Review of 'Identity in Cyberspace: Students' (Bayne,2005)
Wednesday, 25 Feb 2015, 10:18
Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Tom Cheek, Wednesday, 25 Feb 2015, 10:19
Internet offers the possibility of presenting different selves to others in the virtual world
We do not start completing anew when we work online
Identities are more freely transformable, boundaries less firmly drawn and possibilities for metamorphosis of the self more open
Studying online can be unsettling and challenging for students
Sense of identity if vulnerable to experiences where our expectations and assumptions do not hold
Absence of physical expression of identity as an opportunity for 'online self-creation'
'you can develop this persona and get a bit carried away with it...and then it makes you change what you say...'
'it's not like you're actually saying it at all, so it's not you, it's like your just a name, people don't attach it to, like, who you are'
Students online experience not as freeing from an existing identity, but putting that identity, and a sense of its rightness and stability, at risk
Tutors however do not have the same anxiety expressed by students
Tutors found online space easier to manage in terms of projecting a sense of their authority and role
Actively constructed a teacherly persona through their contributions to the forums
Both students and tutors identified the potential of manipulating the kind of identity online but with students experiencing fear and tutors accepting and benefiting from this opportunity
Sense that tutors using the online space found they could construct themselves as an authority figure
Tutors approach online study primarily through their role as a tutor so less of a disjunction when they move into online environment
To be a student online is a to carry out a certain role but the boundaries are less defined than those of tutors
Baynes highlights how uneasy students felt in online forums where 'stability' and 'reality' of identity was undermined. She is working with the a view of learning as Identity Change (IC) rather than as acquisition and participation.
Review of 'Identity in Cyberspace: Students' (Bayne,2005)
References:
Land and Bayne. (2005). Identity in CyberSpace: Students. Available: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=553066§ion=8.1. Last accessed 25th February 2015