Electronic Classroom, Electronic Community - Information Communication Technologies for Human Services Education and Delivery - page 94

to effectively be engaged in a number of different
tasks at one time. This, in effect, allowed them to
be in two places at once. These students tended
to be the more active participants in the MOO in
general but their behaviour also had the unintended
consequences of making them available to offer
support to fellow students in a “just in time”
manner. In the MOO, the timeliness of this sup-
port facilitated the development of SLSN's and
balanced out the study pressures associated with
managing work, home life and study.
Students in the MOO started to establish pat-
terns of online behaviour that colleagues could rely
on for support when they needed it. These patterns
included various practices: some students usually
logged into the MOO and hung around the night
before an assignment was due; certain students
logged on at about 8pm most nights; and one or
two students could usually be found in the MOO
during the day. These patterns of behaviour and
the synchronous nature of the MOO supported
students in integrating their study period with other
aspects of their lives in two ways. Firstly, the qual-
ity of the SLSN's they had developed with each
other and the culture of the online environment
meant they could confidently seek support from
each other. Secondly, the knowledge of their col-
league's availability in the MOO allowed students
to seek support at common times of study stress.
The students in the MOO developed SLSN's that
were integrated into their lives as students but
existed outside of the defined learning activities
in their course.
The students from the first two case studies
believed these connections were important but
said they did not have either the time or the desire
for contributing to a contrived online community.
While wanting and valuing the connections be-
tween students that resulted in the development
of learning support networks, the capacity to
build these connections needed to be integrated
into their learning processes and/or the learning
environment, and modelled by those familiar with
the space. In effect, as the literature on community

development has suggested (Campfens 1997; Ife
1995), someone needed to take a leadership role
in the online environment and model the type of
behaviour that could then set the groundwork for
students to develop SLSN's.

moDelling beHaviour

It was significant that the students in case study
one, from the RMIT Social Science program,
talked about not knowing how to be in the online
environment. Knowing how to be online is a mix-
ture of both being familiar with the environment,
and feeling a sense of presence from others in the
space. For many students in this first case, there
was uncertainty at a number of levels. They were
uncertain about how formal they should be. There
was a need for them to both familiarise themselves
with the online medium, while at the same time,
to understand the permanence of text in online
spaces like discussion boards. They looked for
clues from other students and from the teaching
staff about how much of their personal life they
should bring into the online environment, and how
“academic” they should be in their contributions.
In effect, the entire online environment represented
an online classroom space in which their every
comment remained permanently on show (for the
life of the course). Students from all three cases
talked about feeling nervous when going online
to make contributions and waiting for others to
have their say first, so they could follow their lead.
This level of anxiety certainly had an effect on
student's willingness to engage online.
However, there was some evidence from the
students in case study one that teaching staff could
reduce some of this anxiety by modelling the type
of behaviour expected in the environment. A tutor
from one version of the course started to model a
very relaxed style of engagement with students. He
did this by commenting in the discussion forums
about his personal life and bringing his offline
experiences into the discussions. Some of his