establishing relationships with other students is rather difficult because you never see them. In a traditional classroom it is much easier to consult with other classmates on questions you may have the material or even put together study groups for exams. One the plus side, UBLearns makes it easy for the instructor to organize the class. When it comes to grading it is easy to see who electronically submitted their assignments and who participated in the discussions because you have permanent record of each.

References:
Fernback, J. & Thompson, B. (1995). Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Failure? Retrieved on October 10, 2008 from http://www.rheingold.com/texts/techpolitix/VCcivil.html

Gulia, M. & Wellman, B. (1997). Net Surfers Don’t Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities. Retrieved on October 10, 2008 from http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/publications/netsurfers/netsurfers.pdf