LISTENING LANGUAGE IN ONLINE DISCUSSIONS Timothy Oleksiak, October 4, 2013

Hi. I’m Timothy Oleksiak  Teaching Background  B.S. English and Secondary Education  M.A. English w/ a focus in Rhetoric and Composition  5 th Year Doctoral Candidate in Writing Studies  9 years of college-level teaching Department of English Department of Writing Studies Department of Communication Studies Department of Communication Arts  3 Institutions The University of West Florida The University of Minnesota College of Visual Arts

Online Discussion Forums as Interaction  There is a push for online education.  Discussion forums are often the easiest ways to “warm up” to online education and teaching.  There are many “types” of forum discussions:  Introductions  Social Forums  Teacher Prompt Forums  Critical Engagement Forums  Virtual Peer Review Forums

There are Limitations to Online Discussion Forums  Online discussions and interactions “die” frequently.  College Composition and Communications report on Best Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI) (2011) presents important findings:  Migrating process and social construction onto OWI  New theories of writing instruction haven’t been developed fully for online writing spaces.  Students are texted out.

Limitations continued  Online discussion often mirror similar conflicts that we see in political/popular discourses.  McKee (2002; 2004) finds that online discussions of race or homosexuality are fraught with complications.  “Flaming” (Oleksiak 2012) and “Trolling” are problems that are more likely to occur in online writing spaces.  “Lurking” and low participation are often problems that teachers must confront when developing online interaction.

Listening Language Responds to Concerns with Online Discussion Forums  If we want to change the way students interact in online spaces, we must provide frameworks for interaction that are different than conflict based models.  Listening language is one approach to online interaction.

There are 3 Elements to Listening Language  Setting the Listening Occasion (Booth 2004)  We cannot assume people share a desire to attempt to “genuinely” understand each other.  Displaying how we listen (Ratcliffe 2005)  Focus on how individuals reason through common concepts.  Articulating Disengagement (Crowley 2006)  “Ideologic” helps us understand the degree to which individual adhere to their beliefs and values.  Alternatives to Disengagement “Refusals” (Schilb 2006) Silencing (Glenn 2004)

Create a Listening Inventory First  How do you listen?  Spend the next few minutes to write down how you communicate that you are listening to others.  How can we transform these listening behaviors into writing practices in online forums?  What are the challenges with transplanting non- textual listening practices to textual spaces?

Find a Public Discussion Forum that Illustrates a Classroom Concern  Search for a public discussion forum that is relevant to your class learning goals and objectives.  Examples from Disciplines  Gender Politics Gender Politics  Government Shutdown Government Shutdown  Math Math

Apply Listening Inventory to Public Discussion  Guide classroom communities to make statements about the way posters are responding or not responding to each other.  The goal is not simply to understand content, but also to look at the practices of interaction.  Move toward assessing these communities as either interactive or non-interactive.

Transition from Public Discussion to Classroom Forum  With the assessment of interaction complete or at least underway, we can now guide classroom communities to think about how to interact in our online spaces.  Yeah, so?  The broader issues of knowledge construction and who has a voice and how that voice impacts community members can be a part of our classroom learning.

Any questions?

References  Booth, W.C (2004). The rhetoric of RHETORIC: The quest for effective communication. Madlen, MA: Blackwell Publishing.  College Composition and Communication. (2011). Initial report of the CCCC Committee for best practice in online writing instruction (OWI). Beth L. Hewett, Chair.  Crowley, S. (2006). Toward a civil discourse: Rhetoric and fundamentalism. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.  Glenn, C. (2004). Unspoken: A rhetoric of silence. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.  McKee, H. (2002). “YOUR VIEWS SHOWED TRUE IGNORANCE!!!”: (Mis)communication in an online interracial discussion forum. Computers and Composition, 19,  McKee, H. (2004). “Always a shadow of hope”: Heteronormative binaries in an online discussion of sexual orientation. Computers and Composition, 21,  Oleksiak, T. (2012). “Incendiary discourse: Reconsidering “flaming,’ authority, and deliberative democracy in computer-mediated communication.” Composition Studies, 40(2),  Ratcliffe, K. (2005). Rhetorical listening: Identification, gender, whiteness. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.  Schilb, J. (2007). Rhetorical refusals: Defying audience’s expectation. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.