Wiley+and+Root.+Identification,+Please.

=Wiley, Steve & Root, Mark. "[|Identification, Please: Communication and Control in an Online Learning Environment]"=

Abstract
Steve Wiley’s webtext, “Identification, Please” (designed by brother Mark Root-Wiley), discusses the implications of students in his Communication and Technology class attempting to post anonymously using WebCT’s discussion forums. Those implications obviously touch on issues of student identity in online spaces but also, less obviously, on the institutional/administrative notion of what student identity should be in a university setting.

Argument
As a professor hired to teach “new technologies” to undergraduates, Steve Wiley chose to use his position to help students form identities, to encourage social experimentation, and to promote cultural creativity. New technologies often make possible new forms and practices of subjectivity, identity, and interaction. Kairos itself is designed to encourage experimentation. The Kairos Project embraced the ideals mentioned in “Identification, Please”: a modernist faith in the transformative power of technology, a fascination with new communication technologies as a context for identity construction, and a progressive belief in the democratic potential of technologically mediated interaction. Through these three ideals, Wiley implemented a technologically based curriculum in the university course. He encountered obstacles including “problems with the WebCT software, administrative concerns about the use of fictitious student, and social and ethical conflicts experienced by students” (Wiley, introduction). There was difficulty in allowing anonymous contributions on the WebCT software. WebCT software allowed playful experimentation with anonymous posting, much like social virtual worlds; however, it also had to adhere to the strict academic bureaucracy of the educational system, a system that requires accountability. Wiley offers several questions concerning the future of the delicate relationship of anonymity offered by the internet, and the accountability required by a classroom setting. Wiley recognizes the positives of traditional classroom interactions as a means to develop necessary communication skills. However, he also argues that new technologies offer a variety of other, just as necessary, developing skills- including the ability to “think theoretically and critically about the forms of identity, discourse, community, and power (Wiley, Implications). In summation, the piece asserts that the way for teachers to overcome obstacles within technological based teaching is to stop believing in technology as a pedagogical communication tool, and begin understanding technology for what it is, a social terrain. Additionally, due to the rapid pace at which technology is progressing Wiley suggests that teachers take on roles more like “guides and co-learners” than adhering the traditional hierarchal teacher-student dynamics(Wiley, Implications).

Key Passages
And so I began the semester, enthusiastic about the technology and excited about the experimental journey I was about to undertake with my students. However, as it turned out, the Communication & Technology course soon ran into a number of obstacles. These included technical problems with the WebCT software, administrative concerns about the use of fictitious student identities, and the social and ethical conflicts experienced by students as their online selves were disarticulated from their offline identities (Introduction, par. 5).

I was motivated to take the plunge into online pedagogy by a set of typically American Ideals: optimistic beliefs about the potential for computer-mediated communication to be a more democratic, participatory mode of interaction (Implementation, par. 1).

The incorporation of new technologies and new forms of communication into any social environment often brings conflicts with the Interfaces that shape our interactions and the Institutions within which we live and work. Far more interesting, however, have been the cultural and ethical issues that the students themselves have confronted as they have tried out these new forms of expression. Anonymity and pseudonymity open up creative possibilities for thinking, writing, and communicating (Identities, par. 1).

Large organizations like universities are structured by what Max Weber (1946, p. 196) called bureaucratic authority, a form of logic, discourse, and social control that places heavy emphasis on stable identities, clear categories, and rigid hierarchies, with little tolerance for ambiguity and boundary crossing. Virtual environments, by contrast, often make possible forms of social interaction that resist or escape control and instead emphasize ambiguity, play, and reduced accountability. (Implications par. 4)

The introduction of the anonymous posting option in the WebCT discussion forum is a limited gesture toward inclusion of the more playful, ambiguous logic of social virtual worlds. In this sense, the WebCT software constitutes a hegemonic situation: The bureaucratic rationality of academia incorporates the alternative logic of anonymity, allowing a degree of play and experimentation as long as the fundamental requirements of bureaucratic control are not questioned. (Implications par. 5)

By asking them to grapple with virtual environments and online interaction, we give our students the opportunity to engage significant cultural and technological problems directly. When they are challenged to do this in the context of a critical classroom dialogue about technology, they can develop valuable cognitive and practical skills that are directly applicable to the challenges they will encounter after graduation.This approach--experimentation with technology in the context of critical dialogue--is all the more important given the pace of technological change. (Implications, par. 12)

Selected Works Cited
DeVoss, Dànielle Nicole, Cushman, Ellen, & Grabill, Jeffrey T. (2005). Infrastructure and composing: The //when// of new-media writing.  //College Composition and Communication 57// (1), 14-44.

Faigley, Lester. (1992). //Fragments of rationality: Postmodernity and the subject of composition.// Pittsburgh and London: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Garza, Susan Loudermilk, & Hern, Tommy. (2006). Using wikis as collaborative writing tools: Something wiki this way comes--or not! //Kairos 10//(1). Retrieved 13 December 2006, from [|http://english.ttu.edu/Kairos/10.1/binder2.html?http://falcon/tamucc/edu/wiki/WikiArticle/Home//] //. //

//Selfe, Cynthia L., & Selfe, Richard J., Jr. (1994). The politics of interface: Power and its exercise in electronic contact zones. //College Composition and Communication 45//(4), 480-504. //

//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">Taylor, T. L. (2003). Intentional bodies: Virtual environments and the designers who shape them. //International Journal of Engineering Education 19//<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">(1), 25-34. Retrieved 13 December 2006, from <span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">http://www.itu.dk/~tltaylor/papers/Taylor-Designers.pdf <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">. //

//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">Taylor, T. L., & Kolko, Beth E. (2003). Boundary spaces: Majestic and the uncertain status of knowledge, community, and self in the digital age. //Information, Communication & Society 6//<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">(4), 497-522. Retrieved 13 December 2006, from <span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">http://www.itu.dk/~tltaylor/papers/TaylorKolko-Majestic.pdf <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">.