Facilitating and Sustaining Diverse Online Learning Communities

1. Facilitating and Sustaining Diverse Online Learning Communities Presenters: Sarita Nair & Wesley Shumar August 3-6, 2004

2. What we do… • Work at the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, economic status, disability, culture, language, geography • Leverage the power of diversity to improve education and work systems through innovative technology design and use • Focus on how technology innovation can ensure empowerment, democracy, and social justice in a global society August 3-6, 2004

3. Panelists • Kevin Almeroth - Vice Chair and Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, UCSB • Christopher Dede - Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies, Technology in Education program, Harvard Graduate School of Education • Susan Herring - Professor of Information Science & Adjunct Professor of Linguistics, Indiana University • Nichole Pinkard - Research associate and director of educational technology at the Center for School Improvement at the University of Chicago August 3-6, 2004

4. Panelists & Participants • Judy Ridgway - Assistant Director of Instructional Resources, Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Mathematics and Science Education • John Willinsky - Professor, Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia • Observer: Anthropologist and ethnographer Dr. Wesley Shumar, of Drexel University • Audience: 120 registered participants August 3-6, 2004

5. Framing Questions • What are the requirements for creating, growing, and sustaining diverse online learning communities? • Do existing technologies support and enhance online learning equitably across all learner diversities? • How do existing technologies reflect and reproduce current societal and cultural biases? August 3-6, 2004

6. Discussion Summary What are the requirements for creating, growing, and sustaining diverse online learning communities? • Design decisions involve cultural assumptions and need to be made more transparent • Success stories can be an important tool for learning about diversity • There is a lot to learn about motivating participants from the online gaming research community August 3-6, 2004

7. Discussion Summary Do existing technologies support and enhance online learning equitably across all learner diversities, including different races, socioeconomic status, disability, and gender? • Tools are cultural artifacts and need to be customized to reflect the user population • Individualization of learning resources is important-not all members of a community are the same • Technologies need to be flexible and customizable but not overshadow the learning August 3-6, 2004

8. Discussion Summary How do existing technologies reflect and reproduce current societal and cultural biases? • Tools can attempt to address racial and cultural difference among groups but it is harder to address the biases built into the institutional context where they are used • Research has shown that gendered forms of interaction and conversation persist in online environments even when participants don’t consciously know the gender of individuals with whom they are interacting • There needs to be more collaboration between designers, teachers and other stakeholders in order to address current biases August 3-6, 2004

9. Observations • There were several types of interactions in the dialog • Advice seeking • Discussion around terminology - learning community vs. community of practice • Story telling • Debating issues August 3-6, 2004

10. Open Questions • There is much we still don’t know and more research needs to be done. • How does the culture of the institutional context affect the way technology and digital libraries are used? • How well do tools address cultural differences? • What is the balance between individualization and cultural similarity? • Can online learning communities address some of the institutional impediments to learning for different populations? August 3-6, 2004

11. Resources • Gender, Diversities & Technology Institute • http://www.edc.org/GDI • Discussion Archive • http://mailman.edc.org/pipermail/diversityonline/ • Summary document – coming soon! • Contact: • snair@edc.org August 3-6, 2004