At the risk of entering this argument a little late and without meaning to offend anyone involved, I would like to reinforce the notion of mailing list "listening" as a form of active participation. As Nonnecke & Preece (2001) in "Why Lurkers Lurk" have noted, there is a productive dimension to mailing list engagement at a purely lurking level. It's a shame more pedagogues feel the need to measure output as a means of user engagement, particularly when the nature of an assignment is to seek out responses to an idea or (in the case of this list particularly) a technological development which can only produce a shallow reflection on the proposed topic. In order to avoid this practice in the past, I preferred to use a subject-specific bulletin board, blog or wiki as a means of encouraging student-student interaction, but made that student-oriented discussion open to the world, and instead sent messages to my lists inviting colleagues and other students to engage in the debates begun on my class lists, by giving them links to the online presence and allowing them to comment in response to student initiated posts. This avoided the usual "spam" oriented responses, and allowed my colleagues who had the time and interest to engage in the debate to access the questions and considerations of students as they saw fit. The worst possible impression that students could glean from the exercise we have seen displayed here is that mailing lists are not a valuable source of collective knowledge. Yet if they receive no responses to their queries, then that is precisely the response they are likely to foster. I may be speaking selfishly (given the nature of my own research), but my sense is that this episode in AoIR mailing list history is further evidence that interaction design systems should be considered as a priority in curriculum development, or indeed any intra-organisational knowledge base implementation strategy. Regards to you all, Joanne Jacobs _________________________________________________ Joanne Jacobs Project Manager Australasian CRC for Interaction Design Seconded from the Brisbane Graduate School of Business, QUT. Ph: +61 7 3337 7832 Fax: +61 7 3337 7834 Email: j2.jacobs@qut.edu.au, joanne@acid.net.au, joanne@joannejacobs.net

"I would like to reinforce the notion of mailing list "listening" as a form of active participation."

I agree. Speaking does not equal participation on a list any more than in a physical classroom. For an instructor, the issue is how to assess participation. In physical space, some sort of artifact production based on the topic/issue at hand is useful to measure engagement. While online courses often have discussion boards where students are required to post and reference other posts (perhaps a better interactive exercise?), having students dive onto an active list and try to interact without any contextual grounding in the norms of that environment is (IMO) problematic. As an exercise design problem, I think an analysis of the discussion and the apparent norms would be a better use of the list. Moreover, I think that a little more sensitivity toward the ongoing dynamic of a list and its purpose would be in order when dragooning it into one's lesson plan. I would relate this to having a half dozen students show up at a regular f2f meeting unannounced and trying to dive into the ongoing discussion. Educational, yes, but also disruptive. Where is our obligation as researchers, educators, and members of an open academic association? The list as a mode of interaction has changed over time, for sure, and continues to change. It may be useful for AoIR to come up with an educators guide for using the list (or any list) as a learning tool. This might help to ensure that both students and regular users in our community both have satisfactory experiences. -TED Ted M. Coopman Department of Communication University of Washington On Wed, 14 Jun 2006, Rosanna wrote:

Hello Joanne,

You said: "I would like to reinforce the notion of mailing list "listening" as a form of active participation."

It also has some epistemological "side-effects"... Lave and Wenger (1991) also defines it "legitimate peripheral participation".

Rosanna Tarsiero Online Facilitator , Gionnethics rosanna@gionnethics.com M: +393356759481 http://www.gionnethics.com Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/e/fps/1127530/

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