Exploring Relationship in the Virtual Classroom

8/8/2019 Exploring Relationship in the Virtual Classroom

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Title: Exploring Relationship in the Virtual Classroom

--The Case Study in Taiwan

Topic areas: Education

Keywords: Virtual classroom, Internet Forum, teacher-students

relationship, symbolic interaction

Author: James Feng-chien Lee

Department: Department of Education, Soochow University

Mailing address : 70 Linhsi Road, shihlin, Taipei, Taiwan 111, ROC.

E-mail : [email protected]

Phone number: 886-2-2881-9471 ext. 6120

Fax number: 886-2-2883-8040





courses together for their first academic year. Frequent meeting makes classmates’

anonymity in the Internet hard to maintain. Teacher-students relationship is also

changed for part of the authority role has been adjusted. All these relationship was

discussed by the theories of symbolic interaction and anonymity of Internet user.

The results divided relationship among students into categories. Teacher should

appear in two roles, that is, both as a teacher and a ordinary member to expedite

discussion Teacher-students relationship also divided from these two roles into

categories. The symbol clues that expose real identification behind aliases and

situations that make the anonymity challenged are also discussed.

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*This research was partially supported by a grant from the National Science Council

in Taiwan (NSC 90-2420-H-241-001).



Introduction

Interaction, which produces relationship, happens during the teaching and

learning process. Relationship is the mediated variable of leaning efficiency. Although

the relationship also exists in cyberspace, it may change.

The purposes of the research are exploring the relationship as follows: among

students and between teacher-students. The relationship results from their perception

of the group. Perception effects on their attitude and attitude presents in action.

The virtual classroom was built into the Internet Forum in this research. The

teacher, as a researcher encouraged and let students learn actively. They were

independent to decide when and how to participate the discussion. the internet

forum(the forum) became the extend space from classroom for leaning activity.

Besides the issues in the classroom, they could discuss any topics related to education.

They were allowed to use alias to keep their anonymity during discussion.

Literature Review

Technology and language are two key components to make interaction through

internet possible. The cyberspace where interaction takes place becomes virtual

classroom. Users behind the screen appear by an alias, they interact with each other

by the language of symbols composed by all the characters on the keyboard.

Interaction through internet creates technosociality. Technology creates a new social

organization of biosociality.( Escorba, 1994; Chun & Cheng, 2000) ?



Anonymity

Internet users can be anonymous to interact privately in public. They appear by

an alias which user choose or create. Hayashibara( 1998) found the user’s alias is at

least a word to reduce the repeat of identification and to describe themselves

concretely.

The anonymity makes the user invisible and can partly emphasize, cover or

reconstruct his characteristic. (Jeng,1988). This may cause the polarization effect on

users’ behavior( Sproull & Kiesler, 1986) . Namely, anonymity makes the internet user

behind the screen act in opposite direction: more emotional or emotionless.

All the students were allowed to be anonymous in this research. Do students

need anonymity since they all come fro the m specific group? Can they keep their

anonymity if the answer is yes?

Symbolic interaction

According to the theory of symbolic interaction, mediated symbol makes

communication possible. It is true for every animal but only human creates words to

make precise communication.

How does interaction proceed? There are eight elements in the interchange

process (Goffman, 1962): signs, channel, receiver, reaction, device,

metacommucication, norm and rules. Norm governs the information deployment,

rules govern the relationship of actors and discriminate actor and latent actor who are

in the field without participation. Will this theory apply to this research?



From individual perspective, Schutz pointed out sign or symbol is the

representation of what is meant. When people use a sign or symbol, they are not for

the sign or symbol itself. They use its meaning to express (Walsh & Lehnert, 1967).

Symbol must exist in both actors’ experience to understand each other. And only the

reaction causes interaction going on (Mead,1955). From Blumer’s point of view,

symbol has personal meaning by being interpreted. This meaning will guide their

action (Morrione, 1998).

Besides content of titles and replies, alias is also the symbol. These symbols are

the clues for students to interpret. How do they effect their action?

Interaction & Relationship in the Internet forum

The content in the forum appears in categories by the title. The related replies are

under the same title. Users are easy to choose issues interesting to them by this

designation. The latest content of the title will be refreshed up to the top of the forum.

People interact differently in various environments. The results in features of

interaction in asynchronous forum and synchronous chat room are compared with as

table 1.

Table 1 Features of synchronous and asynchronous communication in

Synchronouscommunication

Asynchronouscommunication

Total discussion time Short Long

Interaction degree High Low

Content of structure Disstructural Structural

Social and emotional

presentation

Higher Low



From The Study on Virtual Community. (P29). Master thesis of management

department, Taiwan University of Science and Technology, unpublished. Hsu, G. L.

(1998).

Kozinets( 1999) analyzed social structure and group interaction and found both

chat room and forum are loosely structured. The focus of interaction is different. The

forum focuses on information exchange, and the chat room focuses on social

exchange.

Many researches are on users interaction and relationship in virtual community.

Some results are as table 2.

Table 2 Interaction and relationship of virtual community

Scholar Feeling in the forum Content in the forum

Wellman,1996 friendship, social

support, and

belongingness

information

Krackhardt &

Hanson( 1993)

trust, and consultant. informational

Hagel & Armstrong

(1997)

interesting,

relationship,

imagination,

Transaction

Peter & Trudy

Johnson-Lenz( 1994)

Construct

self-awareness,

mutually supportive

activities, socialexchange, sense of

collective well-being

Kozinets( 1999) recreation mode,relationship mode,transformational

mode.

information mode

Yang(2000) mode, feelings

exchange, , interfereand restrain.

trading product,

information exchange,problem-solving

mode,



All the interaction and relationship are divided into two categories. There are

feeling and content. The subjective feeling is not exact something they are discussing

about, but related to users’ attitude and feeling to this group. The objective content is

always related to some certain topics.

Wu (1996) studied on the BBS user’s virtual relationship and found it has several

advantages. First, it satisfies users’ need of imagination and expectation. Second,

users have more chances to make friends, especially boy or girl friends. Third,

virtuality and anonymity reduce the pressure and make users be more self-disclosure.

This relationship results from BBS which is for making friends. There may be

different results from virtual community for knowledge exchanging in the research.

Giddens suggested in the book Modenerity and Self -Identity that Pure

Relationship makes people are self-disclosure. This action is based on

trust.(Giddens ,1991). The result from face to face situation seems different from

result in computer-mediated communication. Users feel safe to be self-disclosure to

strangers because of anonymity. Users' secrets will not expose to people around them

(Lee, 2001). The situation becomes more complex in between face-to- face and

computer-mediated communication.

Calderwood( 2000) found community provides communion.. But members form

it may not necessarily develop the relationship of love, respect and commitment.

Sometimes they are interdependent and scarify for practical concern. Members in this

situation are less involved themselves and lack of belongingness.

Information exchange is the necessary interaction in virtual learning community.

Success of learning community depends on members’ sharing knowledge with others

(Chung, 1998). Lu( 1999) and Huang( 1997) studied on the efficiency of the forum



and found both virtual communities’ discussion are not deep enough. Lee( 1998)

studied on the forum for distance education and found messages from students are

four times more than from the teachers. The teacher should not be the only contributor

to the virtual community. The roles and relationship of teachers and students are

changed in the forum. Wu (2000) suggested the numbers of expert and novices should

be considered for facilitating learning virtual community. Community with few

experts has less attraction.

Do they need social interaction besides information? Lee (1998) also found

social support from classmates is important to overcome learner’s fear and loneliness.

Close relationship is good for learning in the virtual community. But if they are too

close in physics, function of internet may decrease. Chung (1998) studied on

classmates as a virtual learning community. Classmates did their homework on line

into groups. The outcome was not very satisfied because face-to-face is more effective

than computer-mediated communication. Furthermore, anonymity is hard to maintain

learning in this way.

How do virtual and real relationship effect each other? What kind of relationship

is it in the specific group? The discussion goes on below.

Research method

Research methods are observation and interview. Subjects are students from

Teacher Education Center, an institute of technology in middle Taiwan. They are

preparing to be high school teachers. These students are from various departments

taking education courses together for their first academic year. There are 47 students.

Five are male, 42 are female. They all took at least one of researcher’s courses during



two semesters. There were Sociology of Education and Education in the first semester

and Youth Psychology in the second semester,

Observation

The forum is built into the Cityfamily since 05.Dec.2001. Cityfamily is a free

cyberspace for virtual community provided by a commercial company. Students

should register and become members before posting messages.. There were 46

members in the community before 30.Jun.2002. Register requirement helps researcher

observe users and their actions. Observation conducted participative observation at

least once a day. Researcher participated with two aliases in the forum. One is just an

ordinary member; the other is a teacher. The period of observation is from

05.Dec.2001 to 31.Jan 2003

Interview

Interview conducted individual interview with ten of the students. Subjects were

chosen considered their behavior both in the classroom and forum. Characters of ten

selected students are described as table 3.

Table 3 Ten subjects of individual interview

No. Age Sex Full-time/ part-time

student

Bandwidth Experiencesof Forum

Using

Personality Participationin the

classroom

Participationin the forum

01 20-25 F F 56K Yes Extrovert Strong Strong

02 20-25 F P 56K Yes Introvert Strong Weak

03 20-24 F F 56K No Introvert Weak Strong

04 26-30 F F 56K Yes Extrovert Strong/Middle Weak

05 30-35 F P 128K No Extrovert Strong/Middle Strong

06 20-25 F F 128K Yes Introvert Weak Strong

07 20-25 F P 56K Yes Extrovert Strong Strong/Middle

08 26-30 F P T1 Yes Introvert Weak Strong

09 30-35 F P 56K No Extrovert Strong Weak

10 20-25 M F 128K Yes Introvert Weak Middle



Discussion

Relationship among students

Ability and Experience

Besides symbols, the technology is a mediated variable which interfere with

users interaction, effecting their participation and sense of relationship with the group.

The sense of relationship described by degree of mastering the technology is as

follows

Alien

A new computer or intenet user is afraid of making mistakes in this strange

discussion situation. They want to express themselves but it takes minutes to type and

they may not be exactly sure of how to send the messages. This may reduce their

degree of participation and make them feel alien in the discussion relationship.

I rarely use the computer… Viewing these issues will giving you lots of

ideas. Some opinions you may agree with, but others you won’t. You need

to type very fast and be familiar with using it to express yourself.

..…eventually, you will feel out of place. You are just listening to, but you

may not agree with or what they say may not even be true. You’ll get very

upset if you can’t respond, and then give up (students 9)

Margined

A newbie is familiar with how to use the forum but lacks interaction experience

in forums. Before they decide to send messages, much worry comes to their minds.



Their degree of participation falls in between of frequent users and aliens. The

relationship is margined compared with regulars who are mastering the usage.

Latent observatory

Some students just view the content without having any reaction because they

don’t have their own opinion. These students need some training on thinking and

expressing themselves. Besides, others may have their ideas, but do not try to share

with others. So their participation is just one-way and latent from others. Of course,

they don’t contribute to the forum.

I won’t reply if others act emotionally. I’ll just smile at them…..in fact I

am comfortable with myself and don’t need others’ approval. That’s OK, I

feel fine. I don’t think I need to be responsible for others.…..taking good

care of myself is just fine……because I think others may say what I don’t.

(student 8)

Group

Being part of a familiar group often is the basic reason for their participation.

Especially for the newbies, this is the place where they take their first step. After they

get positive feedback, they have the courage and increase their level of participation,

thus improve the relationship.

Students trust the group even they are not very familiar with all of them. Student

10 responded to this idea by using his nickname as alias.

All the members are classmates and the forum is an academic one.

Anonymity exists for protection. You don’t have to worry about safety here.



There is no insulting and criticizing here. (student 10)

Another case is because one student knew the background of this group She

didn’t have to worry about her opinion was not deep enough. This made her feel easy

to participate. Students 4 recalled her experience in BBS.

This is what someone posted in response to what I had written: “you can

figure it out yourself. It’s such an easy question Don’t post it here!” or “go

check the book yourself, it’s on page 32 in Education of Philosophy “. I

felt sad about it, though sometimes you can’t tell what their attitude is.

Some users are really sarcastic…..I feel it’s easier to post in our

forum.(students 4)

Based on these reasons above, their relationship is as follows.

Courtesy

Their relationship, generally speaking, was courtesy. There are several reasons

for this result. Such as, they expect themselves to act like teachers; they are college

students; their personalities effect to the actions; and the anonymity is challenged.

Anonymity makes students feel safe as in public forum. They feel safe from

being recognized behind the screen. Knowing each other becomes a constrict factor to

express their true feelings, especially those are negative. Users desire to be

anonymous because they need to be accepted in the classroom. They may revise their

action when worrying about revealing themselves. The higher the degree of their

worries is, the less they may participate enthusiastically. Students 4 said,

You can criticize and say directly what you think in BBS. You can speak



out if you think something is not right. I will express my different opinion;

but I lose interest if I can’t point out the problem in an incisive

way…….Users being anonymous is the benefit of the internet. But the

forum users are those in our class. If your words are offensive or too

critical, it may cause shock. Others will gossip “Did you see it? who said

what?…and it seems to be who…. The student being attacked is in hell, if

he or she is revealed. Aren’t you isolating him from the other students if

you divulge his identity? (student 4)

Direct

In fact, most students make responses after considering the student’s personality

to maintain harmonic atmosphere in classroom. Contrary, they will directly express

themselves without too much disguise in the forum. The reasons are partly because

they are anonymity, and partly because time for arguing is unlimited. Student 3

explained,

For example, student A doesn’t seem open to accepting others’ opinions. I

won’t discuss the problem (with A) in the classroom. It is different in the

forum. The student posting could A or anyone else. I will still post my

opinion without too much consideration. (student 3)

Student 1 is more aggressive than student 3. She represses herself to let the

course run smoothly when countering a narrow-minded student in the classroom. But

she will keep on defending her opinion in the forum. Although their consideration is

different, they have the similar action both in classroom and the forum. Students 1

said,



you can’t waste a lot of time arguing a point, the class needs to go on in the

classroom. You’ll be saved when the bell rings. You just know that it’s

because of her personality. There is no tine limit in the forum. The arguing

can keep going on as long as you wish. (student 1)

Curious and suspect

Though all of students appeared by aliases in the forum, sometimes they might

be revealed. Many students were curious about aliases and might even try several

ways to figure it out their identity. This is the side effect on specific students in the

forum. Their relationship is curious and suspect in this situation.

Close friends

Some students chatted or invited each other in the forum. Their relationship in

the forum is the extension of close friends in real life. But the chatting is stopped soon

for not matching the purpose of the forum.

Content

Students participated automatically and chose the content interesting to them.

Information exchange or issue discussion should be the main purpose in the forum.

Content, which includes both titles and replies, is the mediated symbol according to

symbolic interaction. Titles are more effective factors of decision on whether

participating than replies because of the designation. Besides, the title with many

replies will also attract curious students. The relationship through the content is as

follows.

Information-sharing



Most students posted titles which were important to themselves for discussion or

notice, such as the latest policy on education. The forum gathered information from

students’ efforts. Although most students expected replications from others, they share

voluntarily.

Information dependent

Students sometimes were active to request certain information, such as detail of

the title. They also occasionally asked experienced others for suggestion or opinion.

Categorized by interest

Students chose independently the interesting content and participated. Different

categories of titles attracted different kinds of students. The gathered students under

the same title shared the same interest. This situation happened all the time.

Teacher-students relationship

A teacher should appear in two roles to facilitate discussion. There are both a

teacher and an ordinary member. Each character produces different relationship.

When the alias appears as a teacher, the relationship is as follows.

Expert/trust

Experts present their profession both in experience and theory. Their action is

convincible. Students sometimes expected teacher to show up and give them some

advices or opinions. Especially, when there was an argument for some issues.

Authority/follow

Teacher’s action is meaningful and helpful to students based on role’s authority.



Even the action of a student and a teacher is similar; the effect is different for

students’ different interpretation.

For instance, if I am puzzled, I want the teacher to answer me because I

always think students are less experienced than teachers. Such as: what it

the meaning of taking education courses, what else can I be if I am not a

teacher? Classmates sometimes laugh at each other. Hey, don’t make fun

of me! If the teacher teases, it is because teacher wants me to relax.

Classmates and teachers are certainly different.(student 4)

Power/Obey

Some students have the pressure whenever they see the teacher. They feel the

same to read the teacher’ alias in the forum. The teacher’s opinion may also repress

different ideas of the content.

….it would be very serious if the situation were like this. I would be afraid

to post my opinion following the teacher’s post or if the teacher always

posted his opinion and feelings right after my opinion. That’s no good.

There will create lots of pressure. if the role of a teacher is to critique his

students. Wow, I won’t dare to tell contradict him. (student 3)

When the teacher appears as an ordinary member, the relationship among

students also exists between a teacher and students. Besides, there is still the other as

follows.

Enthusiastic response

Some students may derive the alias as the teacher. After this situation occurred,

some students responded enthusiastically and noticed all the content posted by the



alias.

Advisor/refer.

The Alias as an ordinary member still has its value after the teacher being

revealed. Appearing with this alias means his participation is at equal status. He is

open to different opinions. Students have less pressure in this way.

Both two characters have advantages and disadvantages of facilitating discussion

in different situations. Teacher should appear at the right time to facilitate discussion.

Challenge to anonymity

Students from the Center know each other but not so well. Therefore, students

may not recognize their identify through the forum. However, meeting each other

frequently challenged their anonymity in the forum. Although some students

respected their choice of being anonymity, others didn’t. They were interesting to find

out who they were. This situation happened especially when they read a radical or

emotional content. Ironically, students who posted it often desired to be anonymous in

this situation. Besides, they were also curios about the alias who posted the content of

the same opinion.

Students guessed the identity by the symbolic clues. These symbols are aliases,

titles and replies. They compared these in the classroom with the forum. These clues

included alias, content, tone, expression, words, attitude, etc.

Such as A uses her nickname, B uses her idols name, you can see her idols

photos all over her pencil box, bag…everywhere…but there is still one I

don’t know about, I’ll wait for her to give yourself away. You’ll certainly



guess who it is because they are always around you. ..furthermore, I

always come to the class early. When classmates chat with each other.

Such as how are you these days? …I pay attention to the tone, and the

context of what is said and relate it to what classmates in the forum have

typed. I also directly ask….are you the one?…, so far all I have asked have

answered positively. (student 1)

Conclusion

This is the research on the virtual classroom which formed for its first year with

certain members. Virtual classroom was not built to replace the classroom but to

provide another learning environment. The relationship is multiple. Some relationship

is opposite to another. This is because of various situations and personalities.

Students usually revise their action of discussion according to the one who they

are talking to. This consideration is an important mediated variable of action in

classroom, but reduced in virtual classroom. This may partly because most students

are female, and partly because of the traditional culture. There is a dilemma between

anonymity and curiosity. Anonymity is hard to maintain in this way.

Finally, there are both advantage and disadvantage for the researcher is also their

teacher. Advantage is the teacher knows students well as mentioned above.

Disadvantage is students may hide something behind their teacher. But the teacher’

open attitude to any opinion no matter in or out of classroom and easy

teacher-students relationship may reduce this disadvantage.



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Exploring Relationship in the Virtual Classroom