Do these people look real to you?
We know that there are many aspects of online learning that are different than face to face “in-person” learning. Since it’s still a “new field”, there’s much to discover and understand.
We could start by pondering just what we mean by “in-person” identity, and how that’s different or the same… as an online avatar identity, or as an “account name” identity.
Today, that question seems desperately in need of an answer, which we might well have a hard time supplying. An answer will involve somehow accounting for all the various “selves” we can inhabit online, both synchronously and asynchronously, and what that means for our “core” sense of identity. As in, “which one of these online and IRL “people” am I, really?”
Or if it’s all of them taken together somehow, what does that really mean? Can we know who that “person” is?
One of the important factors of “how we learn” is how confident we are about our abilities, as well as how socially adjusted we are. Another way of saying this, is that learners need emotional support that gives them confidence to take the risks of failure, and the “getting it wrong before we get it right”, that learning entails.
Expectations of success enable success, (and vice versa)…and we take our expectation clues from people around us.
Sometimes that comes from peers, and sometimes it comes from a trusted adult, who could be a family member, or could be some other form of mentor. But research has also shown it’s something that a community supplies, in that members of that community absorb unconsciously certain factors that create expectations of “success”. I’m a member of “x” Community, therefore I will succeed. Or won’t.
On History’s stage, there’s an element of community expectations and definition of self, that has played a large role in cataclysmic human conflict, but also in human achievement.
Nations and Tribes strive to be “Number One” through excellence, but also fight/climb-up to displace kings of the mountain.
Athens and Sparta were two excelling “civilizations”, but also fought each other viciously for long periods. Nazi Germany is often understood as a reaction to the humiliation of the loss of WW1, and the Treaty of Versailles, leaving Germans’ “identity” in tatters despite their nation/culture’s many excelling achievements in science, and the arts.
The US and the USSR fought a half century or so of “Cold War” which produced amazing scientific achievements, perhaps the very internet and computing capabilities we now take for granted…and other high points such as man on the moon etc. But the same conflict also brought moments close to the annihilation of the human race, and huge funds wasted on military hardware never used.
Whether IRL or in virtual reality, intense conflict but also “striving for excellence”, seems a given in the human condition.
Humans create Winners and Losers. Superior and Inferior “Races” are created (unscientifically). As are: Slaves and Free-men. Peasants and Lords. Workers and Owners. Haves and have nots…as in broadband and affordable access… as well as communities that support high educational achievement, and those that can’t manage to accomplish that.
Whatever the actual reality may be, some group will think of themselves as being on the bottom rung, or the top rung, and that will affect how integrated into “social reality” a person or group “feels”…and thus will affect their behavior. And this will affect learning achievements.
All of which is to say that “identity” is a really big deal, and living various identities in the cloud complicates our social relations and structures, and challenges the status quo in ways both wonderful and insidious. (currently there’s wonderful opportunities to rethink and redo education to fix the current creation of winners and losers in US education.)
To create ‘learning in the cloud’ opportunities as “all they might be”, we have to understand how identity works in this new realm of digital bits and bytes, and in combination with IRL identities. From there we can design learning online that works best for “persons” however defined, and for “communities”, also however defined. We have a lot of work to do.
Opinions above are those of John G.