Achoui0423706CMC assignmentSection: 1Summary or the ArticleThe title of this article is: “Methical Jane: Perspective on an Undisclosed Virtual student” this was taken from an online journal,
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/The purpose of this study is, after designing an online higher education course. Investigating the success of adding a virtual student, to stimulate participation, interaction and to provide scaffolding for less competent students. Therefore other students would request assistant from co-student rather than from an instructor.
Methodology:The research design: there was used both qualitative analysis and quantitative.Qualitative was used to discuss about the students’ feelings toward Jane’s identity.While quantitative was used mostly in observation of numbers of discussion posts against the content of the blogs, essays and discussion posting.In this research there was used an open ended questions.
There are two important research questions which are:1- Research question 1: How does a virtual student enhance online community?2- Research question 2: How do students feel about the ethical issues of instructor’s hiding and then disclosing the identity of a virtual student?The subtopics mentioned in this research are: Online Support, The Role of the Instructor and The Role of Co-Students.
The population:This study was done on 23 students, 18 were female and five only were male. These ages are ranged between 30 and 50.The duration of this study:This research has been studied for is eight weeks.Findings:First of all we have to know that the facilitator is available only when posting the CMC medium. Students submit voluntary social posts to an open discussion.The social participation of the class remained stable during the eight weeks except the seventh week. When the instructor maintains a low profile, the students become more independent in seeking answers.
Realising that the students prefer to, discuss more on practical applications rather than theoretical discussions, they also tend to help each other especially toward the end, and their web pages seems to be more diverse in terms of personalizing their projects and much more progressive. The instructor stayed as a low profile therefore the students didn’t realise his help, including Jane’s contributions.When is comes to ethical issues, starting first with experimental studies, Boeree (1998) strongly criticize unethical manipulation in “scientific” experimental studies, but in this study students were not manipulated but they were carefully observed.
He also discourage taking part in illegal, immoral and unethical activities, according to the behaviour of Jane, or the way her real personality was hidden and she wasn’t a real person that can lead to cheating and Boeree discourage doing that. Researchers can be considered as spies because they collect the students’ data without their knowledge. We find that keeping the identity of Jane hidden play a good role play in analyzing unfolding data and incorporate the results into the ongoing course design.Moving to the ‘student’s reaction to methical Jane’, the researchers had focus the finding into Jane’s credibility, unveiling the real Jane, Jane’s contribution to learning, research role and goodwill in virtual community.
In the study, Jane’s credibility as a participant was proven, when none of the students realized that she was virtual until the eighth week. In order to comply with the research ethics, the researchers eventually unveiled Jane’s identity. Different responses were attained; not responding, indifferent and strong feelings – of being cheated. Two (2) felt betrayed and one (1) questioned the action of revealing Jane. Yet, the dismay was faded, as students started to rationalize the matter.
At the end, shock and disbelief was mellowed to enthusiasm. None of them were discontented to the principle of having mythical Jane in the group, but some wanted to identify her as mythical. In Jane’s contribution to learning, most students responded that they felt that Jane was insignificant, despite of their experience working together.
The goal is achieved, as this study is planned for minimal role of facilitator (which was disguising as Jane) as well as to make it less obvious. Jane contributed cognitively through modeling tricky aspects and identifying pitfalls, helping struggling students, over - sighting and enliven debate. Not withstanding, Jane was regarded to have strong and exciting personality. They realized at the end that Jane had caused no harm, yet she propelled the student’s interest in online research as they didactically benefited from her as virtual helper. The variables could be explained in this manner; the stronger their bond with Jane, the more they integrated with the online community. Goodwill in virtual community could be felt by the students upon ending the term due to the pro - social behavior of the instructor, thus they strongly endorsed this virtual student concept. This was judged through their amiable post. They regarded facilitator – cum – student as part of learning experience.
Through ‘the instructor’s perspective on Jane’, the researcher highlighted that pretending as Jane, and at the same time maintaining the students gave the instructor the insight of an online course experience. Jane (the instructor) did the same assignment, experiencing the same server downtimes, JavaScript issue, and browser’s incompatibility as well as constraints of firewalls. ‘Facilitator effort’ stressed on the instructor’s dual role as Jane and instructor, concurrently against all the challenges of potential problems, inclusive of task overload, identity confusion as well as to supervise student’s private communication to protect Jane’s identity. The ‘instructor’ should avoid redundancy by distinguishing Jane’s task with the researcher’s task.
In peak times, colleagues assisted the instructor by acting as Jane, and not anonymous, to maintain student’s trust and secure feeling.In the conclusions of the discussion, the student’s ethical feeling towards hiding – then disclosing the identity of a virtual student, was determined. Jane was accepted due to her credibility and therefore this tells us that online community is capable of integrating a stranger into its system. So, the ethical concern was addressed.
The question of how does the virtual student enhance online learning was addressed by its unique contribution in an online class. Jane’s unobtrusive didactic approach, plus encouragement helped students to finish the course. So ethically, the end justified the means. Jane also helped to minimize facilitator’s dominance, resulting more independent and supportive online learning. Virtual student promoted online dialogue, encourage student’s participation, providing additional support, model online student’s behavior and supportive mutual climate. Virtual student can be applied in different teaching settings, as well as observing the real phenomenon living with online students – or garfinkling.
