Students offended by distribution of printed listserv postings | Kairosnews :: So, if you had participated in a class listserv, how would you feel if the instructor printed up the archives of the listserv and handed it out to your group as a tool for stimulating discussing? The students of the instructor quoted in the story apparently were quite upset by having their words thrown back in their faces.
You’d have thought I’d thrown rats down on the tables. One student got really angry, said he never knew what to expect in this class and now he’d always be on guard from now on. Another said he felt that I’d broken his confidence–”It’s one thing to see it back and forth on e-mail, but when you print it out like that, I feel violated.”
I’m not sure if I understand the students’ reactions or not. The archives were not distributed to anyone who had not taken part in the listserv. Everyone seeing the printout had already seen all the e-mails. Presumably, everyone had all the same information in their e-mail inboxes. So, what’s the problem?
I suppose that we are used to our e-mail postings being ephemeral; they seem to just disappear into the ether(net). There are settings where we expect our writings or utterings to be preserved forever, and we are usually much more careful when composing our ideas. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a conversation with someone who could not only remember every word I said (my wife already has this super-power) but also play our conversations back. A frightening idea.
Wow, that’s bizarre. I use the transcripts of discussion board commentary (similar) in my classroom as a great tool for deconstructing conversations … I guess I’ve been naive and never thought that anyone would take offense. And I am not sure why they would. I think you’re right Rob that e-mail postings just seem to disappear … I think as I am someone who teaches about/with electronic communication media, it will be important to remind students that these communcations really don’t disappear into thin-air (especially listserv postings). Perhaps this will have an effect on the types of posting (similar to the Hawthorne effect I surmise), but it’s good to instill this awareness.
Its interesting that you use discussion board commentaries as a comparison. I think by the nature of each person’s interaction with a discussion board, it would feel a little more permanent – when you go back to a discussion board, your comments are still there. Each users past interactions with a type of communication will obviously shape their expectations of how it will be used.
I know that instructors in online classes (or classes with online components) often go over rules of netiquette with students. I think the netiquette of online learning should include the responsibility of instructors to remind students about what happens to their online communications, as well as inform students of how their online communications will be used by the instructor within the class. I don’t know if the ethics of this have been explored very thoroughly, but I suspect that it will become increasingly important with the growth of online learning.