Dear Angelina - Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. 1999. Building learning communities in cyberspace: Effective strategies for the online classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. These folks describe some of the barriers to participating in virtual communities. Here's the gist of one researcher from my thesis: "As lessons from the virtual classroom indicate, not all students who participate in online communities are successful in developing online personae (see below). Pratt describes the considerable skill set required for online identity formation as the following: •the ability to carry on an internal dialogue in order to formulate responses •the creation of a semblance of privacy both in terms of the space from which the person communicates and the ability to create an internal sense of privacy •the ability to deal with emotional issues in textual form •the ability to create a mental picture of the partner in the communication process •the ability to create a sense of presence online through the personalization of communications (Pratt 1996: 119-120). Pratt, K. 1996. The electronic personality [unpublished thesis]. The Human Organization Systems Program, Fielding Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, CA. Old stuff but -- will set up the dynamics for barriers to learning. I suspect you are looking at the technology as a barrier. Pallof & Pratt look at the personality attributes of the user/learner as the barrier. As lessons from the virtual classroom indicate, not all students who participate in online communities are successful in developing online personae (see below). Pratt describes the considerable skill set required for online identity formation as the following: • the ability to carry on an internal dialogue in order to formulate responses • the creation of a semblance of privacy both in terms of the space from which the person communicates and the ability to create an internal sense of privacy • the ability to deal with emotional issues in textual form • the ability to create a mental picture of the partner in the communication process • the ability to create a sense of presence online through the personalization of communications (Pratt 1996: 119-120). Steve Jones also noted: “The extent to which people use [the internet] as a means to invent new personas, to recreate their own identities, or engage in a combination of the two and the ways in which they do so are issues central to the construction of a computer-mediated social world” (Jones, S. 1997:156). Cheers. Denise Steve Jones noted: “The extent to which people use [the internet] as a means to invent new personas, to recreate their own identities, or engage in a combination of the two and the ways in which they do so are issues central to the construction of a computer-mediated social world” (Jones, S. 1997:156). Denise N. Rall, PhD thesis, "Locating four pathways to internet scholarship" School of Env. Science, Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA Tues: Room T2.17, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 Mobile 0438 233 344 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/rsm/staff/pages/drall/ Virtual member, Cybermetrics Group, University of Wolverhampton, UK http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/index.html ____________________________________________________________________________________ The fish are biting. Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing. http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch_v2.php

Angelina .. I co-authored a chapter with Sally Mavor which was about barriers to participation in international communities. We followed a non-English speaking participant in a post-graduate course run by a British University. As we say in the intro: "The apparent ease with which a student can join an international learning community often masks discoursal, socio-political and cultural barriers to effective participation and learning." Mavor, S. & Trayner, B. (2003) “Exclusion in international online learning communities”. In Electronic Learning Communities: Current Issues and Best Practices, Reisman, S. (eds) Conneticut: Information Age Publishing. If international barriers interests you, I can let you have copies of that chapter, and other related stuff, including... Trayner, B., Smith, J. & Bettoni, M. (forthcoming) “Participation in International Virtual Learning Communities: a Social Learning Perspective”. In Web Information Systems and Technologies. Springer Publishers. Trayner, B. (2004) “Babel in the international café: a respectful critique”. In Communities and Technologies, Huysman, M. Wenger, E. Wulf, V. (eds) Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Available for download from this page. (available for dowload - http://iisi.de/ 114.0.html) Cheers Bev http://www.phronesis.typepad.com On Feb 20, 2007, at 12:02 PM, Angelina Karpovich wrote:

Could anyone recommend any sources (particularly qualitative) exploring individual barriers to online participation? I'm aware of Honnecke and Preece's work on lurkers, but I wonder if other kinds of barriers to participation have also been identified.

Thanks,

Angelina.

Angelina Karpovich Lecturer in Multimedia School of Engineering & Design Brunel University Uxbridge Middlesex UB8 3PH UK

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