TURNING POINT

A turning point during the data collection for this case study occurred towards the end of the module. Juan, one of the students taking the module, posted:

Our group chose not to use this private forum but instead we have created a private work group on Facebook… I would like to know where to upload the final presentation on weblearn's private group forum? Should a thread be created with an attachment? Also under what format should the presentation be uploaded, .mov/pictures/pptx?

I answered Juan’s questions and then asked if I could join the group and was allowed access. This for me was a turning point or as Fine and Deegan (1996: 436) suggest, a serendipitous moment when the researcher transforms good fortune into a

substantive discovery. The revelation was not really that social media is an important social aspect of how students spend their time at University. This has been

demonstrated in several studies, including Madge et al. (2009), that characterise social networking sites as primarily for social purposes, not formal learning. Indeed Madge et al. (2009) agree with Selwyn (2007) that use of Facebook and other SNS should remain backstage and the status quo unaffected. The revelation for me was that through this chance comment by a student confirming the survey finding that a

I was then able to gain access to some of the students’ writing which would have been hidden.

I disagree with Selwyn’s (2009) suggestion that the Facebook ‘Wall’ function is backstage. At the time of his study, a Facebook Wall was an asynchronous message board function that allowed users to post updates, photos etc. about themselves that could then be viewed by others in their network. Users could adopt quite sophisticated approaches to how they managed their Wall by adjusting the settings so that the public, friends, particular groups of friends or just a single contact could see the content posted. This allows for sophisticated online identity management or “facework”, a term Selwyn borrows from Goffman (1959) along with the terms “frontstage” and “backstage” which refer to how individuals perform in public and private spaces. However, what is apparent from Selwyn’s (2009) textual analysis is that students are not adopting a sophisticated approach to managing who could see what they wrote online. Selwyn presents examples of student conversations that are ‘unforgiving’ towards their tutors and could have been read by the tutors they were writing negatively about. Selwyn describes how he was able to log onto Facebook ‘…on a daily basis and observed the development of the student pages and groups

associated with the Coalsville social science students.’ (Selwyn, 2009: 160).

I suggest that while the Wall posts Selwyn (2009) observed might be seen as being a place away from the university, in SNS environments these wall posts were very much frontstage in that anyone within the network could read them. What was so important and fortuitous about Juan’s group allowing me to join their private forum on Facebook was that this constituted access to their backstage. The content of such groups cannot be read by anyone who has not first been given access to the group by one of the group members.

Another important consideration and, I would argue, a unique aspect of my study is that within the university’s online space, students had access to both institutional and non-institutional open forums like Facebook Wall and also private group spaces. While most students did not use the institutional spaces, those that did offered important

insights into how digital spaces are used and go beyond what Selwyn (2009) terms social activity.

In Chapter 5 I will offer a close textual analysis that offers an alternative to the view of SNS as a backstage activity by weaving texts together from different virtual platforms and interviews with students.

4.9 Summary

The survey provides useful data that contributes to the development of the case study and address the topic questions set out in the introduction. When the students’ responses relating to how often material was downloaded from the VLE and whether other CMC applications were used are compared with the usage data, insight is given into how the majority of students access the VLE. This addresses topic questions:

1. What are the levels of participation of students, tutors and external professionals in the VLE and,

2. How do students and staff view the utility of the VLE?

The students used the VLE to gain materials and content but did not use the private group forums, preferring other CMC applications like Facebook to work together. Moreover, activity drops away sharply as the module progresses with some increase prior to assessment deadlines. The students’ responses in the survey seem to confirm the usage data, for example, nearly half the students said they used their PGF

most/every week in relation to the use of private group forums which is confirmed by the counts of posts in each PGF.

The survey data also gives an indication of the level of trust between students and staff and partially addresses topic question 4, What is the level of trust between students and staff? From the students’ responses it is clear that the majority trusted their tutor to be fair when marking their work. However, students were less confident that their fellow students would contribute positively to group work. Furthermore the correlation analysis offers useful insights into the relationships between different variables, in particular the significant relationships between trust in tutor and advice

and support. However, the survey did not give any indication of whether staff trusted students.

The survey also gives useful background data, for example the gender of students, their parents’ education and their ethnicity which together enable the reader to gain a clearer picture of the students who took the module. The survey also enables an understanding and application of concepts such as social capital through the gathering of data on students’ involvement with student societies and the Students’ Union - which is minimal. Equally, the majority of students said that they socialised outside of the university community. Involvement with the student union and societies and socialising outside the university suggest that bonding social capital is weak amongst the students in this case study.

At the same time the survey and usage data provide a limited view. This is borne out in my interaction with Juan that started on the VLE and ended with being allowed access to their Facebook group. Gaining access to Juan’s Facebook group was a turning point for this research project in two ways. Firstly, it gave an insight into the students’ digital practices outside the VLE which challenges previous research in this area. Secondly, the data was an extra thread that I was able to weave into my deconstructive discourse analysis which helped to contribute to a richer understanding of how students appropriate virtual space.