Elaine Maher National College of Ireland, Dublin ED-MEDIA 2007 Online Teaching in Higher Education: Changing the Professional Identity of the Lecturer? Elaine Maher National College of Ireland, Dublin ED-MEDIA 2007

Overview Background Research Question Identity terminology Lecturer Identity in an online setting Themes & markers Findings. ???Q&A???

Background Evolving nature of academics’ work Re-organisation of HE policy and practice Online learning initiatives.

Research Question? Does online teaching in higher education (HE) lead to a change in the professional identity of the lecturer?

Importance of Educator Identity Teacher’s sense of a unique self as differentiated from others One trait that all good teachers possess. It is that a strong sense of identity permeates their work.

What is Identity??

What is Identity? Early literature: the self ‘who or what someone is, the various meanings people can attach to themselves, or the meanings attributed by others‘ ‘ perception of oneness with or belonging to a particular human group, such as a specific organization or profession’ Differentiation between identity and role.

What is Identity? Temporal nature Chickering & Reiser (1993): Stages: (1) comfort with body and appearance, (2) comfort with gender and sexual orientation, (3) sense of self in a social, historical, and cultural context, (4) clarification of self-concept through roles and life-style, (5) sense of self in response to feedback from valued others, (6) self acceptance and self-esteem and (7) personal stability and integration.

Online Identity Changes in teaching environment + Changes facing HE institutions ▼ Notable growth in our dependence on new technologies to support and structure our learning environments & An inevitability in the changing nature of lecturers' identity.

Challenges for Research Community Emergent themes: research into academics' experiences of teaching identity, role and practices in online learning environments need for inquiry into the experiences of teachers who use technology, and he recommends qualitative studies (including case studies) that are classroom-based and that extend over meaningful periods of time the importance of examining online identities in relation to particular interactions in particular spaces.

Constructing Online Identity How is the identity of ‘self’ or lecturer as 'subject' in an online environment constructed? Is technology contributing to a process of 'identity dissolution and fragmentation‘? Who is the ‘I’ in an online environment??

Constructing Online Identity Is my identity as a teacher, an aspect of an authentic 'me', and is this authentic identity the one with closest connection to my physical body? Or is my identity as a teacher, and in particular an online teacher a performance constructed for a particular moment with reference to little else? Or a collection of parallel performances enabled by the technology? How do I represent/create this/these teacher identity/ies dynamically online?

Identity Markers Anonymity Transparency of identity markers such as gender, age, race along with other physical features in the face-to-face setting with how this is construed online Creating a persona that directly extends their face-to-face persona Creation of a whole other character Anonymity: lack of bias, identity disembodied, personality disembodied, no appearance and no ethnicity' all positive features of the online paradigm

Identity Markers Authority, Status & Power Removes the worry of online cheating because of the stronger relationships held by teacher and student Online education teachers feel that they were on a more equal footing with students than in face to face teaching, resulting in students being more aggressive towards the teacher online

Conclusions Further research to be conducted Research in this area of the field is sparse and relatively ad hoc Online environments have contributed to the experience of self as a multiplicity of parts and ease of reconstructing identity in the online world However, strong sense of potential destabilisation and fragmentation of identity in the online context in comparison to the autonomous, fixed, and self-controlled identity of the face-to-face lecturer.

Conclusions Sense of a loss of status, power and autonomy as a lecturer when part of an online environment, which is not true of the traditional environment Arguably, the most illuminating difference between traditional and online lecturer identities is that of anonymity. The literature displays this sense of anonymity as a dominant theme and highlights the liberating effect of the absence of physicality for many online educators.

The End... Questions? Thanks!