“Community” is a common buzzword in composition studies these days, hovering in the air of departments like the hum (or din?) of vuvuzelas at a World Cup soccer match. And like many buzzwords, we tend to assume “community” has a given definition for others. After our class discussion on Monday, we can clearly see that this is not the case. I am as guilty of this as anyone else. “Community” is one of those quick go-to terms I use when people ask me what some of my goals are when I teach. Like most others, I have some general sense of what I mean (usually, students working together to discuss and understand course material). But we can and should provide some clearer definitions of this for ourselves and for our discipline.
Numerous scholars have addressed the issue of community, both regarding its definition and implementation. For Kenneth Bruffee, “[a] community of knowledgeable peers is a group of people who accept, and whose work is guided by, the same paradigms and the same code of values and assumptions” (642-43). The goal of these communities is to build knowledge “by challenging each other’s biases and presuppositions; by negotiating collectively toward new paradigms of perception, thought, feeling, and expression; and by joining larger, more experienced communities of knowledgeable peers through assenting to those communities’ interests, values, language, and paradigms of perception and thought” (646). For Joseph Harris, a community is like a city, a place of “consensus and conflict” (269). In this metaphor, members of a community share a sense of important ideas but not necessarily the same perspectives on them. Robust disagreement might even foster better understanding. We then have tensions to explore and different perspectives, adding richer sites of discussion. Lori E. Amy, too, notes that harmony is not something necessary for a community. Citing Mary Louise Pratt’s theory of the contact zone, she says communities should be a place “of struggle and contest over meanings” (112), much like our class discussion on Monday about the definition of community. Kristine Blair and Cheryl Hoy share a similar perspective. They felt that online discussions allowed students “to generate ideas, discuss issues related to the class and to their papers, and build a sense of collaboration” (38).
But these definitions individually have their faults. Bruffee hints at more consensus than do the others. Harris’s metaphor seems to leave out the violence—Amy finds rhetorical violence a significant problem—and the isolation sometimes present in cities. And Blair and Hoy sometimes use the term “community” a bit generally. But combining these we might help us define community, at least in a rough way. A community is a group of people interested in discussing and analyzing issues meaningful to that community for the purpose of exploring these issues and their value for the community. Consensus might be a part of this. In fact, respectful disagreement might develop fuller consideration of that issue.
We can use this to interrogate our course blogs. Blogs do create a strong possibility for interaction. If the focus of a student’s blog is clear, other students can identify, at least initially, which ones might be of greater interest to them. Additionally, blogs extend one’s claims to an audience beyond the teacher and thus open the door to greater interaction. Traditional forms of education, in which the teacher disseminates the knowledge of the course and evaluates the students on their performance, create a “Community of Power.” According to Joseph Moxley, such communities, which value individual achievement, turn into communities of secrecy so people can protect their knowledge for personal gain (186-87). Blogs can help foster “Communities of Learning,” which encourage sharing and interaction (191).
On the surface, our blogs did not seem to form strong communities in this regard. Many postings received no responses at all and those that did typically received only a few responses. Given the brevity of these posts, the deeper and fuller exploration of issues didn’t seem to be achieved. However, in more fully exploring these posts and responses, we can see some meaningful steps toward community occurring. For example, Cynthia’s blog had only three comments, all on the third entry. Yet Nancy raised some interesting labor concerns and a useful point about not using technology for its own sake. These questions encouraged Cynthia to explore these matters more fully. In response to my second blog posting, Nancy used her experience to complicate my perception of the article’s claims. In addition, Zsuzsanna’s comment on my third blog posting drew connections between her readings on the matter and this reading, drawing out the idea that she might have students use synchronous methods to start projects and asynchronous methods after the project has developed a bit more. Such examples seemed common across the blogs, suggesting that we had the desire to develop a “community of knowledgeable peers.”
But the course’s length was a hindrance here. Forming a community among ten or so students in a few short weeks seems a difficult task. Furthermore, since strong interaction was not required, I felt that I could spend a little less time on the blogs when other work became more pressing. But required postings defeat the purpose of a community. The desire to collaborate, discuss, and debate are what make a community, not just the interaction itself. The instructor might have used one of Scott Warnock’s methods by requiring the use of our peers’ blogs in our other writings (88). This would have encouraged (if I can avoid saying “required” here) students to tie the work of others into their own thinking and writing, but this is something that was completely open to us to do on our own; furthermore, any required interaction is not organic and thus less like a community. Another, maybe less obligatory, method is one that likely would only work in a semester-long course. Here two or three students each could have been responsible for a blog posting every week. This would focus other students’ attention on those blogs, perhaps encouraging responses. But I am not sure how well this would have worked in our short time frame. Ultimately, the blog assignment represented the realities of trying to create a community during a course—successes and some failures.
Finally, all of this is not to say that community did not develop elsewhere, and in what seemed like strong ways, elsewhere in the course. The use of the chat area developed as a source of community as we began adding brief comments and jokes. This brought in members of the class (like myself) who maybe were not as vocal. We could add our opinions easily, and, for the distance students, this was perhaps somewhat more effective for short comments than raising a hand, clicking on the microphone, and adding a brief comment. People would also share experiences, ask questions about readings or other people’s comments, and give links to and tips about various tools and teaching strategies. The general discussion of the course also built strong community. On a regular basis, we would push each other’s thinking and challenge positions to develop more precise understandings or add more complexity. Certainly, our discussion from Monday after my presentation gave me a number of ways to think about my use of wikis and some of the pedagogical concerns this might create. We also added significant complexity to what “community” can or does or should mean. In short, while the blogs may have stepped toward community, the class overall developed that community.
Works Cited
Amy, Lori E. “Rhetorical Violence and the Problematics of Power: A Notion of Community for the Digital Age Classroom.” Role Play: Distance Learning and the Teaching of Writing. Eds. Jonathan Alexander and Marcia Dickson. Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2006. Print.
Blair, Kristine and Cheryl Hoy. “Paying Attention to Adult Learners Online: The Pedagogy and Politics of Community.” Computers and Composition. 23 (2006): 32-48. ERIC. Web. 10 June 2010.
Bruffee, Kenneth. “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” College English 46.7 (1984): 635-52. JSTOR. Web. 3 June 2010.
Harris, Joseph. “The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing.” On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays, 1975-1998. Ed. Lisa Ede. Boston: Bedford, 1999. 260-71. Print.
Moxley, Joseph. “Datagogies, Writing Spaces, and the Age of Peer Production.” Computers and Composition 25 (2008): 182-202. ERIC. Web. 28 May 2010.
Pengilly, Cynthia. “Blog.” CynthiaPengilly. N.p. 10 June 2010. Web. 14 June 2010.
Serfling, Nathan. “Collaborative Writing at a Distance.” Nathanserfling.blogspot. Blogger. 14 June 2010. Web. 16 June 2010.
Warnock, Scott. Teaching Writing Online: Why and How. West Lafayette, IN: NCTE, 2009. Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment