Virtual Voyeurism: An Ethnographic Educational Evaluation of a Qualitative Research Class

(written summer semester 1996)

Annotated bibliography

Findings        Communication        Cybercommunity        Recommendations

By Eric Wiltse
University of Wyoming

     (Author's note: All names have been changed to ensure the 
anonymity of participants in the pilot project.)

INTRODUCTION
     In the computer lab, 20 graduate students perch before their
Gateway 2000s, staring intently at screens and pecking at keyboards
like a flock of feeding flamingoes. Occasionally, one will cackle
out loud and speak to a person in the next chair or even across the
room. 
     A few students migrate from the computers back to a large
table
in the center of the room, reading or talking with April, the
professor. Back at the computers, the rest of the students are
reading messages on their screens and typing responses. 
     Dick turns from the center table where he's been reading and
glances at the computer screen behind him. "Oh, look at all the
people," he says.
     I look to see to whom he's speaking and to which people he's
referring. But Dick is looking at and speaking to his computer
screen, which is full of messages written by other students in the
classroom. He swings his office chair around 180 degrees and starts
typing on the computer, which he has ignored for the last 15
minutes or so.
     Earlier, I had asked Dick why he wasn't yet posting messages
on the lab's network. "I don't want to start too soon since there
isn't anybody here to converse with," he replied, even though there
were a half dozen other people in the room.
     Dick and the other grad students were conversing with each
other on the Daedalus Integrated Writing Environment's Interchange
(DIWE), a program that allows classroom discussions to take place
without speaking. The conversations are not verbal but text-based,
and the writing is synchronous in that students can read others'
messages at the same time they are writing their own. These
conversations are real-time, meaning that messages appear on
everyone's screens nearly as soon as they are written.      I was
observing an eight-week, summer class of master's and doctoral
students attending a university in the Rocky Mountains to see how
DIWE was being used by students to learn qualitative research.
Eventually, though, I found more subtle, profound changes in the
way class members interacted and communicated not only with each
other, but with the computers.
     For instance, people who didn't know each other by name or
face would converse casually on DIWE, even cracking jokes as though
they were long-time friends. Other people, such as Dick,
personified their machines, giving the computers human
characteristics, if not a human identity.
     Rather than only evaluating DIWE's effectiveness in teaching
qualitative research, I also approached the pilot project from a
constructivistic perspective. I planned to examine how the DIWE
technology could help learners build their own knowledge about
qualitative research. This seemed more appropriate for qualitative
research than trying to determine simply whether DIWE worked or
not. The answer likely would be "That depends on how you look at
it" (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992, p. 207). However, my evaluation of how
students used DIWE to learn about qualitative research also
revealed information about DIWE's effectiveness as an instructional
technology.
     The learning that took place on DIWE and during subsequent
verbal class discussions was constructivistic in that the
construction of knowledge took place both individually and
collectively. Constructivism also involves a community that
provides the setting for building knowledge, poses challenges to
foster the building, and offers support that will encourage the
construction (Kent, 1995). For instance, on DIWE each student would
build his or her thoughts individually by writing about them. Then
the class, taking the role of a community, would collectively
examine those writings and expand upon them, offering other ideas
and experiences, and further building the knowledge base of not
just the individual, but the others in the class. 
     However, as I observed the class, talked to classmates, and
read the literature, I realized that constructivism couldn't
adequately explain everything that was going on in the lab.
Postmodernism seemed like a more encompassing paradigm to explain
the events taking place between the people and the machines in the
computer lab. Students would talk at (and often swear at) their
machines. They would grant the machines and the DIWE software human
characteristics, such as the ability to converse. More intriguing,
though, was how students engaged in DIWE conversation would switch
with ease from keyboard to verbal communication with classmates,
typing or reading a message one second and then turning to say
something verbally the next second. Some of these characteristics
of the class echo some of the postmodernist research taking place
involving human-computer relationships. "Granting a psychology to
computers can mean that objects in the category 'machine,' like
objects in the categories 'people' and 'pets,' are fitting partners
for dialog and relationship," Turkle (1996, p. 150) noted. 
     The manner in which students smoothly shifted from textual to
verbal communication underlines the postmodernist concept that the
distinctions between what is real and what is virtual are being
blurred, if not erased. To the qualitative research students, there
was little or no difference between the virtual conversation taking
place on their computer screens and the simultaneous verbal talking
in the classroom. Their adaptability and flexibility, demonstrated
by the textual-verbal shifts during the DIWE sessions, are among
the characteristics of postmodernist behavior (McCorduck, 1996). 
METHODOLOGY
     I investigated this pilot project from June 11, 1996, until
July 16, 1996. My investigation consisted of interviews,
observations, photographs and documents. The literature notes that
most qualitative studies use a variety of data sources because they
are the "evidence and clues" that the researcher will analyze
(Bodgan & Biklen, 1992, p. 106). 
     I interviewed five people as part of the investigation: April,
an associate professor who taught the class, interviewed in her
office July 3 from 2:35-3:45 p.m.; Joan, a director of a university
writing center, interviewed at her home by telephone July 11 from
4-4:30 p.m.; Bob, a 54-year-old secondary school educator,
interviewed on campus July 12 from 1 to 1:42 p.m.; Louise, a 31-
year-old graduate student, interviewed at her home by phone July 14
from 1:55-2:20 p.m.; and Paula, a 51-year-old university
instructor, interviewed on campus July 16 from 9:05-9:30 p.m. I
used a combination of semi-structured and informal interview
techniques, and kept written notes.     
     I observed a graduate-level qualitative research class in a
computer laboratory. The class started with 24 students enrolled
and ended with 23. Field notes were kept as a written record of
classroom observations on June 27 and July 2, 9, 16. My role as
researcher shifted back and forth from observer to participant-
observer as I sometimes worked on Interchange while observing and
other times didn't.
     Other data sources I used were photographs of students working
on computers and printouts of the DIWE Interchange sessions on June
11, 18, 20 and July 2, 9, 16. The Interchange documents were
collected both chronologically in the order messages were posted,
and individually with all of a person's messages for the session
compiled under his or her name. Four photographs were taken from
the four corners of the lab on June 27 and July 3, 16 as a visual
record of the DIWE sessions while they were in progress.
       In addition, I kept a reflexive journal that recorded my
reactions to readings, problems faced during observations and
interviews, mistakes I made and how I might avoid them the next
time (Kleinsasser, 1991), and memos of information I needed to
gather. 
     In deciding the kinds of data to gather, I also had to
consider conflicting recommendations in the literature regarding
ethnographic educational evaluation. Fetterman (1987, p. 54) says
that "good" ethnographic educational evaluation will use a mix of
qualitative and quantitative data. However, Guba and Lincoln (1988)
argue that mixing the two research paradigms is illogical, "the
logical equivalent to calling for a compromise between the view
that the world is flat and the view that the world is round" (p.
93). For my purposes, Bodgan and Biklen's advice for the beginning
qualitative researcher seemed more pragmatic -- trying to do both
types of studies simultaneously can be "a big headache" (1992, p.
43). Looking at other data to evaluate the success of Interchange
as a teaching tool would be useful, such as looking at grades in
classes taught with and without DIWE, and questionnaires for each
person in the class to take regarding their attitudes toward the
success of DIWE on learning about qualitative research. If I had
the chance to repeat the study with more time, a questionnaire
would be useful to gauge reaction from the entire class toward
Interchange, rather than from just the three students interviewed.
However, to stay in a qualitative methodology, questions would be
based on my analysis of data collected from interviews,
observations and documents, not on preconceived ideas I had about
what I might find out about Interchange (Guba & Lincoln, 1988). The
questionnaire would be one of the final steps I took in the study,
rather than one of the first, as might be done in a scientific
inquiry.  
     To help me achieve trustworthiness and credibility, Louise
agreed to perform a member check of my interview with her and my
interpretations of what she said. Firestone and Dawson (1988)
recommend this intersubjective approach to data analysis involving
interaction between the researcher and participant to enhance
understanding of the data and to help verify the researcher's
findings. I also used triangulation to seek convergence across the
various data sources (Firestone & Dawson, 1988). In addition, a
peer review of my field notes from the July 2 observation was
conducted by two classmates was conducted as another check on
trustworthiness and credibility.
     To maintain a high ethical standard for the study, I developed
consent forms after consulting the University of Wyoming
Institutional Review Board for Projects Involving Human Subjects
consent form. I was particularly concerned about protecting
participants in my study from emotional or psychological harm
(Eicher, 1991), such as fearing their grades could suffer if the
professor discovered they said something critical about her or her
class. But at the same time, I did not want to "paralyze" my
fieldwork by overstating the possible risks to people (Wax, 1971,
p. 274) and making them unwilling to participate in my study. After
interviewing April and observing her in class, my intuition was
that she would not lower a student's grade as retribution. Part of
my hunch was based on the emphasis she placed on ethics in the
course content. Another reason was that she is an active researcher
herself and has likely encountered similar problems in her work. So
my consent form stated there were minimal risks involved. 
     One ethical issue that arose concerned my access to the
Interchange printouts, which were stored on the lab's network after
each DIWE session. My concern was that, because everyone was
identified in the Interchange printout, I would have to get a
signature on a consent form from each member of the class, which
would be inconvenient in an eight-week class. If one person refused
to grant consent, could I ethically look at the printouts since
that person's writings would be included. I also considered  the
DIWE sessions to be public record, because anyone in the class
could get access to them. I resolved the question by explaining my
dilemma to the class and asking for a consensus allowing me to use
the printouts. If anyone objected, they were asked to contact me.
Nobody did and the study went forward.
     When it came time for data analysis, I basically followed the
advice of Bodgan and Biklen (1992) about how to sort through and
organize my various data sources. I did not follow their advice
about cutting out pieces of my field notes and sorting them into
folders. That seemed too unwieldy. I looked for repeated words and
phrases, behavior patterns and events. I then assigned a code to
each category with abbreviations and page numbers of where the
information could be found. I originally had 10 categories:
technical difficulties, interaction with the instructor,
interpersonal interaction among class members, lurkers, computer as
personification, more time, room problems, recommendations, and
benefits of DIWE. I looked for relationships among those groups and
narrowed down my data analysis to three major themes: problems,
communication and cybercommunity. I decided to put recommendations
in a separate section of the ethnography because my pilot project
was an educational evaluation.
Data source codes
     I used the following codes for citations from my data sources
to ensure trustworthiness and credibility. A citation that reads
(I-2, p. 4), for example, means second interview, page four of my
notes. Dates of interviews, photos and observations are in the
methodology section above.
     O -- Observation fieldnotes
     I -- Interview notes
     D -- DIWE records
     R -- Reflexive journal entries
     F -- Photographs from observations
The lab environment
     The computer lab for the class was located in the basement of
a business school building. There are 25 Gateway 2000 4SX-25
computers with Crystal Scan 1024 NI monitors in the lab. Six are
lined up on the south wall of the room, eight on the north wall,
and 10 on a U-shaped table at the east end of the room. One is
located on a stand at the front or west end of the classroom for
instructor use. Another U-shaped table is located at the west end
for students to use when they're not on the computers. Two dot-
matrix and one laser printer are located in the front of the room,
as are a TV and VCR on a cart, and a LCD panel and overhead
projector on another cart.
     There are 24 office chairs upholstered in pink fabric. The
chairs swivel and roll, allowing students freedom of movement
around the lab. Three pink, plastic flamingoes normally found in
yards and one pink flamingo stuffed toy are in the back of the
room. The pink theme continues on the north and east walls where
shocking pink signs give instructions on how to use the computers.
     The lab was created in 1992 when the university received a
$300,000 educational trust fund grant from the state, according to
Joan (I-2, p.1). The computer lab was funded with $75,000 of that
grant. Originally, university officials planned to buy 286 IBM-
clone computers, but when computer prices fell, more powerful 486
computers were purchased instead. 
     Until 1992, the room had been a lecture-type classroom that
held 50 students. Joan said that research on computer lab design
revealed that for a 25-computer lab, at least 1,000 square feet of
space is needed. At first, they considered designing the lab with
pods of three or four computers arranged in small groups but wiring
the lab would have been difficult. So what Joan termed a W shape
was used, which she said "proved workable" (I-2, p. 3). The rolling
chairs "are probably the feature that students like the most," she
said, and they allow for interaction as students roll around the
classroom in them. One design flaw, as she termed it, was putting
the instructor's computer on a higher table. "The pedagogy of a
computer classroom should take the limelight off the teacher," Joan
explained (I-2, p. 4).
     DIWE was purchased for the lab in 1994 when instructors who
taught in the lab decided a synchronous writing program was needed.

Most of the teachers who use the lab for their classes are in the
English Department. Twenty-five copies of DIWE software were
purchased for about $4,000. The software includes Mail, Interchange
and a word-processing program. 
Technical requirements
     The DIWE software is produced by The Daedalus Group, Inc.,
located in Austin, Texas. Versions are produced for Macintosh and
IBM systems. The system requires at least an AT computer installed
with DOS 3.3, and with 640 kilobytes of RAM. A hard disk and mouse
are recommended. Network requirements are computers with at least
a 286 or 386 microprocessor, four megabytes of RAM, and 80
megabytes of hard disk. The average class will generate 10 to 20
megs of data per semester.
FINDINGS  
     My data analysis resulted in  three major themes that will be
explored in this section. One involved problems with DIWE, the lab
environment and lack of time to work on DIWE. A second dealt with
communication: interpersonal communication, discourse with the
instructor, class discussion, and the use of research language. The
third involved cybercommunities: personification of computer
technology and lurking.
     Because one of my goals for the pilot project was to evaluate
how DIWE helps students learn about qualitative research, I will
conclude the findings with recommendations for future use of DIWE
in this class and will take an advocacy position based on my
findings (Fetterman, 1987).
Problems with DIWE and the lab
     Three problematic areas were identified in the data analysis:
technical difficulties using DIWE, conditions in the lab
environment, and pedagogical problems, particularly lack of time.
     Observations, documents and interviews revealed that messages
scrolled across the screen too quickly and that students had
trouble stopping the scrolling. Even as late as the third class
that DIWE was used, Maynard asked April, "Is there anyway you can
stop it from scrolling?" (O-1, p. 2). Students came up with several
ways of resolving this problem and often shared them with others.
One way was to move the cursor to the top of the screen, which
would freeze the messages until the cursor was moved. However, even
on the final observation, at least one person was still having
problems (O-4, p. 2). Paula left her computer and walked to the
back of the room to show Louise how to move her cursor to the
scroll bars to stop the messages. "Scrolling was a problem," said
Paula, who was shown how to stop the scrolling by Bob. "It's
intimidating seeing the comments flying past. It needs a
programming solution" (I-3, p. 2). Bob also said the scrolling was
distracting. "If you focus on one thing, two or three others scroll
by," he said (I-3, p. 1). The rapid scrolling was the No. 1 problem
with the software, according to observations, interviews and
documents. April also said she found the scrolling to be "annoying"
(I-1, p. 3). She said that initially she was concerned DIWE would
be too complex to add to an eight-week semester. However, only one
or two people seemed to be struggling with the technology by mid-
semester, she said (I-1, p. 1.)
     Another problem had to do with time, both the lack of time to
use DIWE and the time that it took to log on to DIWE. April said
that one reason she decided to go with the DIWE writing sessions
was because there was not enough time to use outside readers for
the class' pilot projects in an eight-week semester. She also comes
to the lab at 4:30 p.m. because DIWE requires more of her time to
prepare for class. Her teaching strategy was to have the class
write on DIWE for only 15-20 minutes a class so people wouldn't get
tired (I-1, p. 4). Some class members would show up 30-60 minutes
before class and would start writing on DIWE early. Others showed
up at 6 p.m. when the class was scheduled to begin. "If you come
right at 6, it's 10 or 15 minute sessions. That's not enough time,"
said Louise (I-4, p. 4). "We don't have enough time to really talk
to people." She added that if she enjoyed working on DIWE more, she
would go to class earlier to use it. If she knew that each class
would begin with a DIWE session, she also would go early. In my
observations, I noticed that some students would get to class about
6 p.m. and not even log on to DIWE. Some would sit at the main
table and talk, while one student spent the entire DIWE session
reading the assignment for that class (O-2, p. 2). 
     Several students complained about the slowness of the
software. Frustration seemed high on July 16, the night of my
fourth  observation. Both Sam and Candy complained that the
messages were taking too long to come up on the screen (O-4, p. 1).
The lack of speed could have been due to the software, the hardware
or the volume of messages posted that night (85). Louise also
mentioned her frustration in logging on to the lab's network before
she could start working on DIWE. "You have to boot up the computer,
then it takes a long time to get into DIWE. It needs to be more
mouse oriented to speed it up," she said (I-4, p. 2).
     Cognitive time also was mentioned several times in interviews.
Joan said slow thinkers and slow typers usually don't participate
actively in DIWE sessions (I-2, p. 2). I asked Bob why he always
came to the lab by 5 p.m. "I'm slow. That's why I start early," he
said. (O-3, p. 1). In a subsequent interview, he added that he
considered himself a "pretty passive" participant in DIWE sessions
(I-3, p. 2). Paula also considered herself a "low user, because I
can't think fast enough. If I write one thing in a session, I feel
successful." When asked how much time would be enough, she said
that if she had an hour on DIWE, she would write more comments (1-
5, p. 1). 
     Some other technical problems were observed. On June 18, Sam
gave instructions by Interchange to another student about how to
send a message in Interchange. On June 27, another person couldn't
get from a T:/ prompt to Interchange. On July 16, Candy
accidentally called up the Help screen in DIWE and couldn't return
to the Interchange session. That same night, Sara couldn't get from
WordPerfect into Interchange (O-4, p. 1).
     Although most people seemed happy with the lab environment, a
few criticisms were heard. April complained that the lab was too
hot (I-1, p. 3). Although she liked the tables and chairs, Louise
mentioned a "lack of air" because of poor ventilation. She also
said the narrow aisle between the two U-shaped tables was "awkward"
(I-4, p. 2). I noticed that aisle became congested whenever people
were moving around the lab. While I was trying to walk through the
aisle I knocked somebody's papers off their desk (O-4, p. 2). On
the other hand, Bob said he liked the "coolness" of the lab and the
lab layout "handles everyone remarkably well" (I-3, p. 2).
Communication
     The main communication categories that I noticed in my
fieldwork were the amount of interpersonal communication between
students during DIWE sessions, the number of communications
directed to April, the level of discourse about qualitative
research and the discourse that digressed from research topics, and
the use of subconferences and electronic mail for discussion.
     In interpersonal communication, I examined the DIWE
documentation for messages posted directly to another person by
name. For example, a message that started "Bob" would be considered
interpersonal. I noticed that as the Interchange sessions evolved
over the semester, the number of interpersonal messages increased
significantly. On June 11, there were only four interpersonal
messages, but on July 16, 51 percent of the messages were
interpersonal. At the same time, while observing Interchange
sessions in progress, I noticed that the number of verbal
interpersonal exchanges between class members dropped from the
first observation, dropping from 11 on June 27 to 8 on July 16.
That indicated to me that the class might have been becoming more
comfortable with the technology, as well as more comfortable
conversing one-on-one using computers. April noticed a similar
transition occurring, saying in our July 3 interview that she saw
more "back and forth dialogue directed to specific people" (I-1, p.
3). 
     The types of interpersonal communication varied from personal
to academic topics. For example, in a highly focused DIWE session
on July 16, Donald mentioned he was using stimulated recall by
showing participants in his study photographs. Cassidy answered:
"[Donald]: interesting idea. Are you going to include those photos
in the appendix?" (D-6, p. 4). That kicked off a thread of
discussion about stimulated recall. Some nights, though, the
discussion could get into other threads that I called socializing
online. The June 18 session began with a series of bad puns about
the ValuJet crash in Florida. "You can't get a ticket on Valujet -
they are 'swamped,' Bob wrote (D-2, p. 1). Many nights there was a
fair amount of joking around during DIWE sessions, both on and off
line. The room would be quiet for a while, and then the silence
would be broken by laughter and humorous exchanges between people
(O-1, pp. 1-2). One night Paula brought a treat into the lab during
a DIWE session. "Did you bring chocolate cake?" asked Veronica.
"You evil woman." 
     While I observed DIWE sessions, classmates would often spend
time talking with me instead of typing and reading on Interchange.
These could become valuable discussions about research-related
subjects, not unlike the conversation taking place on line. During
my first observation, Veronica asked me if I was "watching" her. I
told her I was observing for my study. That evolved into a
discussion about who gives permission to a researcher in a
classroom setting, the instructor or the students. I said I thought
the instructor had that authority. Veronica wondered who she would
ask for permission to observe a library. We speculated that it
would be the librarian. I later noticed in the DIWE document that
she didn't post any messages on Interchange that evening. That led
me to wonder whether my presence as an observer was a distraction
to classmates (R, pp. 5-6). 
     On July 2, I was observing DIWE when I engaged in a discussion
with Smitty about his pilot project. He was sitting next to
Veronica at the computers on the southside of the lab. It was a
revealing talk in that I learned a lot about Smitty, such as how
long he had been married, and his life philosophy. But he, too,
didn't file any messages on Interchange that night. I speculated
that the distraction I might be causing to some people could prove
useful in my pilot project. Tracking Veronica's and Smitty's
Interchange  participation through DIWE documents showed that they
were among the least active users in terms of the number of
messages posted. Did they feel more comfortable talking verbally
than online? Did they simply not like DIWE or was there some other
factor leading to their low participation? It would have been
interesting to interview them to find out, but I also was facing
time problems.
     Bob said he thought the verbal interaction taking place in the
lab indicated problems with DIWE. "When people talk, it tells you
the software is too cumbersome. It's easier and faster to talk than
go on DIWE" (I-3, p. 3). Along the same line, Paula said that she
walked across the room to show Louise how to stop the scrolling on
July 16 because "it would take too long to write how" (I-5, p. 2).
Louise said she felt comfortable verbally talking to people only if
they were sitting next to her (I-4, p. 1). She also became
"irritated" when the discussion on DIWE digressed from research
topics. "It wastes class time" (I-4, p. 4), she said. Paula said
she didn't always see a dialogue taking place on Interchange.
"You're commenting to someone when you get 40 other posts at the
same time" (I-5, p. 3).  
     April expressed concern that students would write for her --
the teacher -- instead of seeing their DIWE audience as themselves
and the rest of the class. Having students write for the entire
class was important to her because it was a way to reach her
objective of the class becoming a research community (I-1, p. 2).
The number of DIWE posts directed to April by name were low. The
most posts directly to her were the seven on July 16. In my five
observations, I only noticed four instances in which students
verbally talked to April while DIWE was in progress. However, in
the interviews only Paula said she was writing "for the rest of the
class." Others saw themselves writing for the instructor. "Most of
the time I just answer the questions she poses," Louise said. "When
she posts a question I feel obligated to answer that" (I-4, p. 1).
Bob said, "I'm writing for her as much as anything because most of
my writing is in response to her."  He said he wasn't expecting
feedback to his responses from other students. In fact, he
considered the "highlight" of DIWE sessions to be "watching what
(April) does. She knows exactly what your concerns are (I-3, p. 2).


     Another of April's reasons for employing DIWE writing sessions
was that students would be performing "authentic research tasks,"
which include writing fieldnotes and reflexive journals (I-1, pp.
1-2). She also hoped that DIWE writing would encourage students "to
think like a researcher" and to "practice the language" of
research. The DIWE documents showed that the level of discussion
about qualitative research intensified during the semester. I
looked for posts that were digressions from qualitative research
topics or that didn't use vocabulary associated with research. The
June 18 DIWE session (which will be called the ValuJet session from
now on) had the most digressions (13 out of 59 total posts), while
by July 16 the discussion was extremely focused on research with
only two digressions out of 85 posts. During my observations, I
noticed that even the distractions that I caused were related to
research questions. My discussions with both Veronica and Smitty
were as much about researching as they were socializing. During the
July 16 DIWE session, Louise verbally said to Bob, "Well [Bob], we
seem to be converging," referring to their DIWE posts about
credibility. Her use of the word converging indicated to me that
students might be using research language even in casual
conversation. In interviews, students had mixed reactions about
whether DIWE helped their pilot projects or helped them learn about
qualitative research. Bob, for instance, said that DIWE was of "no
benefit" to his project, nor did DIWE lead to the formation of a
class research community. There wasn't enough time to form a
network, he said, because "it takes time to get to know people" (I-
3, p. 3). Louise said DIWE helped her "get ideas on things I
wouldn't have thought of," and she learned from other people's
mistakes that they disclosed on Interchange. "In that sense, it's
part of that whole research community thing," she said of DIWE. She
thought DIWE was successful in getting the class talking about such
research issues as interviewing and journaling. But she didn't feel
part of a research community in the class because most classmates
were in education degree programs and she was not. Paula said that
her small group had become more of a research community for her
than the DIWE discussions. "DIWE is too fast and furious," she
said. "I still like to have conversations with people" (I-5, p. 3).
However, she found DIWE to be valuable in her research task of
reflexive journaling. In class discussions, Paula had expressed her
reluctance to keep a journal, saying that she didn't like to be
forced to write. After class on July 2, she approached Cassidy and
me about getting her DIWE posts saved on a diskette or printed out.
She said she wanted to use her posts for her journal. I thought
that using the DIWE posts might be an effective way for her to
organize her thoughts and reflections on different aspects of
research and decided I should try to interview her about that (O-2,
p. 3). She told me that it "made sense" to use her DIWE posts in
her journal. "I'm looking at it as being eclectic -- my reactions
to books and directed writing activities like DIWE. I probably
wouldn't sit down and write about data analysis, for example" (I-5,
p. 1). 
     Despite several suggestions by April and Cassidy about forming
Interchange subconferences, the class seemed reluctant to break off
into alternative discussions. I noted that the April 2 DIWE
session, which consisted of four subconferences created by April,
had no digressions out of 50 total posts. Several students also
commented that they thought the April 2 session was very
productive. I started one on June 20 to discuss beer and only one
other person posted a message there. A subconference was set up on
June 18 about covert research, but a suggestion by Cassidy to set
up an ethnography subconference got no action. A June 18
subconference called Bananas had three respondents. Although April
thought that the small groups in class would set up their own
subconferences on DIWE, that didn't happen. 
     April explained that her strategy in setting up subconferences
on April 2 was "to get away from eight million messages scrolling
past, to try to slow it up." However, she thought the result was
"kind of boring." Bob said he thought the subconference DIWE
session produced "almost too much information" but it did get him
more actively involved than had past sessions. "I felt obligated to
answer each question" (I-3, p. 2). Louise, the only person to join
the Beer subconference, said the smaller discussions "give you the
opportunity to talk more ... It's easier to have conversations."
She joined two subconferences on April 2 and said she "checked out"
all four of them (I-4, pp. 1-2). Paula also found subconferences
"easier to do because there aren't as many people." She joined one
subconference on April 2. "I would do more if I had more time," she
said (I-5, p. 2). 
     Electronic mail or e-mail was used with mixed results by many
in the class. April speculated that some of the people who weren't
active on DIWE were reading their e-mail instead, and that was
causing DIWE sessions to get off to slow starts. Smitty posted
several messages asking people to e-mail him with their thoughts on
spirituality, research ethics, and journaling. As of the July 9
class, he hadn't received any e-mail in response. Other students,
however, found e-mail was invaluable to their work in the class.
Bob was using e-mail 15 years ago on the original ARPNET system
when he worked in the defense industry. He  said he would give up
DIWE before he'd give up e-mail. He e-mailed research questions to
April frequently during the semester and said he would feel
"comfortable" e-mailing her in the future about his research (I-3,
p. 3). Paula said she was saving her e-mail correspondence with
April to use in her reflexive journal. She preferred writing e-mail
to writing on DIWE because she had "more time to think ... DIWE is
not the type of writing that allows for a lot of reflection" (I-5,
p. 1). A list of the 20 students in class who had e-mail addresses
was compiled and April made copies for everyone. Bob said he
thought it was more likely that students would form "e-mail
communities" than DIWE research communities.
     April said she intended to use DIWE as a way to get more
people participating in class discussions. Joan also noted that in
her experience other students like how people who dominate verbal
classroom discussion "lose their voice" in DIWE conversations (I-2,
p. 2). This proved to be a valid concern early on in the semester.
After class members complained about a few people dominating verbal
class discussion, April implemented her "DIWE" policy: When
questions involved individual concerns instead of broader issues of
interest to the whole class, she would say "DIWE" and further
discussion of the individual topic would have to take place online.
DIWE did get at least one quiet class member involved in discussion
online. After the June 27 class, April mentioned to me that Marty
never speaks in class discussion, but that his DIWE posts were
lengthy and insightful (R, p. 11). Bob said he prefers DIWE
discussions. "It allows a cross section of the whole class that I
wouldn't get otherwise ... It takes the pressure off you to get
recognized in class discussion," he said (I-3, p. 1). 
Cybercommunity
     As I observed the DIWE sessions and read more of the
literature about computer-assisted instruction, it became apparent
that some of the behavior in class was similar to that of a
cybercommunity in which humans interacted not just with each other,
but with their machines and with personalities that existed only
through their computer networks. What first struck me as a
postmodern phenomenon was when Dick referred to his monitor as
"look at all the people." That started me thinking about how other
students related with their machines and with their world through
their machines. Candy had a love-hate affair with her machine and
with DIWE. Despite complaining about the slowness of DIWE, she was
active in the July 16 session, posting four messages. But she also
said out loud to nobody in particular, "I'd much rather talk to a
face than to a computer screen" (O-4, p. 2). April had, perhaps
unconsciously, alluded to this type of behavior when she said DIWE
was "a nice way to think out loud." When I asked her to explain
that phrase, she changed it to "thinking made visible" in that DIWE
made a person's words visible (I-1, pp. 2-3). Were DIWE and
computers merely tools for learning, or were they becoming
extensions of human cognitive processes? Louise said they her
"thoughts come together better" when she's writing on a computer.
She also saw Interchange as "a talking." Numerous descriptions of
Interchange as a conversation implied that students considered the
software not just as a channel for communication between people,
but as a communication in itself. 
     One feature of Interchange is that it allows people to log
into discussions anonymously or with pseudonyms as a way to
encourage candid discussions, much like MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons)
in which people can create their own persona, or as Turkle (1996)
calls them, their "multiple selves" (p.  152). Louise referred to
this ability to remain anonymous online when she talked about the
comfort she feels hiding behind the monitor. Although she's entered
chat rooms on the Internet and was active in DIWE, Louise said she
doesn't consider those to be substitutes for socializing. "I very
much value the human contact aspect and wouldn't use this as a
substitute," she said (I-4, p. 4). Yet some class members were able
to share personal information as a result of communicating online.
On June 27, Kurt broke the silence of an Interchange session by
turning around to ask Candy when she changed her name. He had
noticed on Interchange that she was using a different surname than
he had known her by. She explained verbally that she had remarried.
Even though everyone in the class probably knew each by face, at
least one student wasn't sure about people's names. Bob wrote
interpersonal communications on DIWE to Connie a couple times,
including a funny comment that she should join Lurkers Anonymous
(D-5, p. 6). When I asked him if he and Connie were friends, he
said he wasn't sure who she was (I-3, p. 2), even though he once
sat just a seat away from her during a DIWE session (F-3).
     Even though in my data analysis I considered it a digression
from research discussion, lurking took up much of the July 9 DIWE
conversation and showed me something else about class dynamics.
About halfway through the DIWE session, Adam wrote a post that
there seemed to be a lot of lurkers on Interchange today. April
asked him to define lurker, which kicked off a discussion about
DIWE users who "listen in" but don't participate in the discussion
(D-5, p. 4). Sam wondered about the apparent contradiction between
listening and reading off a monitor. "How can you be listening if
I am looking at a screen. Lurcking (sic) implies 'looking' so a
lurker is a virtual voyer (sic)," he wrote (D-5, p. 5). That led to
an analogy between virtual voyeurs and field researchers, and made
me think about something Bob had said in an earlier discussion
about covert research. "I think it should be 'passive' as well as
covert. I mean that one could observe a subject's actions and
collect data without intruding," he wrote (D-2, p. 4). When we
talked about lurking during our interview, Bob said he was "a
lurker at heart" and considered himself a passive participant on
DIWE. He likes to "see who's talking and what was said" during
Interchange (I-3, p. 1). Rather than creating a multiple self in
the cybercommunity, Bob and other lurkers in class sometimes were
opting for no self, an invisible, unintrusive persona that still
had a role in the conversation -- that of the eavesdropper. 
Recommendations
     Based on the problems noted in observations and interviews,
and also on suggestions made by participants in the study, the
following steps are recommended if Interchange is to be used again
in this course:
     1. Until Daedalus Inc. makes a programming correction to stop
the rapid scrolling, the instructor should give a brief
demonstration or make a handout on the first night of class
instructing how to solve the problem using the cursor. 
     2. A brief demonstration or handout about setting up and
accessing subconferences would encourage participation in more
specific discussions and reduce the volume of posts in the main
conference.
     3. DIWE sessions should be scheduled in the syllabus so
interested students or slow thinkers could come to class early to
increase the time on Interchange. Starting the class with DIWE
seemed like an effective way to seque into the rest of the
evening's activities by focusing students' attention on research
topics.
     4. Comments made in interviews about writing for the
instructor and the number of Interchange posts directed to April
were disturbing and seemed to defeat one of the main attractions of
Interchange -- to get students writing for themselves and the rest
of the class instead of for the teacher. To bypass this tendency --
which is a learned behavior for many students -- the instructor
should become a lurker on DIWE. Instead of the instructor doing it,
students should generate the questions and issues to be discussed
in directed writing exercises on DIWE to stimulate the creation of
a research community in the class.
     5. Journaling could be mentioned early in the semester as one
benefit of DIWE. More students might become actively involved in
Interchange sessions if they knew what they wrote could be used in
the required reflexive journal.
     6. If there is controversy in the classroom, an anonymous or
pseudonymous Interchange session might be a way to reduce tension
by letting everyone speak frankly and candidly. All other DIWE
sessions probably should be done with users logged on under their
own names to keep the discussion tactful and courteous, and to
encourage the development of a class research community.
Researcher's advocacy
     Having both used and observed Interchange for the semester, I
think Interchange holds many benefits for a research class of this
type. Primarily, it gives everyone a chance to participate in class
discussions in a non-threatening environment. Writing also tends to
be more introspective and thoughtful than speaking, producing a
higher level of class discussion. Since most people in the class
were educators, introducing them to a synchronous writing program
could lead them to adopting this instructional technology in their
own classrooms. 
Reflecting, reflexing, reacting
     I made mistakes. I can't even call them well-intentioned
mistakes, since I didn't have any intentions when I made them.
Perhaps they were honest mistakes because there was no attempt to
deceive anybody. To repeat the mistakes would be dishonest. My
mistakes would mainly be in the dumb category. But they were
valuable mistakes because I realized what I had done soon after
doing it. Then I would try to rationalize my mistakes. That would
turn to reflection about why I made them and finally to reaction
about how I would avoid making the same mistake again. I might make
a different mistake, but not the same one. 
     It didn't take long to make mistakes in my field work. The
most embarrassing was when I interviewed the instructor and didn't
give her a consent form to sign first. I had one with me, but just
plain forgot to use it. Two days later, when I was writing in my
journal, it struck me what I had done. I rationalized my mistake by
saying I had an e-mail record of her granting me the interview and
setting up an appointment. Besides, she was the instructor and
should have known the purpose, methods and risks of my pilot
project. Interviewing her was different than interviewing other
people, I told myself, because she's THE PROFESSOR. However, to
follow the ethical standards of qualitative research, I should have
had her sign a form to prevent future misunderstandings when I
write up my findings. I need to get in the habit of asking
participants to sign consent forms. I also wondered whether verbal
consent and e-mail consent would be sufficient if I ended up in
court someday. Verbal contracts have been upheld in several famous
palimony cases. But, I think a written contract avoids any
ambiguities, misunderstandings and misrepresentations. Better get
those consent forms signed in the future. I sheepishly mentioned my
oversight to April at the next class, and she said it was the first
thing she noticed in the interview. But why didn't she mention it
then? After reading her article about the educational value of
making mistakes, I understood. By failing to inform a participant
of the risks of my research, even though they were minimal or non-
existent, was I really any better than Milgram? That's probably
being too hard on myself, but the point is well taken (R, pp. 19-
21, 25).
     The next dumb mistake involved the field notes I typed up for
the two members of my small group to read as part of our reflexive
journal grading contracts. The idea was to read each other's field
notes from an observation and then comment on them as a critical
friend. I was in a hurry to get the notes typed before class and
typed them verbatim, including people's real names. Since my
critical friends are in the same class, they would know everybody
I wrote about in the notes. The next day I realized what I had
done. My attempt to rationalize the mistake was that only two
people would read the notes and, as critical friends, they wouldn't
tell any of the participants about my fieldnote comments. But I
considered it an ethical violation because I didn't protect the
identities of participants in my study. I had compromised their
trust in me and my research methods. In the future, I should assign
pseudonyms or let participants choose pseudonyms and probably use
those names even in my fieldnotes in case someone else got hold of
them. Certainly, I should change people's names if I'm going to let
anyone else other than a co-researcher see my notes (R, p. 25).
     I also thought and wrote a lot about my role as a participant-
observer. Often, I was in an awkward position because I was a
student in the same class I was observing. One classmate tossed out
the phrase "suck-up" within my hearing range. I think it was in
jest, but that might have been the perception some people had of
me. Rather than feeling like a suck-up, I felt that I gets have put
myself in a tougher position as a student than others in the class.
April had suggested she'd like to see somebody research DIWE and I
took her up on it because of my interest in instructional
technology. Later I realized some of the possible repercussions of
my decision. The instructor was observing the same class that I
was. Would she be seeing important things that I missed? Was this
a pet project of hers with expectations that I couldn't meet? Would
I fall behind in the class because, instead of participating in the
DIWE sessions, I was observing them? So I found myself between the
proverbial rock and hard place, with classmates seeing me trying to
ingratiate myself with the instructor for good grades and my self-
perception of not being able to meet the instructor's expectations.
My typical response to this situation is that I don't care what
people think about me as long as I feel comfortable with what I'm
doing. That's the attitude I ended up taking in this case.
     But were my observations making others in the class
uncomfortable and perhaps hurting their learning experience in the
class? The first time I took photos during a DIWE session, people
joked about whether their hair looked OK and laughed. But they
seemed uncomfortable. I guessed that they expected to be
researchers in this class, not the researched. I would have liked
to interview people about that: How did it feel to have the
research table turned on them? I justified the photography by
telling myself the photos were nearly all of the back of people's
heads, which might help reinforce the anonymity of participants in
my study. I had no trouble changing hats from researcher during
DIWE to student when DIWE ended. But I wondered whether some people
in the class may have had problems making that distinction of me
(R, pp. 3, 5-6).
     A lot of my journal writing involved comparisons between
journalistic reporting and qualitative research methods. I was
surprised to see Hunter S. Thompson's "Hell's Angels" referred to
in Punch's (1986) book as an example of a researcher who was
threatened and beaten up during fieldwork. Thompson was a writer
who got me interested in journalism, but I never thought of him as
a qualitative researcher. If you overlook his exaggerations,
though, his techniques of first-hand involvement with subcultures,
such as biker gangs and federal drug agents, observing and
interviewing them, and then writing about his field experiences in
a subjective style were a lot like those of qualitative researchers
(R, p. 8).
     Although I interviewed hundreds if not thousands of people
during my career, I was uncertain about interviewing as a
researcher. For one thing, I have never used a tape recorder
because transcribing the tape would slow me down when writing on
deadline. But it seemed like many if not most ethnographers taped
their interviews. I felt confident enough in my note-taking
ability, though, to stay the course. Secondly, in journalism you
interview for information, for content, while in qualitative
research your interview goal seemed to be to generate meaning and
interpretation. In journalism, we'd try to gather facts and let the
reader figure out what they mean. Research interviews went an extra
step and did the interpretation for the reader. I was apprehensive
about my first interview with the instructor. I figured she was an
experienced, if not expert, research interviewer. I asked her to
critique my interview style, which I changed to pick up on key
phrases and then ask her to explain what she meant by those
phrases. I used my usual unstructured interview format, going into
the interview with some general ideas of what I wanted to talk
about but with no prepared, written questions. Afterward, she said
my interviewing was OK, but I wondered if she was just too tired to
really critique it. In the course of the interview, she also gave
me some ideas of things to look for in my observations. Later, when
I became familiar with the term, I realized that she would fall
into the key informant category because of her assistance (R, pp.
16, 20).
     I was also struck by Punch's (1986) concern about Great
Britain's strict libel laws and how that fear could paralyze a lot
of worthwhile research in that country. In the U.S., journalists
are always conscious of libel when they write stories. But the main
difference between here and Great Britain is that you have to prove
malice to win a libel case in this country. The reporter must have
deliberately set out to damage somebody's reputation to commit
libel here. Proving that state of mind has proven difficult. In
England, though, damaging a person's reputation is enough to prove
libel, even if it was unintentional. If his participants decided to
pursue a libel case against him and did need to prove malice, Punch
probably wrote his own guilty decision with his admission that he
didn't like the English upper-classes (R, pp. 8-10).
     If I had it to do over again, I would take at least six months
to get more depth and breadth in my data. I would have interviewed
more people in the class, used a questionnaire to gather
information from everyone in class about their attitudes toward
DIWE, and read more literature, especially about learning theories.
In particular, I would have liked to tackle Lacan to learn more
about postmodernism, and read more Turkle to see how she's applying
Lacan's thinking to her cyber-studies. I'm also still fuzzy on the
distinction between constructivism and constructionism, and would
do more reading in that area. From what I've been able to figure
out, they share a lot of qualities but constructionism is based
more upon experiential learning: To learn about a hammer, you need
to use a hammer. In retrospect, collaborative learning might be a
more accurate theory to explain DIWE (R, p. 32).