Influencing the agenda: exploring the online classroom as a third space for amplifying responsible environmental citizenry

Online learning communities (OLC) have the potential to become powerful amplification stations for promoting responsible environmental citizenry. This dissertation explores how interactions in an online classroom (e.g., with course content, instructor, peers, and interface) might encourage students to become more active environmental citizens and help amplify a more green agenda. Using a multimethod case study approach, which includes the use of a pretest/posttest measure, this research demonstrates ways instructors in higher education can transform online learning platforms into collaborative learning environments or Third Spaces. Within these Third Spaces, students can learn and practice skills necessary for environmental problem solving and decision making as well as increase their overall awareness and concern for the environment. In part, this work seeks to build a bridge between scholarship and practice in Marketing and Public Relations with online and distance education. Suggestions are also made for ways educators can structure and facilitate similar online learning experiences.

INFLUENCING THE AGENDA: EXPLORING THE ONLINE CLASSROOM AS A THIRD SPACE FOR AMPLIFYING RESPONSIBLE ENVIRONMENTAL CITIZENRY by Autumn Leigh Miller A dissertation submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Communication The University of Utah May 2016 Copyright © Autumn Leigh Miller 2016 All Rights Reserved The Uni ver s i ty of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF DISSERTATION APPROVAL The dissertation of Autumn Leigh Miller has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: James Anderson , Chair 8/18/2015 Date Approved Timothy Larson , Member 8/18/2015 Date Approved Connie Bullis , Member 8/18/2015 Date Approved Glen Feighery , Member 8/18/2015 Date Approved Debra Scammon , Member 8/18/2015 Date Approved and by Kent Ono , Chair/Dean of the Department/College/School of Communication and by David B. Kieda, Dean of The Graduate School. ABSTRACT Online learning communities (OLC) have the potential to become powerful am­plification stations for promoting responsible environmental citizenry. This dissertation explores how interactions in an online classroom (e.g., with course content, instructor, peers, and interface) might encourage students to become more active environmental cit­izens and help amplify a more green agenda. Using a multimethod case study approach, which includes the use of a pretest/posttest measure, this research demonstrates ways instructors in higher education can transform online learning platforms into collaborative learning environments or Third Spaces. Within these Third Spaces, students can learn and practice skills necessary for environmental problem solving and decision making as well as increase their overall awareness and concern for the environment. In part, this work seeks to build a bridge between scholarship and practice in Marketing and Public Rela­tions with online and distance education. Suggestions are also made for ways educators can structure and facilitate similar online learning experiences. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT............................................................................................................................ iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS......................................................................................................vi Chapters 1 INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................1 Voices From the Field..............................................................................................1 Literature Review.....................................................................................................4 Research Questions.................................................................................................26 Summary/Overview of the Dissertation...............................................................26 2 METHODOLOGY.............................................................................................................. 29 Course Description: The Context of the Study................................................... 29 ClassMembers........................................................................................................40 Procedure/Data Collection..................................................................................... 41 Inferential Statistics................................................................................................ 52 3 QUALITATIVE RESULTS.................................................................................................55 Descriptive Information on the Texts................................................................... 56 Themes....................................................................................................................56 Summary.............................................................................................................. 139 4 QUANTITATIVE RESULTS............................................................................................ 143 Population and Descriptive Findings.................................................................. 144 Instrumentation Constructs and Reliability........................................................146 Assumptions......................................................................................................... 153 Examination of the Research Questions.............................................................153 Summary.............................................................................................................. 218 5 DISCUSSION 239 Summary of Qualitative and Quantitative Results............................................241 Third Space.......................................................................................................... 246 Significance of Findings...................................................................................... 256 Utility of the Measures Used in This Study.......................................................259 Limitations............................................................................................................262 FutureResearch.................................................................................................... 263 Practical Advice...................................................................................................265 Conclusion............................................................................................................ 268 Appendices A: COURSE SYLLABUS AND GUIDELINES............................................... 271 B: DISCUSSION BOARD ASSIGNMENTS AND PROMPTS.....................289 C: PRETEST/POSTTEST MEASURES............................................................303 D: SUMMARY OF MEAN VALUES FOR ALL INSTRUMENT CONSTRUCTS.................................................................312 REFERENCES.....................................................................................................................314 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, neither my doctoral degree nor my dissertation would have been possible without the support of my advisor and other committee members-my sincerest gratitude and thanks go to Jim Anderson, Connie Bullis, Glen Feighery, Tim Larson, and Debbie Scammon. Second, thank you to all my family, friends, and all those others in the world who were somehow sounding boards or integral to this process-you too are responsible for the content herein. Third, thank you to the University of Utah, especially the Depart­ment of Communication, for this incredible opportunity to learn, teach, and expand my mind. I will forever remain grateful and speak highly of this experience. My hope is that people will read this dissertation and do something cool with it-make ripples, if you will. Thanks in advance for reading. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Voices From the Field "Now that I know just how much difference one person's behavior can make, I plan on doing more to help the environment." "I 'm already making changes. Because o f the group projects, I am now more conscientious o f my water usage and am trying to cut back. I 'm also encouraging my family to use less energy and recycle. They are little steps, but I believe they can make a big difference." "I am so glad I took this class. Now that I 'm graduating, I 'm going to see about getting more involved in my community to see what difference I can make with the environment." ~ Comments from students in COMM 2004: Communicating about Health, Sci­ence and the Environment, University of Cincinnati, spring 2013 The above excerpts are all examples of students expressing their intentions to engage in environmentally responsible behavior (ERB), seemingly as a result of their participation in an online learning community (OLC). The voices of these students serve as the impetus for this dissertation and are just a small indication of the large impact participation in an OLC can have when it comes to sensitizing students to environmental issues (among other possibilities). At the heart of it, my study explores pedagogical techniques that can be used in online classrooms to facilitate community building and encourage pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. I argue that one way we can encourage students to be more environmentally responsible citizens is by creating unique Third Spaces, or hybrid spaces that are both real and virtual with qualities not attainable in a traditional, nonhybrid classroom. Within these spaces, opportunities for interaction and collaboration can encourage discussion and deliberation, critical thinking, self-reflection, and small group problem solving, all of which have been designated as necessary skills for individuals to become more active, environmental citizens (Chawling, 2006). Considerable research across disciplines suggests that conversing with others about current/political issues can increase citizenship behaviors,1 and has the potential to ripple out (Kasperson et al., 1988), diffuse or innovate (Rogers, 1962), influence (Keller & Berry, 2003), and "effect" the publics' agendas in multiple ways. Put another way, it is in the act of conversation (i.e., the interaction), be it virtually or face-to-face, where in­fluence potentially occurs. Because deliberation can have such a deep impact on the way people think and behave, more scholars have become increasingly interested in figuring out ways to encourage meaningful conversations with procivic as well as pro- environ­mental outcomes (e.g., Chawla & Cushing, 2007; Shah et al., 2005). From Barber's (1984) perspective, it is ". . . the exploration of mutuality through conversation . . . that gives life to the notion of citizen" (p.184). Cissna and Anderson 1 See Searing (2007) for a complete review 2 (1994) contend that it is this back-and-forth process that allows for the changing and being changed of individuals (as cited in Kim & Kim, 2008, p. 57). It may also be a key ingredient for the preparation of more responsible environmental citizens. To explore the possibility of promoting responsible environmental citizenship through interaction, I use as my case study a discussion-based class I teach at the Uni­versity of Cincinnati called COMM 2004: Communicating about Health, Science and the Environment. COMM 2004 satisfies the requirements of both Communication and Environmental Studies students, and is open to all majors. It is a sophomore-level class and has no prerequisites to take it. The data collected for this study come from my third iteration of teaching COMM 2004 online and is described in detail in later chapters. In this chapter, I discuss the impetus for the current research and the literature relevant to carrying out this study, including key research from distance education, mar­keting, political communication, and environmental education (EE). I argue that although we have made strides in Marketing and Public Relations concerning the building of online communities for enhancing brands and selling products, we are less savvy about how such communities might promote a more pro-environmental agenda. First, I review several definitions for community that have emerged, including the definition appropriate for the current study. I argue that OLCs form as a result of communicative work (i.e., interaction) and discuss the collaborative learning framework that informs the current study. I also outline several typologies that help us examine the communicative processes of OLCs, including the following: 1) Types of Online Interaction; 2) Types of Online Presence; and 3) Spirit, Trust, Learning, and Interaction. Third, I explain how an OLC can be further enhanced by embodying qualities of a Third Space. Finally, I give a sense 3 of how to go about measuring the success of OLCs, particularly when pro-environmental outcomes are the primary measure for success. Literature Review What Is an Online Learning Community (OLC)? Depending on the group of people and context involved, there are various ways to define community. If we are talking about online communities of Lord o f the Rings fans, for example, their experience of what it means to be a part of a community will perhaps differ vastly from how students in an online classroom covering science, health, and environmental content experience community. It is also possible that merely forming online can change the way community is experienced (Blanchard, 2007). Therefore, in this section, I describe several basic definitions of community, including how it was first envisioned in traditional classrooms as well as and how opportunities for online interac­tion have expanded our understanding. SOC, or sense of community, was first recognized as important for the successful functioning of communities in face-to-face situations by Sarason (1986). McMillan and Chavis (1986) defined this sense of community as the extent to which participants expe­rienced a sense of belonging, identity, and attachment to a group (as cited in Arbaugh, 2007). This attachment is crucial because it can be an important precursor to satisfaction and commitment in groups (Burroughs & Eby, 1998; DeVincenzo & Scammon, 2015). Less is known, however, about the impact community can have on commitment to the environment. Because previous work focused primarily on face-to-face interactions, as opposed 4 to those that occur online, researchers sought to expand our understanding of community to also include virtual environments, arguing that there is something unique about com­munities that form online (Blanchard, 2007; Blanchard & Markus, 2004; Koh & Kim, 2003; Roberts, Smith, & Pollock, 2002). For example, although it may seem counter intuitive, Blanchard and Markus (2004) found that those in virtual communities felt that they got to know people better and observed more personal relationships than in face-to-face communities (p. 66). Cutler (1996) demonstrated that self-disclosure begets trust, and trust begets increased satisfaction and a strengthened sense of community. There is also evidence to suggest that students may learn environmental content more effectively in online platforms (e.g., Aivazidis, Lazaridou, & Hellden, 2006). There­fore, distance learning scholars in particular have more recently emphasized the impor­tance of the online space in their definitions of community. For example, Preece (2001) described an online community more generally as "any virtual social space where people come together to get and give information or support, to learn, or to find company. The community can be local, national, international, small or large" (p. 349). In this definition of community, although Preece alludes to the importance of attachment and belonging, she seems to privilege the online space itself and the resources it makes available to its participants. The size of the community also seems important, although what the ideal sizes are for encouraging online communities is not discussed. As we are talking about OLCs that form in the classroom, the following definition pulled together from multiple authors by Papastergiou et al. (2011) is most apt for the current study: 5 An OLC is a group of individuals that are connected through technologically mediated communication who actively participate in collaborative learning ac­tivities, sharing common principles and practices, in order to achieve common learning objectives. (p. 129) The Papastergiou et al. (2011) definition operates under the assumption that students in the community collaborate and share some set of core principles and learning objectives. Similarly, in COMM 2004, a group of students is connected through the Blackboard web portal and are encouraged to regularly interact by contributing to asyn­chronous discussion board assignment; at the same time, they are also guided by a course syllabus, common learning objectives, and instructor. Arguably, it is these common elements (i.e., the online space and structured learning opportunities and resources it provides) that initially bring participants together and set the stage for the formation of OLCs. How Does an OLC Form? Online learning communities form as a result of communicative work (i.e., inter­action). According to Lave and Wenger (1991) "These communities and the learning that takes place within them, happens through communication, negotiation and interaction, and is seen as a process of social participation" (as cited in Papastergiou et al., 2011, p. 129). It is through this process of participation that students are able to lurk and move "from feeling like outsiders to feeling like insiders" (Wegerif, 1998, p. 34). Essentially, it is this feeling of connectedness or "we-ness" that fuels the level of community experienced in the class. In essence, as participants interact, acquire more information, and understand 6 the processes of how the community functions, they eventually gravitate "towards the center," and begin to more fully engage in the community (Papastergiou et al., 2011). The level of engagement experienced by students in these communities depends on the kind and quality of the interactions they have with teachers, students, and content (An­derson & Garrison, 1997; Moore; 1989). This emphasis on interactivity in the classroom is the cornerstone of collaborative learning pedagogy, which undergirds the current study, serves as a helpful framework, and is discussed next. After explaining the collaborative learning framework, I describe three typologies used to conceptualize the process of OLC formation. Collaborative Learning Those who study online and distance education tend to find that a key driver of success in online learning is the extent to which students are able to participate in col­laborative learning (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer, 2001; Bourne, McMaster, Rieger, & Campbell, 1997; Brown & Campione, 1990; King, 2002; Wegerif, 1998). At the heart of it, collaborative learning emphasizes active interaction and participation be­tween instructors and students alike (Hiltz, 1997; Jonassen, Davidson, Collins, Campbell, & Haag, 1995). Although the way these interactions play out in the classroom can vary, Jonassen et al. (1995) contend ‘‘the most valuable activity in a classroom of any kind is the opportunity for students to work and interact together and to build and become a part of a community of scholars and practitioners'' (p. 7, as cited in King, 2002). It is through a variety of interactions that these scholars and practitioners emerge. 7 Types of Online Interaction We can envision OLCs forming through several types of online interaction. In the late 1980s, when the possibility of learning online was becoming increasingly more real, Moore (1989) recommended that distance educators become more systematic about studying the types of interaction that are possible when teaching students across the boundaries of space and time. Although other scholars have since added to the scope of his typology, Moore (1989) suggested observing a minimum of three types of interaction in the online classroom: 1) Learner-instructor, 2) Learner-content, and 3) Learner-learner (see Figure 1.1). These interaction types serve as a helpful starting place for conceptual­izing how an OLC might form and are each described in the next section. 8 Learner-lnstructor Lea mer- Learner- Interface Learner Learner-Content Figure 1.1. Depiction of Moore's (1989) three levels of interaction in the online class-rooom with Hillman, Willis, and Gunawardena 's (1994) addition of the fourth level, Learner-Interface. Learner-Content The first type of online interaction occurs between learners and content. According to Moore (1989), the content of a class is the "defining characteristic of education" (p. 2). Put another way, it is the foundation upon which everything else in the class is built. Moore (1989) goes on to say the following about course content: Without it there cannot be education since it is the process of intellectually in­teracting with content that results in changes in the learner's understanding, the learner's perspective, and the cognitive structures of the learner's mind. (p. 2) From this perspective, it is the content of the class that provides opportunities for students to heuristically process information, thereby involving themselves in a self-persuasion process or what Holmberg (1986) refers to as "internal didactic conversation" wherein students learn to "talk to themselves" about the content they experience (as cited in Moore, 1989). As a result of this self-persuasion process, course content and the associated assignments of a class can become important catalyzers for heuristic processing, self-reflection, and critical thinking. Tallent-Runnels et al. (2006) found that some of the most pivotal learning mo­ments occur when there is a deep understanding of course content. Put another way, con­tent can expand and change people's minds. Therefore, presentations, videos, PowerPoint lectures, and the like can all make lasting impressions in students' minds. In addition, the interactions students have with their peers can also have an impact on learning outcomes and the extent to which students feel a part of an OLC. Learner-Instructor The second type of online interaction occurs between the learner and instructor. Whether it is online or in a traditional classroom, the interactions (or lack thereof)instructors 9 have with students play a significant role in the learning outcomes and the sense of commu­nity experienced in a class. In fact, teaching presence and direct facilitation of instructors may contribute more to students' sense of connectedness and learning than instructional design, learner characteristics, and course organization (e.g., see Shea et al., 2006). Swan (2012) expanded on the significance of the role played by the teacher in the classroom: In any educational setting, the instructor serves as an expert who plans instruc­tion to stimulate student's interest, motivates their participation in the learning process, and facilitates their learning. (p. 4) In Swan's (2012) description, the onus of instruction becomes the sole responsi­bility and direct result of the teacher; however, it fails to account for the following: 1) in­stances when students become experts and knowledge leaders, 2) the impact the internet and information seeking on it can influence the creation of new knowledge production in an online class, 3) the possibility that the instructor can be on more level ground with students, and 4) the amount of autonomous or self-directed learning students must do in online classrooms. Additional scholars have described alternative ways the instructor's role can manifest in the classroom as well. For example, Howe, Brown, and Campione (1990) suggest that within a collab­orative learning framework, instructors must step down from their authoritative roles, acting more as mentors or guides to students and fully participating and becoming co­operative members of the learning community themselves. Berge (1995) confirms that online instructors should be accessible and maintain a nonauthoritarian style in the online classroom. Essentially, rather than being the all-knowing "sage on the stage," the role of the instructor then shifts from being the "mentor in the center" to the "guide on the side" (Lave & Wenger, 1991). 10 Arguably, this change in teaching style is an adjustment for many students who may be accustomed to a more top-down approach from instructors and must be communi­cated appropriately. Instructors can start this process by establishing norms and etiquette in the course syllabus and on the course site itself. They can continue this process by modeling such norms during interactions with students throughout the class. Kleinman (2005) makes three additional suggestions for teachers in the online classroom: First, instructors should be upfront about course expectations and how discus­sion boards will be evaluated. Second, they should foster a community that encourages self-disclosure. Third, they should use course software to track students' abilities. Learner-Learner The third type of online interaction occurs between learners and other learners. When he originally came up with his typology in 1989, Moore hypothesized that we would eventu­ally be most interested in the impact peers can have on one another in the online classroom. We have seen empirical evidence of this peer/normative influence when it comes to people being willing to alter their thinking or behaviors regarding their health in particular (e.g., Jang, Rimmel, & Cho, 2012; Liang & Scammon; 2012). We have also seen the impact normative influence can have regarding political topics (Griffin, Neuwirth, & Dunwoody, 2002; Kim et al., 1999; Mcleod, Scheufele, & Moy, 2005; Shah et al., 2005; Shah et al., 2001). Put simply, when we talk to others, they can influence us, and we can influence them. Cothrel (2000) defines this influence as "implicit or explicit effect of one thing (or person) on another" (p. 5). When we couch this influence in the online setting, Cothrel's explanation can be expanded to include the extent to which someone's words, links, and/ 11 or videos make another person think, say, or do something. When marketers are asked how this influence happens in online brand communi­ties, they tend to use the following formula: expertise + trust = influence. In the context of online teaching and environmental education interventions, this formula becomes par­ticularly relevant. Although we are not selling a product in the context of an online class per se, we are selling ideas, and we are promoting our own brand of teaching, whether we realize it or not. Moreover, it is possible and highly likely that when students (and the instructor) are perceived as being more credible, trustworthy, or having some sort of expertise, that they too would ultimately be more persuasive (i.e., influential). Opportunities for collaboration with peers, small group work more specifically, may enhance the overall experience of community in online classroom (King, 2002; Shea, 2006; Rovai, 2002; Tallent-Runnels et al., 2006). According to Rovai (2002), small group collabo­ration allows students to engage meaningfully in learning and make connections with one an­other, thereby increasing social bonding and feelings of community. Gunawardena and Zittle (1997) add that when students are able to interact in new social situations (e.g., small group settings), they are in essence able to create interpersonal connections critical for the develop­ment of OLCs. In addition to these interactions with other students, OLCs can also forms as a result of interactions learners have with the online interface used to facilitate a course. Learner-Interface More recently, researchers have began to examine the extent to which interac­tions students have with online interfaces can impact learning (e.g., Hillman et al., 1994; Swan, 2012). For example, Swan (2012) found that the usability of course sites as well as 12 factors, such as clarity, consistency, and simplicity, affected students' perceived learning (i.e., the fewer problems students encountered with a site, the more perceived learning that took place). As a result, Swan (2012) suggested using consistent, transparent, and simple course structures to enhance the clarity of meaning in an online class and insure that learners only have to adapt to the course structures once (Swan, 2012). Without a clear, consistent course design, students may experience distracting "noise" that can frustrate them and impede their learning experience as well as the extent to which they experience feeling a part of a community. According to Preece (2001) "whenever possible, the opportunity for users to make errors should be engineered out" (p. 6). The goal of instructors should be to make the user interface as seamless, flawless, and transparent to students as possible to help promote the formation of OLCs. Ultimately, the communicative work performed by online instructors, students, content and the interfaces themselves, are what form the foundation of OLCs. One way to examine these interactions is using Moore's (1989) typology of online interactions, discussed above. In addition to these various forms of interaction, we can also envision community manifesting as three types of classroom "presence." Types of Classroom Presence Based on their read of the collaborative learning literature, Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000) argue that meaningful learning experiences result from the intersection and overlap of three necessary presences in an online classroom: social, cognitive, and teaching. Figure 1.2 depicts how these three presences overlap to help form an OLC. Next, each type of presence is discussed in detail. 13 14 Social Presence ^ OLC^ Teaching Cognitive Presence Presence W Figure 1.2. Garrison et al. (2000) types of online presence2 Social Presence Social presence has been defined as "the ability of participants to identify with the community (e.g., course of study), communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and develop interpersonal relationships by way of projecting individual personalities" (Garrison, 2009, p. 9). Arbaugh, Cleveland-Innes, Diaz, and Garrison (2008) further elab­orate on social presence, breaking it down into three subcategories: open communication, group cohesion, and personal/affective projection. It is the effective combination of these 2 Note that in this dissertation, the author explored an additional fourth type of presence, "learner presence." three subcategories that predict a student's ability to both project and experience social presence in an OLC. Gunawardena and Sittle (1997) define social presence as "the degree with which a person is perceived as a ‘real person' in mediated communication" (p. 9). In other words, the extent to which individuals get to "be themselves," or least some version they are able to (un)intentionally construct and project in the class, is shaped by and helps shape the formation of OLCs. OLCs also emerge through cognitive presence. Cognitive Presence The second type of presence, cognitive presence, occurs as a developmental pro­cess over time, which instructors can track to help decipher if an OLC has developed: 1) triggering event, 2) exploration, 3) integration, and 4) resolution/application (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001). Ideally, instructors are able to help students effectively move through this entire process, with application being the ultimate capstone of achievement (Garrison et al., 2001). Self-reflection and critical thinking can both be identified as forms of cognitive presence. Cognitive presence can also be impacted by the choices instructors make in the classroom. Teaching Presence The third presence in an online community, teaching presence, has been deter­mined as an important factor in the satisfaction and success of OLCs (Garrison, 2007; Garrison & Arbaugh, 2007). Several authors have developed helpful checklists of ac­tions that teachers must perform to make their presence known in an OLC. For example, 15 Shea, Li, and Pickett (2006) break teaching presence down into three distinct, yet related, types of actions: 1) design, 2) facilitation, and 3) direct instruction. Shea, Li, and Pickett (2006) further recommend instructors do the following: set curriculum, design methods, establish time parameters, utilize the medium effectively, and establish group norms via conventions of "netiquette." Ideally, these rules of netiquette are made clear early in the process of community building, modeled by the instructor and mimicked by the students. Additionally, Shea et al. (2006) argued online instructors must do the following: a) identify points of agreement and disagreement; b) seek consensus and understanding; c) encourage; d) acknowledge; e) reinforce student contributions; f) set the climate for learning; g) draw in participants; h) prompt discussion; and i) assess the efficacy of the process. According to Anderson et al. (2001), teaching presence is also made known by direct instruction, presenting content and questions, focusing the discussion on specific issues, summarizing discussion, confirming understanding, diagnosing misperceptions, injecting knowledge from diverse sources, and responding to technical concerns. Based on their qualitative work on graduate students and their interactions with online instructors, Mclssac, Blocher, Mahes, and Vrasidas (1999) and Tallent-Runnels et al. (2006) found that the most positive online learning experiences resulted from in­structors encouraging social interaction, participating in social interaction themselves, providing prompt feedback, and employing collaborative learning strategies. Therefore, Berge (1995) suggests that within a collaborative learning framework, the main role of instructors becomes facilitation (i.e., they encourage learners to interact). Anderson et al. (2001) concur that the best indication that a genuine OLC has formed is the extent to which focused and sustained deliberation has taken place. 16 The Anderson et al. (2000) conceptualization of community in terms of three overlap­ping online presences (i.e., social, cognitive, and teaching) is another helpful way to imagine the process of OLC formation. In addition to these various types of presence, we can envision OLCs forming as a result of the spirit, trust, interaction, and learning that occurs online. Spirit, Trust, Interaction, and Learning Rovai (2001) conceptualized the online classroom community in terms of four distinct, yet overlapping, components: 1) spirit, 2) trust, 3) interaction, and 4) learning (see Figure 1.3). First, the spirit component involves more emotional aspects of being part of a community such as the bonding, feelings of friendship, and cohesion that result from students spending time with one another (Rovai, 2001). According to Moormon, Zaltman, and Deshpande (1993) trust, the second component, actually consists of two dimensions: credibility and benevolence. Credibility is the notion that students come to trust that other learners (and the instructor) can be relied on; benevolence is the extent to which instructors and students take a legitimate interest in others and are motivated to help them learn (Rovai, 2002). The third component, interaction, is the means through which all the other components in Rovai's model materialize. Thus, interactions and the platforms that enable them are important prerequisites for building online communities. Finally, learning, the fourth component, tends to be the initial reason for the formation of online learning communities (Rovai, 2006). Perhaps not surprisingly, the extent to which learning needs are met has been directly linked to the level of interaction and active par­ticipation in the community (Rovai, 2006). Therefore, instructors should play an active role in creating opportunities for meaningful interactions and learning in an online class. 17 18 Figure 1.3. Depiction of Rovai's (2006) 4 components of community: spirit, trust, interac­tion, and learning. Teachers should accept responsibility for creating a conducive environment for the building of OLCs by modeling communicative behavior and cultural norms. These efforts by the instructor in turn allow for socialization, thereby increasing levels of trust and feelings of community (Cutler, 1996; Zhu, 2006). It starts with the course guidelines, initial tone set by the instructor, and consistency in the course design; it hinges on the students' ability and willingness to participate and conform to the norms of practice. Online Learning Community (OLC) Summary A sense of community is a direct result of communicative interaction and an im­portant precursor to the formation of OLCs. Through the process of communicating and collaboratively learning, OLCs are built. The formation of OLCs can be conceptualized in terms of the types of online interaction that comprise them, the types of online presences that co-mingle to produce them, and the extent to which they embody trust, spirit, interac­tion, and learning. In addition to these typologies, an OLC can be further understood and enhanced by the extent to which it embodies qualities of a Third Space. The Online Classroom as a Third Space The online classroom may be the ideal space for communities to develop given its propensity to embody qualities of a Third Space. A Third Space is a nonconventional place or hybrid space where community building and deliberation can take place. It blurs the lines between real and virtual and becomes something new by inhabiting qualities of both. Habermas (2005) distinguishes between two ideal types of spaces for political deliberation: "a) among citizens within the informal public sphere and b) among politi­cians or representatives within formal settings" (p. 53, as cited in Kim & Kim, 2008). The online classroom can be considered a hybrid of both of these deliberative settings and resembles what Bhabha (1990) refers to as a Third Space: The Third Space displaces the histories that constitute it, and sets up new struc­tures of authority, new political initiatives. The process of cultural hybridity gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation, meaning and representations. (p. 211, as cited in Davies, 2006) The Third Space turns traditional learning on its head, giving birth to new ways 19 of interacting where new meanings can be created and negotiated in ways perhaps not possible in other realms. Asynchronous discussion affords participants opportunities to reflect on their classmate's contributions while also creating their own. A mindfulness and a culture of reflection may develop in online courses that may be more difficult to achieve in a tradi­tional classroom (Swan, 2012). Arguably, the real-time nature of most face-to-face classes makes it difficult to foster this level of mindful independent thought and reflection, which may be an advantage of online classes in general. Moreover, the online classroom and the communities it helps foster might be important gateways to deeper, deliberative conversations needed for significant polit­ical change. As environmental issues are necessarily political issues, it makes sense that instructors find ways to enable students to deliberate about those as well. Third Space learning may encourage such deliberation. According to Davies (2006), it is within the online classroom that Third Spaces are realized. Gee (2004) refers to these special spaces as "affinity spaces" in some detail and Davies (2006) highlights the most relevant elements pertaining to online learning: -There is a common endeavor (interests, goals or practices); -The space has content; -The content is organized; -Individuals can choose to interact with content and/or each other; -Individuals share the space, even fulfilling different roles; -There are many ways (portals) of entering the space; -New content can be generated; 20 -Many types of knowledge (individual, distributed, disperse and tacit) are valued; -Group endeavor is valued and encouraged; -Interactivity is required to sustain the affinity space; -Novices and the experienced occupy the same domain; there is no segregation; -There are many ways of participating and these can change temporally; -Leadership is "porous"; -There are many ways of gaining status; -The organization of the space can change through interaction; -Learning is social and enjoyable. (pp. 220-221) These affinity or Third Space qualities serve as a helpful checklist and starting place for instructors wishing to encourage the cultivation of collaborative learning environments. They also help conceptualize how we might go about measuring the success of OLCs. How Is the "Success" of OLCs Measured? Defining Success Much like the definition of community, the ways we define "success" in a class­room will vary across context, depending on our goals and desired outcomes: Some instructors focus primarily on end-of-semester grades, for example; others focus on the extent to which students actively engage in classroom discussion. Preece (2001) advises that success is based on instructors' abilities to identify key determinants of sociability and usability (e.g., the number of messages per unit of time, members' satisfaction, reciprocity, number of on-topic messages, and trustworthiness). In online studies, thread depth has also been discovered as an indicator of interactivity (Liang & Scammon, 2011; 21 Rafaeli & Sudweeks, 1997) and could also be a precursor to or indicator of success. If we couch success in terms of how effective an intervention is at influencing environmental attitudes and behaviors, we can learn much from Environmental Edu­cation (EE) literature. Scholars in Environmental Education (EE) and Online/Distance education have been exploring the use of the internet and other multimedia software and technologies in learning outcomes for some time now (e.g., Ballantyne, Fien, & Packer, 2001; Bullard, 1998; Houtsonen, 2003, Moore, 1989; Moore & Huber, 2001). However, less work has explored the specific impact OLCs can have on EE interventions. A few scholars have called for more use of the online medium for EE interventions (e.g., Potter, 2010; Whitehouse, 2008), but most EE research has focused on the impacts of outdoor/ experiential education on children in primary or secondary education settings. There have been a few notable exceptions (Aivazidis, Lazaridou, & Hellden; 2006; Nomura, 2004; Papastergiou, Antoniou, & Apostolou, 2011). Aivazidis et al. (2006), for example, examined how the impact of EE interventions in online classrooms compares to traditional classrooms. The researchers used a pretest/posttest quasi- ex­perimental design using a measure they developed specifically for capturing knowledge acquisition and attitude change after students took part in a secondary EE program about rivers. Ultimately, students who received the online instruction scored significantly higher than their traditional classroom counterparts. In addition, there was a significant, although slight, increase in environmental attitude scores of those in the online class, compared to those in the traditional setting. Papastergiou et al. (2011) used an in-depth case study to examine the participation of secondary education students in an OLC and the impact it had on students' attitudes 22 and knowledge regarding the natural environment, social skills, and their attitudes toward Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Using a pretest/posttest measure, Papastergiou and colleagues found that pro-environmental attitudes were strengthened as a result of participation in the OLC, and knowledge of the environment and computer skills also increased, evidence that EE interventions online may have implications beyond just changes in environmental attitudes and behaviors. Nomura (2004) described the online EE intervention strategies of the World School Network (WSN). As an active nonprofit from the years 1994-2003, WSM fostered an approach to environmental issues using a global perspective with the assis­tance of computer technology and the internet. Ultimately, researchers found evidence that opportunities for children to talk to each other by participating in "project circles" online helped motivate students to learn more about environmental issues, increased knowledge, impacted environmental behavior, and enhanced intercultural communica­tion (Nomura, 2004). Based on their metareview of the literature on Environmental Education (EE) interventions, Chawla and Cushing (2007) deduced that the most effective EE programs embody the following characteristics: "an extended duration of time, opportunities to learn and practice action skills, and success in achieving some valued goals" (p. 441). Papastergiou et al. (2011) suggest four additional criteria of successful EE interventions: 1) students actively collaborated in a group project to achieve learning objectives, 2) students contributed materials to the discussion boards regularly, 3) students engaged in social interactions and exchange viewpoints, and 4) students regularly access content (i.e., lectures and readings for the class). 23 24 Methodological Approaches Most work on OLCs stems out of the qualitative paradigm. For example, eth­nography is a widely used technique, which has proven quite effective for developing understanding of online communities. Ethnography allows for thick descriptions (Geertz, 1973) and intimate understandings of interactions within specific contexts, which quantitative methods are unable to produce. On the other hand, in Environmental Education (EE) interventions, it is common to measure the success of a class based on some sort of significant change on a pretest/posttest measure related to environmental knowledge, attitudes, or behavior. Arbaugh et al. (2008) stressed the need to reach beyond strictly qualitative ap­proaches for studying OLCs and argues the following: This exploratory interpretivist approach certainly has shown to be fruitful, but it may be time to move from a descriptive to an inferential approach to studying online communities of inquiry. This would permit large studies of online and blended learning across institutions and disciplines. For this to happen we need to develop a structurally valid and psychometrically sound survey instrument with the potential to expand the study of online and blended learning. Such an instrument would also provide the means to study the structure of each of the presences and their inter-relationships. (p. 134) Ultimately, Arbaugh et al. (2008) call for more quantitative studies to comple­ment our girth of qualitative studies. To answer such calls, several measures have been developed to capture the extent to which community is experienced online, including the Arbaugh et al. (2008) Community of Inquiry Instrument (CoI), Blanchard's (2007) Sense of Virtual Community Measure, and Rovai's (2002) Classroom Community Scale, all of which are further discussed in Chapter 3. Whether it is quantitative or qualitative research, Preece (2001) cautions us against using strict mono-method approaches for studying OLCs because of the poten­tial to create "false impressions" (p. 1). In other words, we may need multiple methods to get a better sense of what happens in our online classrooms and how OLCs form. Therefore, Preece (2001) encourages the use of several methods to study OLCs, with scales being added to complement primarily qualitatively-driven approaches. In part, the current research seeks to build a bridge between scholarship in EE, Online/Distance education, and Marketing. Our colleagues in Marketing have made strides toward documenting what it takes to successfully build an online community (e.g., see Howard, 2010; Kraut & Resnick, 2011; Millington, 2012). However, most of this work has focused on what these communities can do for branding products, diffusing trends, and contributing to the bottom line, with a few exceptions among transformative and sustainable marketing scholars. We have seen evidence recently, however, that social media and online com­munities can have an impact on social movements (e.g., 350.org, Occupy, etc.) as well as health behaviors and decisions (e.g., Donnelle & Hoffman-Goetz, 2008; Eichhorn, 2008; Liang & Scammon, 2011; Liang & Scammon, 2013). Although an online class is not a social movement per se, given the potential for people enrolled in the class to invigorate or positively change their own environmental attitudes and behaviors as well as educate others about what they have learned, it makes sense that we explore more about the potential impact people in online classrooms can have on the envi­ronmental agenda. Therefore, I propose the following Research Questions for further investigation. 25 Research Questions My research is guided by six overarching Research Questions, which are ex­panded upon in subsequent chapters: RQ 1: Does an OLC appear to form in COMM 2004? RQ 2: To what extent does COMM 2004 embody qualities of a Third Space? RQ 3: To what extent does participation in COMM 2004 affect participants envi­ronmental attitudes and behaviors? RQ 4: To what extent does participation in COMM 2004 seem to influence participants? RQ 5: How does participation in COM 2004 affect the students' desire to seek out and share information? RQ 6: Is there a relationship between participation in an OLC and students' overall satisfaction with COMM 2004? Summary/Overview of the Dissertation In Chapter 1, I gave voice to a group of students who reported engaging in pro-environmental behaviors after participating in COMM 2004. I made the case for further exploration of the higher education online classroom setting as a Third Space for pro­moting pro-environmental citizenship in OLCs. I argued that an OLC forms through com­municative work and described three different ways to conceptualize how this process unfolds. I also described the collaborative learning framework that undergirds this study and why it is appropriate for exploring OLCs. Then, I briefly discussed how to measure the success of OLCs when pro-environmental outcomes are desired. Finally, based on the 26 aforementioned review, I presented the Research Questions used to guide my study. Next, Chapter 2 details my methodology. Given the applied nature of my work, I position my project alongside other scholars in multiple, practical, and ap­plied fields (e.g., Health Promotion, Environmental Education, Public Relations, Social Marketing), who have in recent years employed the use of multiple methods to help answer their Research Questions and explain their Hypotheses. First, I provide background on the classroom site and participants. Second, I explain the procedure I used to collect my data and the types of qualitative and quantitative data I gathered. Third, I briefly explain the hybrid confirmatory/emergent coding scheme I used to analyze my qualitative data. Fourth, I discuss the quantitative measures of the study, including the scales used in my pretest/posttest measure. Finally, I briefly discuss how I combined my data sources. Chapter 3 details the results from my qualitative data. First, I provide some de­scriptive information on the texts used for analysis. Then, I explain the coding process I used to generate themes. I also provide relevant tables and graphs and highlight exem­plars from discussion board conversations and field notes. Chapter 4 covers the results from my quantitative data. First, I provide population and descriptive findings. Then, I detail the instrumentation, constructs, and associated reliabilities. I also explain the results from the factor analysis from the Course Influence Scale (CIS), which I developed for use in this study. Finally, I describe the statistics I used to test my hypotheses and highlight significant findings. Chapter 5 summarizes the qualitative and quantitative results. First, I answer each of the six research questions put forth by this dissertation and explain what is learned 27 from combining both data sets. Next, I discuss the implications of the findings for online learning more generally and pro-environmental/sustainability campaigns in higher educa­tion more specifically. I also discuss the limitations of the current study, call attention to future needed research and offer practical advice. 28 CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY This study employed a multiple method case study approach with a pretest/ posttest measure. Researchers have used the case study method for many years across a variety of disciplines to get a more intimate understanding of various objects of study, including online communities. This particular case study allowed for a more in- depth understanding of a real-world online classroom. In this chapter, I first describe the class I used as context for the current study as well as the group of individuals who participated in the class. Next, I explain the procedure I used to collect my data followed by a brief discussion of the types of qualitative and quantitative data I collected. Course Description: The Context of the Study The site for this study was an online iteration of a class offered at University of Cincinnati called COMM 2004: Communicating about Health, Science and the Environ­ment. COMM 2004 is a sophomore-level class and satisfies general studies requirements for all majors. It also helps satisfy major requirements for students in both Communica­tion (COMM) and Environmental Studies (EVST). There are no pre- requisites for the class, and it runs a full academic semester lasting 16 weeks. Since its inception, I have 30 taught the class a total of four times, three of which have been online. I gathered the data for this dissertation during the spring semester of 2014. The following excerpt from the COMM 2004 course syllabus (2014) helps describe the crux of the class: In the areas of science, health and the environment, communication plays a fundamental role. Whether it's the technical journals we rely on for the latest scientific findings of the day, messages we glean from the mass media, words exchanged with others in chat rooms, or face-to-face conversations with our doc­tors, we use communication to define and help make sense of our world and the problems that arise in it for us. In this class, students will learn about the every­day symbolic and material consequences of a variety of science, health and envi­ronmental issues as well as ways in which we evaluate and communicate about such issues in a variety of contexts. Whether it is talking with one of your peers about how you feel regarding a video we viewed in class, working with a partner to learn more about an area of health you are both interested in, or brainstorming solutions to environmental problems in small groups, in this class, you are asked to interact with your peers, critically engage material and actively apply what you learn. (p. 1) Additionally, there were 10 course objectives that guided the class: • To recognize some of the historical and contemporary influences on the public's understanding, enthusiasm, and overall literacy in the areas of science, health, and the environment • To recognize ways in which communication can serve as both a barrier to and vehicle for the public's understanding, enthusiasm, and overall literacy in the areas of science, health, and the environment • To learn some of the fundamental theories and concepts from the field of Com­munication that can inform how we communicate in the areas of science, health, and environment • To apply some of these fundamental theories and principles to real-life examples and case studies • To bolster students' understanding, critical thinking, skills, and overall media literacy • To take part in meaningful conversations with peers that get us thinking, talking, and applying course concepts to our respective areas of study and lives. • To generate a community of interested individuals that can learn from, interro­gate, and critique each other's ideas • To gain a better sense of (and develop a vocabulary for) one's own and others' ideological worldviews • To practice communication skills in small groups to research and problem-solve • To learn about ways we can become more informed citizens and better advocates for our own health, environment, and society. The preceding course description and learning objectives served as the foundation for the class and I referred to them when making decisions about how I organized the class as well as what content and assignments I chose to include. COMM 2004 runs a full academic semester lasting 16 weeks. The class was divided into three sections: During the first third of the class (Weeks 1-4), the course focused on science communication and mass communication. During the second third of the class, the focus was on health communication (Weeks 5-9). It was during the final third of the class (Weeks 10-16) when content specifically devoted to environmental topics was covered, and it was also during this time when I recruited students for the study and pre- and posttests were administered. Figure 2.1 depicts the overall flow of COMM 2004 including a brief overview of what was covered in each part of the class as well as when the pre- and posttests were administered. The complete course syllabus can 31 Parti: Part 2: ^ Intro T c ^ / Science & Mass Health ^M id t e rm Class/lcebreaking w Communication Communication m Exam f t •Content ^Content • Discussion • Discussion •Self Disclosure •Small Group training & projects •Reflection on small group process Figure 2.1. Flow of COMM 20043 3 Note when pre- and posttests were administered Environmental Communication Part 3: •Content • Discussion •Reflection on carbon footprints and NEP Scores •Small group training, icebreaking & group projects •Reflection on small group process •Reflection on the class Final Exam LtJ to be found in Appendix C. In part, the class was designed to give students opportunities to "learn and practice action skills" through discussion board assignments and small group problem solving. Research in both political communication and Environmental Education (EE) emphasize the need for individuals to be able to think critically, deliberate, and collaborate to in order to solve the problems facing the world, environmental issues notwithstanding. As a result, I attempted to provide opportunities to practice these skills in COMM 2004. Students participated in COMM 2004 several ways. These methods of participa­tion are first briefly discussed, then each is unpacked in detail. First, students were as­signed weekly readings. Second, students were given access to lectures that corresponded to the weekly readings. Third, students took a 10-point quiz each week on the readings. Fourth, students were assigned a midterm and a final that covered weekly readings and lectures. Fifth, students were asked to participate each week on the class discussion board (DB) by responding to one instructor-posed prompt based on the content from the course readings and lectures for the week as well as commenting on a minimum of three peer's posts (all discussion board prompts for the class are included in Appendix B). Finally, students partook in two small group DB projects. In terms of course readings, there were four required books for the class that were read in the following order: • Mooney, C., & Kirshenbaum, S. (2009). Unscientific America: How scientific illiteracy threatens our future. Philadelphia, PA: Perseus Books Group. • Olson, R. (2009). Don't be such a scientist: Talking substance in an age o f style. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. 33 • Parrott, R. (2009). Talking about health: Why communication matters. West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell. • Corbett, J. B. (2006). Communicating nature: How we create and understand environmental messages. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. The first two books corresponded with the first part of the class and focused primarily on science communication. I used the third book in the second part of the class to help teach about health communication. Finally, I used the fourth book to focus on En­vironmental Communication. These four books were lighter reads and less like traditional textbooks typically used in a college classroom. There were also several short, supple­mental articles assigned throughout the semester to complement the books and lectures. My lectures were meant to supplement and complement the student reading and drive home key concepts by providing graphics, videos, and relevant examples and case studies. I created lectures in Microsoft PowerPoint and recorded my voice so students could listen to them. There were a few weeks when lectures contained no narration (e.g., when small group communication was taught), but the vast majority of lectures contained voice-narrated slides available to students on the Blackboard site to help familiarize them with the weekly flow of the class. Although the class was offered online, the way I disseminated the class content flowed much like a traditional Tuesday/Thursday class. More specifically, each Tuesday and Thursday, I posted a new lecture based on readings students were to complete for the week. Table 2.1 displays an abbreviated schedule of COMM 2004. On Wednesday nights, weekly quizzes were due. Quizzes were worth 10 points each and based on the readings from the week prior. There were 10 quizzes total, comprising 100 out of the 600 points 34 35 Table 2.1. Abbreviated weekly schedule for COMM 2004 Sun Mon Tues Wed Thurs Fri Sat -Weekly quiz appears -Weekly Module, Weekly Notes & To-Do List appears -New Lecture/ Video Posted -3 Peer comments due on previous week's DB -Weekly quiz due on the previous week's readings -New lecture/video posted -DB Posts Due for the class. Students also had a chance to earn one bonus point every time they took a quiz by answering an additional 11th question per quiz. Students also completed a mid­term (worth 50 points) and a final (worth 100 points). Participation in DBs was the most heavily weighted aspect of the class; individual DB posts comprised 35% of the total grade for the class. An additional 23% of the course grade came from the two small group DB projects. Hence, 58% of the total course grade resulted from students' participation in DB assignments. Figure 2.2 displays each aspect of the course and what percentage of the total grade each was worth. I also provided detailed instructions and a rubric for how their posts would be evaluated (see Figure 2.3). These instructions included what an "A" performance looked like as well as how many words must be written to meet the grading criteria. For each initial prompt response from students, they were asked to write between 300-500 words. Note that more than any other aspect of the class, Discussion Board posts are weighted the most heavily at 35% of the final grade. In addition, in the three responses students wrote to their peers, they were asked to write a minimum of 50 words. The amount of participation in the DB assignments varied week by week, with some participants going above and beyond the three post minimum every week and 36 ■ Individual Discussion Board Posts (35%) ■ Weekly Quizzes (17%) Tests (i.e. Midterm & Final) (25%) ■ Discussion Board Group Projects (23%) Figure 2.2. Grade breakdown percentages by assignment for COMM 2004. others not participating at all (see Figure 2.4). The use of the DB had five primary pur­poses: 1) to provide a space for participation in class discussion and build community, 2) to encourage critical reflection and interrogation of course material (i.e., so students could think and talk about what they and their peers thought and talked about), 3) to provide an avenue where students could simultaneously learn from and teach peers and the in­structor, 4) to give students chances to apply ideas and concepts to real-life examples and case studies, and 5) to create a tool kit of resources students could use to learn more about science, health, media, and the environment. After students posted their initial DB responses, by the following Tuesday, they were also asked to respond to a minimum of three peer's posts. These responses were to be at least 50-100 words in length and were meant to critique, interrogate, and supple­ment what other students wrote the week prior. These deadlines were staggered inten­tionally so students had ample time to read other people's posts, process the content, and 37 ________COMM 2004 Discussion Board Grading Rubric_______ A Exemnla.rv: -Contributes well-written (i.e., well thought out, free of grammar, spelling, and proofreading errors) commentaries about the assigned readings and thoughtful peer responses to the discussion boards -Offers examples and demonstrates understanding of assigned readings and concepts in an exemplary manner -Properly cites sources of outside information and ideas -Meets deadline for submitting posts and peer comments -Regularly asks and answers questions and participates in online discussion above and beyond the required 3 peer response minimum -Responds to peers when they ask questions on posts-attempts to have interactive discussion B Good: -Contributes well written commentaries about the assigned readings and thoughtful responses to peers' posts -Offers examples and demonstrates understanding of assigned reading -Properly cites sources of information and ideas -Meets deadline for submitting posts and peer responses -Meets the minimum 3 peer comment requirement C Satisfactory -Contributes commentaries about the assigned readings and peers responses to the discussion board by the weekly deadline -Offers examples and demonstrates understanding of assigned readings -Does not meet the 3 peer response minimum F Failing: -Does not contribute regularly and substantively to the discussion boards. Adapted from Kleinman, S. (2005). Strategies fo r Encouraging Active Learning, Interaction and Academic Integrity in Online Courses. Communication Teacher 19 (1). 3-18._______________ Figure 2.3. COMM 2004 discussion board grading rubric 38 Figure 2.4. Discussion Board participation over 15 weeks of class respond thoughtfully to their peers. In addition to individual DB posts, quizzes, and tests, students also participated in two small group DB projects. In the first small group project, students were ran­domly assigned and asked to do research on various types of alternatives to western medicine and make recommendations to their peers based on their research. For the second project, students were asked to develop an action plan to solve an environ­mental problem of their choosing. In the first project, students were randomly assigned into a dyad pair of two students and asked to do research on various types of alternatives to western medicine. For example, if students chose to do the topic of acupuncture, students discussed the pros and cons of doing acupuncture based on their own research and advised whether others should engage in the activity as a form of medical treatment. Students had to write 500 words for their initial post, provide a bibliography and comment on three other groups' projects. Students were also asked to fill out a peer evaluation form for their partners based on their experience during the project. Then, based on the outcomes on peer evaluation forms from the first project, membership of the groups for the second project was determined. Among other questions about their peers' performance, students filled out a revised version of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) for their peers. More specifically, they answered to what extent they would recommend working with their peers to others on a 5-point Likert scale. Based on the NPS, some students stayed with their original group members and some students moved into new groups (e.g., if students reported having positive expe­riences, then they stayed in their original groups. If they had negative experiences, they were put into a new group). This peer evaluation process aimed to help reduce dishar­mony and promote collaboration. It also gave students a chance to reflect on their first groups experience and hopefully improve for their next group experience. The peer evaluation form and icebreaker assignment used for the group projects can both be found in Appendix B. For the second project, students worked in a group of three to four and were asked to develop an action plan to solve an environmental problem of their choosing. For example, if students chose to talk about saving endangered rhinos, they were asked to first discuss the problem and why it was an important one to address. Then, based on their research, students were asked to develop an action plan to help save the rhinos. These action plans were supposed to include actions that could be taken on an individual and collective level to help solve the problem. Additionally, students created a PowerPoint presentation to demonstrate the problem they researched and the action plan 39 they developed to solve it. Students also provided a bibliography of at least 10 resources, two of which had to be videos. Similar to the first project, students also completed peer evaluation forms for one another, which were also used to help calculate each individual's final grade on the project. For both projects, to help facilitate the group process, I provided basic instruction in small group communication and an icebreaking period for students to get to know one another. The project descriptions as well as the icebreaker assignment used for both proj­ects can be found in Appendix B. Class Members Participants for this study were students from the University of Cincinnati (UC), a large, Midwestern university situated in an urban setting, with approximately 42,000 students. Most UC students tend to commute to school and many of them also work at least part-time. In my experience teaching COMM 2004, there has generally been a mix of gen­ders and ethnicities. There is also usually a wide range of majors from the sciences to the humanities and everything in between. For this particular iteration of COMM 2004, the enrollment in the class was 41, 20 of whom were Environmental Studies (EVST) majors. Six students were Communication majors. There were also students from a variety of other disciplines, including the following: Criminal Justice, Geology, Psychology, Chem­istry, Finance, Biology, Language Arts, Philosophy, and Graphic Design. Eighteen of the students were males and 23 were females. 40 Procedure/Data Collection In this section, I first describe the design of the current study and explain the procedure I used to collect data from the participants. Second, I detail the types of texts I gathered for my qualitative analysis. Finally, I describe the measures I used for my quan­titative analysis. This study incorporated a basic quasi-experimental design. To more fully under­stand the impact the class (i.e., the intervention) had on the outcomes, I administered a pretest/posttest measure designed to determine what impact, if any, COMM 2004 had an students' environmental attitudes, behaviors, and willingness to talk to others about envi­ronmental issues. Because I studied an online course with certain expectations and goals, the design was as follows: Participant group ^ Pretest ^ Intervention ^ Posttest/Outcomes As shown in Figure 2.1, I administered the pretest just prior to the coverage of environmental content in the class, and I distributed the posttest immediately after the environmental portion of the class. Students had two opportunities to participate in this study: a) the completion of the pretest/posttest measure and b) the permission to use their Discussion Board posts. Pretests were completed before the final third of the class, prior to the start of week 10 when environmental content officially began. Participation was voluntary with extra credit available for participation. If students chose not to participate, they were offered alternative extra credit opportunities per IRB protocol. The class was alerted to the research opportunity via an "Extra Credit" tab in the main entryway of the class that was housed in our shared BlackBoard web portal. 41 Students also received two reminders when the pre- and posttests were avail­able and due for completion. Participants filled out the measures online using a Sur-veyMonkey account. This account was kept separate from the researcher until after the class was complete so that bias could be avoided on the part of the instructor (i.e., the instructor did not know who was participating while the class was in session so as not to influence grading and perceptions of students). No data were analyzed until the student's final grades were submitted. I accessed the surveys to award extra credit points after the final exams in the class were turned in, but I did not access their actual responses until students knew their final grades. The protocol was discussed with the University of Cincinnati's IRB and met all of its requirements. Qualitative Data To analyze my data more thoroughly, I used NVivo version 10 Software as well as both confirmatory and emergent methods of coding to help content analyze my data. Initially, I was interested in exploring several a priori theoretical concepts that exist in the literature including the notions of "community," "types of online interaction," "presence," "trust," and qualities of a "third space." I was also interested in learning more about the extent to which the course and class participants seemed to exert "influence." There were several goals with collecting qualitative data: 1) To give some depth to the posttest mea­sure outcomes, 2) To pick out emergent themes using multiphase coding, 3) To empiri­cally observe ways in which an OLC appears to (or not to) have formed, 4) To identify what appears to be peer/normative influence in posts, 5) To capture some empirical in situ data that might reveal how interactions in the class (e.g., conversations with instructors 42 and peers) might influence posttest outcomes, and 6) To empirically observe ways cogni­tive, social, and teaching presence emerged in the class. With asynchronous discussion being the foundation of the class, I was most in­terested in finding out what happened during the discussion board interactions; therefore, the primary unit of analysis for this study was a discussion board post. These posts can be split into two types, instructor and students. However, I was also analyzing other data along with DB posts, which were also included in the total number of codes as well. Texts/Sources Field Notes My field notes spanned the entire period of the class. In total, I had 133 single spaced pages of field notes. Field notes helped me develop a sense of how the class was structured, provided a helpful narrative for how the class progressed, and identified significant interactions I experienced as the instructor of the class. I detailed my reac­tions as to what was happening in the class as well as how changes I made to content and structure seemed to impact the class. I also used my notes to give more thick description (Geertz, 1973) on the actual content and structure of the course. Discussion Board Posts There were 36 out of the 41 participants in the class who gave me permission to use their DB posts in this dissertation. All available posts from these 36 students across all three segments of the course were coded. There were some weeks when students opted not to participate in the DB; therefore, when posts were absent, they could not be 43 included in analysis. There were a total of 1,536 posts included from the students. There were an additional 758 posts and 136 email reminder posts included from the instructor. Syllabus The syllabus for a course is an important document that helps instructors set the stage for a class. The syllabus helps students understand the goals and expectations of the class, establishes tone, and sets up guidelines and netiquette for the class. Arguably, because online classes lack the physical presence of an instructor, which students get in the face-to-face classroom, the course syllabus could be an even more important document in the online classroom as it also helps establish teaching pres­ence. Hence, the course syllabus is worth analyzing in a case study about using online spaces to promote the environment. Coding Process I used a hybrid coding approach that was both a priori and emergent. First, I began developing my initial set of codes based on my experiences teaching the class pre­viously. For example, among other possibilities, I thought I might find examples of "peer influence," "instructor influence," "leadership," and "self-disclosure" Second, based on my previous experiences, I sought out literature to help me try to explain some of the observations I had made. As a result, I used several conceptual frameworks to guide my coding, which I previously discussed in my literature review and here mention again: 1) The Papastergiou et al. (2011) definition of an OLC, 2) Moore's (1989) three types of online interaction, 3) Anderson's (2001) four types of online 44 presence, and Davies' (2006) conceptualization of the Third Space using Gee's (2006) explanation of affinity spaces. I also expected to find evidence of collaborative learning (De Laat, Lally, Lipponen, & Simons, 2006), "playful learning" (Vygotsky, 1962), peer influence/encouragement (Jang et al., 2012; Liang & Scammon, 2013;), as well as evi­dence of heuristic processing (Griffin, Neuwirth, & Dunwoody, 2002). I first engaged the complete data set and took notes about what themes started to emerge. Second, I input my initial list of codes into NVivo, which I used as a starting place for my coding process. Then, I coded all documents week by week using the initial set of codes. As I coded, I wrote memos, added new codes, refined old codes, and made note of potential exemplars from the data set. As the coding process continued, concepts were further expanded and refined and other themes emerged. While I was primarily interested in what I could learn about the formation of online communities and the impact such communities might have on envi­ronmental attitudes and behaviors, I tried to stay open to other emergent possibilities as well. For example, I started with three main codes for presence (i.e., cognitive, social, and teaching), and an additional fourth category for "learner presence" emerged, as well as dozens of additional subcategories for each type of presence. Another unexpected finding occurred during the second part of the class, which covered health content. More specifically, students engaged in the action of "uncertainty reduction," which did not happen in any other part of the class. I also ended up coding for "Awareness" (e.g., of health problems, environmental issues, new sources), which was not originally anticipated in initial codes. There were also many "actions" performed by the instructor and students alike that I originally did not expect to emerge, which I 45 ultimately coded as well. After all the data were coded and all categories were finalized, I totaled the number of posts for the class and the number of codes for each category, confirmatory and emergent, and input the information into Excel. I used excel to generate charts, tables, and graphs to display the trends in the qualitative data. Finally, I used the themes and their associated codes, to tease out and examine exemplars to gain a better sense of the process behind the numbers. Quantitative Data The pretest/posttest survey I used for this study contained six different scales (see Appendix C for all measures). The scales were based on 5-point Likert scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). For each scale, the means were calculated on the pretest and compared with posttest measures (with negative items being reverse scored). Students were also asked to share some basic demographic information. In the section that follows, I explain each scale and why it was used in the current study. Instruments The Col First, I incorporated two scales to capture more about the students' perceptions of the extent to which they experienced feeling like part of an online community. The first instrument was the Community of Inquiry Instrument (CoI) (Arbaugh et al., 2008). The CoI framework has been used extensively in qualitative online learning research (e.g., Anagnostopoulos, Masmadjian, & McCrory, 2005; Garrison & Arbaugh, 2007; Garrison 46 & Cleveland-Innes, 2005), and more recently, there has been a move to use the frame­work more quantitatively (Arbaugh, Cleveland-Innes, Diaz, Garrison, Richardson, & Swan, 2008), hence the development of the CoI scale itself. The CoI was intended to help researchers tease out what is needed for the creation of meaningful learning experiences and community, including three types of overlapping presence (i.e., social, cognitive, and teaching) (Arbaugh et al., 2008). The CoI used in this study is the same version originally created by Arbaugh and co-authors; it contained 34 items and it factored out into the three multiple interrelated presences. Initially, the CoI was created to answer calls from researchers to move beyond strictly qualitative studies, which incorporated the community of inquiry framework, but did not have empirical (i.e., quantitative) evidence to validate it. With approximately 763 citations to date (google scholar, March 2015), the CoI has become a trusted measure when it comes to understanding more about how communities are conducted online. Multiple researchers across disciplines have called for additional testing of the CoI, which includes the use of multi-institutional samples as well as quantitative and mixed methods approaches to improve the usability and generalizability of the scale (e.g., Arbaugh, 2007; Garrison, 2007; Ho & Swan; 2007), a call which is partly answered by the current study. The SOVC The second instrument I used to further explore the extent to which a sense of community was experienced by members of the class was the Sense of Virtual Commu­nity (SOVC) measure developed by Blanchard (2007). According to Blanchard (2007), 47 SOVC is defined as: "members' feelings of membership, identity, belonging and attach­ment to a group that interacts primarily through electronic communication. SOVC as­sesses the ‘community-ness' of virtual communities; it distinguishes virtual communities from other types of virtual groups" (p. 827). The development of the SOVC stemmed from extensive work done in psychology on SOC or sense of community, first recognized as important for the successful functioning of communities in face-to-face situations by Sarason (1986). Because previous work had focused primarily on face-to-face interactions, as opposed to those which occur online, re­searchers sought to expand our understanding of sense of community to also include virtual environments, hence the creation of the SOVC (Blanchard, 2007; Blanchard & Markus, 2004; Koh & Kim, 2003; Liang & Scammon, 2013; Roberts, Smith, & Pollock, 2002). The NEP Scale The first scale I used to explore the environmental attitudes of participants was a revised version of the New Ecological Paradigm Scale (NEP) (Cordona, Welcomer, & Scherer; 2003). The scale was originally created by Dunlap and Van Liere (1978) and has since been revised and used by the original creators of the scale (e.g., Dunlap, Van Liere, Mertig, & Jones, 2000) and others in Environmental Education and related fields to examine the environmental attitudes of various populations. The higher the score a re­spondent has on the NEP scale, the greater the pro-environmental attitudes an individual is said to have (Dunlap et al., 2000). According to Shultz and Zelezny (1999), NEP scores can also correlate to what degree an individual perceives humans as protectors of nature rather than consumers of nature. 48 Put simply, if an individual has a high NEP score, they are more likely to pre­scribe to the NEP and be less likely to be in line with the Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP). The NEP and DSP can be viewed as opposite ends of an ecological worldview continuum (La Trobe & Acott, 2000). While the DSP emphasizes the dominant ideologies of modern Western culture (e.g., consumption, growth, technology, and consumerism), the NEP serves as a more environmentally conscious worldview, which counters these "everyday" cultural views about the environment (La Trobe & Acott, 2000; Mayer & Frantz, 2004). Dunlap et al. (2000) claim what the NEP is used for depends on the goals of the research; furthermore, questions on the NEP can be omitted or added and still produce reliable results. For example, Dunlap et al. (2000) found their revised version produced a Cronbach's alpha of .81. Additionally, the Cordano et al. (2003) eight-question abbrevi­ated version produced a.72 Cronbachs alpha. The NEP and its various versions has been one of the most widely used instru­ments to compare the environmental concerns of different groups (Cordano et al., 2003; Dunlap et al., 2000; Ewert & Baker, 2001; LaTrobe & Acott, 2000; Sherburn & Devlin, 2004; Van Liere et al., 1981). Furthermore, NEP scores have been correlated with factors such as political affiliation, religion, college major, education, age, sex, and other cultural factors. Research has shown it to be a useful, trusted, and reliable tool. Thus far, however, no research has used the NEP scale to study environmental education interventions in an online classroom. The same is true for the next scale I used to learn more about the envi­ronmental tendencies of the class. 49 The CHEAKS The next environmentally focused scale I used tapped into emotions/affect, behavioral intentions and behaviors. It was a revised version of the Children's Envi­ronmental Attitudes and Knowledge Scale (CHEAKS) (Leeming, Dwyer, & Bracken, 1995). The CHEAKS was originally developed as an instrument that could be used in a wide range of research contexts with sound psychometric properties. Until the cre­ation of the CHEAKS, there were no instruments that could be tested across contexts, which had also been tested for reliability and validity. As a result, Leeming and the other co-creators of the scale sought to create an instrument that could not only be used across contexts, but could also be used in comparative studies as well. The design of the instrument was based off of a similar scale intended to mea­sure the environmental attitudes and knowledge of adults created by Maloney, Ward, and Braucht (1975). Based on a review of the Maloney et al. original scale by Gray, Borden, and Weigel (1985), it not only had acceptable reliability and validity, but also tapped into the complexity of attitudes by factoring out into other components, including affect, behavioral intentions, and actual behavior (as cited in Leeming et al., 1995). I chose to include a modified version of the CHEAKS, originally intended for children, rather than Maloney's scale intended for adults, for a few reasons. First, the wording of the CHEAKS was much more simplistic, accessible, and easy to under­stand. Second, the CHEAKS scale had shown to be a reliable and valid measure and been tested more recently than Maloney and colleagues' original version (e.g., Alp, Ertepinar, Tekkaya, & Yilmaz, 2008; Walsh-Daneshmandi, & Machlan, 2006;). Third, 50 the CHEAKS was the only scale I could find that had been tested for reliability and validity, which could also measure attitudes and behaviors in one scale. Given the number of questions and scales I was asking participants to fill out, I also wanted to err on the side of fewer questions to avoid less exhaustion on the part of the participants. I excluded the knowledge portion of the scale originally included in the CHEAKS, because the content in COMM 2004 did not align with the content taught when the CHEAKS was originally created. Rather, I used the scale primarily as a helpful tool to get at both attitudes and behaviors. The CIS The fifth scale I used was comprised of two subscales: 1) the CIS1 (Course Influence Scale and 2) the CIS2 (Course Information Scale). I developed these sub­scales myself based off of Moore's (1989) three types of interaction and what I had already experienced in previous iterations of teaching COMM 2004. This measure was composed of four questions for each of the three types of interaction for a total of 12 questions. I used these two subscales scales to explore the extent to which students perceived the class, content, or peers as influential as well as to what extent they were willing to share or communicate about health, science, and environmental information. Although I had not yet tested the instrument prior to this study, my dis­sertation served as an excellent opportunity to see if the scale had good measurement properties. 51 Net Promoter Score (NPS) Finally, I included the net promoter score (NPS) for each respondent to see if I could find any relationship between the levels of community experienced by students and their overall satisfaction with the class. The NPS was originally created to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty. In this study, it was used to measure the satisfaction level of the students after participating in an online learning community. At the posttest assessment time, each student was asked to give a rating of the class on a scale of 1-10 (where 1 = "You definitely would not recommend this class" and 10 = "You most certainly would recommend this class"). Students who rated the class 0-6 were classified as Detractors, while students who rated the class 9-10 were classified as Promoters. Inferential Statistics The research questions developed for this study lent themselves to hypotheses concerning attitude and behavior changes across the various measures over their pretest and posttest administrations. To test the supporting hypotheses, I ran various inferen­tial statistics using SPSS Software to examine the survey data (i.e., pretest/posttest). I was interested to see if there appeared to be a significant change between how students scored on the various measures before and after the class as well as what relationship (if any) existed among various demographic/background variables (e.g., major, age) and students' responses to community and environmental attitudes/behaviors mea­sures. The reliability of the all measures used in the pretest/posttest were examined using Cronbach's alphas. In addition, the dimensionality of the CIS, developed by the 52 researcher, was tested using confirmatory factor analysis. Additional information on the quantitative results can be found in Chapter 4. Next, in Chapter 3, I discuss the results from my qualitative data. Mixing the Data Ultimately, I split the qualitative data set into thirds for purposes of comparing each part of the class. I separately coded, saved, and printed the data at each interval of the class after completing the coding such that each 1/3 of the class could stand on its own and be compared to the others. Then, I used the pretest/posttest results from my quantitative data to help corroborate and/or refute my qualitative codes. For ex­ample, during my coding, I looked for evidence that an OLC had formed; in my pretest/ posttest measure, two of the scales I incorporated (i.e., the CoI and the SOVC) tapped into what extent participants felt like they were a part of a community. Additionally, in the qualitative data, I coded for evidence of various types of "presence," which were also factors in the CoI scale. I also looked for evidence in the qualitative data that the course content, in­structor, and/or peers seemed to exert an influence on students in the class; the CIS instrument I developed for this study likewise teased out this influence quantitatively. I used two scales to learn more about the impact the class had on students' environmental attitudes and behaviors (i.e., the CHEAKS and the NEP) and also coded for evidence of behavioral intentions and actual behavior toward the environment in the qualitative data set as well. 53 Summary This chapter discussed my methodology. I described the multiple method case study approach that I used. I discussed the site of the study, the participants, and the types of qualitative and quantitative data I collected and analyzed. Finally, I discussed how I went about mixing the various types of data I used in this study. The findings from my coding process and resultant themes are further discussed next in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 contains the quantitative results. Finally, what can be learned by combining the qualita­tive and quantitative results is discussed in Chapter 5. 54 CHAPTER 3 QUALITATIVE RESULTS This chapter discusses my qualitative results in five steps. First, I provide some descriptive information about the texts, the level of participation in the Dis­cussion Board (DB) posts by both the students and myself, and the number of themes and the percentage of coded texts that comprised each theme. Second, to foreground the explanation of how community developed in COMM 2004, I pro­vide some basic graphical data that summarizes the major concepts that comprised community, and exemplars from the participants that emerged during each part of the class. Third, I describe the multiphase process through which community devel­oped. This process followed-with a few exceptions unique to COMM 2004-Tuck-man's (1965) explanation of the small group process: (a) forming, (b) norming, (c) storming, (d) maintenance/renewal, (e) performing, and (f) transformation. To help conceptualize how this process occurred, I provide a visual model and weave in ad­ditional exemplars from the voices of participants. Fourth, I discuss the emergence and development of Third Space qualities in COMM 2004. Again, I provide a brief summary of the major Third Space qualities that emerged in each part of the class using graphical data and exemplars. I also provide a visual model to conceptualize how a Third Space seemed to function in COMM 2004. Fifth, I discuss the extent to which the class seemed to influence participants, including their behavioral intentions and information seeking-sharing tendencies. Finally, I conclude by briefly summarizing how the qualitative analysis helps answer the Research Questions of the study. Descriptive Information on the Texts Thirty-six students gave permission to use their DB posts in this study. The total number of DB posts used for analysis was 2,293. Students contributed to 67% of these posts. I contributed to 33% of the posts. These 2,293 posts yielded 17,840 coded segments. These segments resulted from the coding of posts, with a post being the primary unit of analysis. All posts had at least one coded segment. These posts can be split into two types: instructor and students. Themes There were five major themes, each with its own subsets of codes. The most prevalent coded segments were for the theme of community, which represented 79% of all coded segments. Following community were themes for topic/content (10%), Third Space (6%), influence (2%), behavior and intentions (2%), and other emergent codes (1%). Table 3.1 and Figure 3.1 display the total number of coded segments for each theme as well as the percentage of coded segments that made up each theme. 56 57 Table 3.1. Total number of coded segments for each theme Community 14134 Third Space 1022 Influence 317 Behavior and Intentions 362 Topics/Content 1744 Other Emergent Codes 261 Total 17840 ■ Community ■ Third Space ■ Influence ■ Behavior and Intentions Topics/Content Other Emergent Codes 1% 79% Figure 3.1. Percentage of total coded text fragments that compose each theme Community According to McMillan and Chavis (1986) a sense of community has developed when participants experience a sense of belonging, identity, and attachment to a group (as cited in Arbaugh, 2007). Essentially, this feeling of "we-ness" becomes the mainstay for the level of community experienced in the class and can be stimulated through the discovery of mutual tendencies, interests, and similarities; self-disclosure that begets trust (Cutler, 1996); and the building of personal relationships (Blanchard & Markus, 2004). For the current study, community is conceptualized and described as the outcome and interplay that results from the co-mingling of the following five variables: (a) interactions among members (including the instructor); (b) four types of online presence; (c) a multiphase membership-development process, which includes the establishment and conferral of group membership and a norming of class netiquette; (d) an increasing prioritization of others' interests in the community; and (e) an emerging sense of a collective "we." Following this introduction, the chapter will present the evidence for interaction, presence, membership de­velopment, prioritization of needs, and the sense of "we." To help determine if a community formed in COMM 2004, I began by coding for sev­eral a priori concepts from the literature-the types of online interaction and presence reported in Chapter 1-as well as evidence of trust building and sustained deliberation, which have all been dubbed by previous authors as necessary precursors for online communities to develop. Additionally, because previous work in collaborative learning indicates that opportunities for small group work enhance the level of community experienced by participants, I coded for instances of community building via teamwork. Finally, I did text searches over communi­ty- connected terms ("we," "our," etc.) to ensure a broad capture of community discourse. 58 Based on qualitative coding, it does appear that a sense of community developed in COMM 2004. In Part 1 of the class, 83% of all text fragments were coded for community. In Part 2, 81% of all coded fragments were for community. Finally, in Part 3 of the class, 77% of all text fragments were coded as some element of community. One possible explanation for the gradual decline in the number of coded fragments for community is the reduced number of posts required of students later in the semester for the two group projects. Another explanation is that students may have been experiencing general exhaustion near the end of the semester, with other commitments competing for their attention. The supporting qualitative evidence that this community developed and was maintained is described in the section that follows. Types of Online Interaction Online learning communities can be understood as the process and product of various interactions (e.g., communication) in an online context over an extended period of time. It is through interaction that community is performed, and in an online class, this performance can be studied through a close examination of posts. I coded for four types of online interaction: (a) learner-instructor (b) learner-content, (c) learner-learner, and (d) learner-interface. The first three types of interaction were initially described by Moore (1989) and the fourth type was added by Gudawarena et al. (1994). I was interested to learn more about the frequency and character of interactions across time. I was also interested in exploring the theoretical relation­ship between online interactions and the types of online presence, which I will discuss in the next subsection. Figure 3.2 displays the types of interactions that happened in each part of the class and their frequency. 59 60 350 ■M £ 300 E re 250 | 200 8 150 4­2 ioo ai g 50 3 Z o 'W 1 2 3 ♦ agree/like 264 144 95 ■ group cohesion/ similarity 292 150 98 ^ ^ " disagreement/ deliberation 108 23 13 plays devil's advocate 44 36 25 ^ t ^ t a k e a stance 171 139 133 Figure 3.2. Types of online interaction Learner-Instructor A post was coded as learner-instructor whenever I initiated communication or inter­acted with a student. Learner-instructor interactions were at their highest frequency during the first part of the class when I welcomed students, helped break the ice, drew in participants, set the tone of the class, and began disciplining the process of the class flow and structure. Students also initiated communication with me, although not as often as I initi­ated with them. When students did begin the exchange with me, I coded it as "upward communication with the instructor." Figure 3.3 displays the number of instances of upward communication coded in each part of the class. These interactions, like others, also peaked during the first part of the class and continued to decline throughout the semester. Usually, when students did directly interact with me, it was the result of me 61 Figure 3.3. Upward communication in each part of the class first commenting on one of their posts. For example, during Part 1 of the class, a student and I interacted when we discussed what age groups are likely to use certain media. One student commented how it was primarily younger generations that used Facebook, and I pointed out that that was not necessarily an absolute: Me (in response to student's post): One exception to the rule (so far anyway) is women in the 50-ish age group-they are increasingly getting online for info and social networking. Student: So that explains why my aunts are suddenly taking over my Facebook feed. (2)4 It also seemed that there were a specific handful of students who were more likely to engage in upward communication with me as the instructor, with most other students interacting only with their peers. This may be due in part to the fact that there is a power 4 The number 2 represents the reference number of this particular text fragment in NVivo. dynamic between student and instructor that is difficult to overcome in the college class­room. Not to mention that not every student wants this type of interaction with his or her professor. Likewise, I did not require students to talk to me in their posts as I did with their peers. It is possible "forcing" students to talk to me as a requirement could have merely reinforced this power dynamic. Learner-Content A text fragment was coded as learner-content when a student specifically referenced content from the class. This included citations from the books, PowerPoint lectures, or videos in the class. This code was also used when students introduced new content in the class that they had researched, learned about in another class, or opted to share. Part 1. In Part 1, content focused on science and mass communication, and DBs focused on critical thinking and problem solving around those areas. For ex­ample, one student referenced a lecture that discussed the notion of the self-rein­forcing echo chamber: As one of our lectures covers, there's also the notion of the self-reinforcing echo chamber where people tend to just seek out information/news channels that merely reinforce what they already think or believe-be it on TV or the Internet. In other words, although there might be many options to pick from online, people will still tend to seek out either more liberal or conservative sources depending on which way they lean. So, yes, people have more options online, but I don't think that guarantees they will be exposed to more, different, or varied opinions per se. It depends on what you seek out and what you can find. (21) Part 2. Part 2 of the class focused on Health Communication. There was less con­tent referenced by students from the books and lectures and more integration of students' own outside research, primarily because of the kinds of DB prompts in the second part 62 of the class (i.e., more prompts in Part 2 required students to do research). For example, for the group projects on alternatives to Western medicine, students worked in pairs and taught us more about the pluses and minuses of acupuncture, massage therapy, medicinal marijuana, aromatherapy, hypnosis, and visualization (among others). Students also did their own research on celebrities who were involved in some sort of a health cause or issue; health blogs; and pharmaceuticals, cosmeceuticals, and nutraceuticals (e.g., Cym-balta, Revlon Age Defying makeup, and fish oil). Finally, students plugged organizations or health causes they participated in or found out about through research, such as the Susan G. Komen foundation, Autism Speaks, Helping Haitian Angels, and UC's Student Wellness Center. Part 3. The third part of the class focused on Environmental Communication. Students completed individual DB assignments that asked them to research products and companies that seemed to engage in some sort of greenwashing. Students also completed a second DB group project, wherein they researched and found solutions to various en­vironmental problems. Within their short papers and PowerPoint or Prezi presentations, students were asked to generate solutions to the environmental problems they researched by couching them within the four types of pro-environmental behavior as outlined in Julia Corbett's book Communicating Nature. As a result of the students' efforts, we as a class learned more about sustainable agriculture, eutrophication, rising sea levels, deforesta­tion, urban sprawl, the effects of climate change on human health, and other topics that were not in the original purview of the class. Students further interacted with this content during their last quiz for the class, which was based off of the content learned from the second group projects. 63 Learner-content interactions steadily declined over the course of the class, with a slight surge in the last part of the class due to the outside research required from the DB assignments. At one point, I realized the decline in the integration of content and made a note for how to improve it for the next iteration of the class: I need to more strongly emphasize that they need to incorporate examples from lectures/books to be integrated into comments/peer posts-perhaps I could in­clude that in the rubric for the DBs next time and make their grade contingent on it. (3) Although students were exposed to content in the class in other ways (e.g., Power­Point lectures, videos, quizzes, tests) this lack of content integration in the DBs was seen as an area for improvement in the class. At the same time, the surge in content in Part 3 could also suggest that students were actually interested in environmental content. Learner-Interface Preece (2001) argues that whenever possible, issues with the online interface should be engineered out so as to not disrupt the formation and functioning of the community. Texts were coded as learner-interface when the Blackboard site itself seemed to somehow impede or interrupt the flow of the class, interactivity, and/or understanding of the students or instructor. I used feedback from the students, which I collected using an anonymous SurveyMonkey questionnaire 4 weeks into the class, to make adjustments to the inter­face. Arguably, this effort to make changes based on student input, as well as the students' increasing familiarity with the structure and flow of the class over time, contributed to the decrease in the number of instances coded as learner-interface interactions. Suggestions for improving interface interactions in an online class are discussed in Chapter 5. 64 Learner-Learner Learner-learner interactions remained relatively steady throughout the class, most likely in response to the course requirement for students to respond to a minimum of three peer posts each week. This requirement was designed to facilitate interaction among students as well as encourage them to question, critique, and add to what their peers said in their posts. During weeks when group projects were due, students were instead asked to submit three posts total for the group. This change in the number of required peer comments is noteworthy as it may have also contributed to the decline in the number of learner-learner interactions in Parts 2 and 3 of the class. Although one may expect that interactions between students to increase in frequency over time, the opposite was true in this case: Students interacted more frequently initially and then interaction gradually decreased over time. Part 1. During the first part of the class, particularly during Week 1, when the stu­dents completed their icebreakers, most interactions between students involved some sort of playful small talk that resulted in students finding similarities between themselves and the instructor, as seen in the following example: Student 1: I work at Skyline Chili when I'm not at school. Student 2: You should totally get the class Skyline. Me: I'm personally a bigger fan of Gold Star. Student 1: Skyline's chili is so much better. Student 2: I have to agree. Me: For me, it's not a chili thing-it's a hot dog thing. Student 1: So the chili wars continue. 65 According to Kim and Kim (2008), this small talk essentially becomes the "womb for dialogic moments" that makes deeper, deliberative conversation possible (p. 23). In other words, these opportunities to get to know one another may have helped the stu­dents feel more comfortable to talk freely about other, deeper issues in future weeks of the class. And in the next few weeks of the class, as prompts shifted away from fun, playful icebreaker activities with a tendency to evoke agreement and similarity, I noticed a decrease in the tendency to agree and an increase in the students' willingness to take a stance as well as play devil's advocate when it came to responding to their peers around Weeks 3 and 4. Figure 3.4 displays the tendencies for students to take stance, play devil's advocate, disagree, agree, and find similarity overtime. In addition to students possibly feeling more comfortable as a result of ice-breaking, this shift toward deliberation may partly be explained by the change in the kinds of questions asked by the prompts. More specifically, at this time, DB prompts elic­ited students' stances on science, political, and religious issues. Students were also asked to think critically and interrogate several mass communication theories. Part 2. Toward the end of the first part of the class and increasingly in the second part of class, more students were willing to challenge one another's thinking, and there also seemed to be fewer tendencies to agree with one another. For example, when one student indicated that more science is needed on the news to educate the public, a peer in the class had this as a retort: "I would contest that the ‘supposed science' that is often broadcast on TV today doesn't actually help educate as you seem to claim." Another student disagreed when a peer claimed that science majors should be required to take a world religion class: 66 67 350 ■M S 300 £b 250 ■o 200 S 150 4­° 100 Ol ■f 50 3 Z 0 1 i 2 3 ♦ agree/like 264 144 95 ■ group cohesion/ similarity 292 150 98 ^ ^ " disagreement/ deliberation 108 23 13 >< plays devil's advocate 44 36 25 * take a stance 171 139 133 Figure 3.4. Tendencies for students to take a stance, play devil's advocate, disagree, agree, and find similarity over time I disagree I think a world religions course would not be a waste of time for a sci­ence major. Religion may not be ‘testable' but people who are religious I would think would tell you it IS based on empirical evidence. (1) More often, however, students used language that did not explicitly express disagree­ment. Rather, they seemed to gently nudge and make more subtle suggestions. For example, when on student disagreed, she politely added, "Though I respect your points and am in­trigued by your opinion, I would love to add a few points to this discussion." When another student criticized the Affordable Care Act, one of his peers responded with the following: I must admit that when I first heard about the Affordable Care Act that I thought it was exactly what you said, an extension of welfare benefits. I was surprised lat­er on when I found out more about it and that it is not free and only makes health care accessible to people who might not have access otherwise. (7) 68 In both of these examples, although students disagreed with their peers, they did not come out and explicitly say so, per se. Rather, they were a bit indirect in their ap­proach for disagreeing. This form of "polite disagreeing" continued throughout the class. It is possible that this emergent netiquette enhanced the level of community experienced in the class and/or discouraged more productive debate. Part 3. In Part 3 of the class, students continued to push one another in terms of issues regarding the environment, although slightly less deliberating took place than in Parts 1 and 2 of the class. For example, when one student argued that nature would eventually trump humans and may not really need to be "saved," a student had this to say in response: I agree with you that nature is more powerful than humans and if someone is hurting the environment; they deserve to be wiped out. But I think it would be great if we could avoid that and make changes now before it's too late. Earth is such a beautiful place that I would hate to see it destroyed. (1) Another student disagreed with a peer that all endangered species were the result of human activity: I think it's irresponsible to generalize so much to say that all endangered species are endangered because of human activity. Natural predation and natural eco­logical phenomenon that happen have been known to cause species to become endangered or extinct. Look at dinosaurs who went extinct long before man ever grew to be large enough to affect the environment. (1) When a student posted about the efforts of the Kroger company to "go green," someone responded, "If Kroger has really gone green we shouldn't be able to see on the shelves products crops grown with toxic pesticides and fertilizers, foods with arti­ficial flavors and preservatives, etc." As these examples show, students demonstrated they were willing to think critically and challenge the comments of their peers at least to some degree. Types of Presence I also coded for evidence of four overlapping types of online presence, the first three of which have been previously theorized and empirically observed in research of online learning communities. The fourth emerged during the coding of the data set used for this dissertation: (1) social, (2) cognitive, (3) teaching, and (4) learner. Previous literature indicates that community results from the overlapping of the first three types of presence, often privileging the importance of the teaching presence (i.e., the instructor) in community development. I additionally discovered that learners themselves played an integral role in the sense of community that developed in COMM 2004 and therefore coded for a fourth type of presence: learner presence. Although there was quite a bit of overlap in the content that was coded for the "four types of online interaction" and the "four types of online presence," there was some distinction as well. For example, I always coded any post from student to student on the DB as learner-learner interaction; however, within each inter­action it was possible and highly likely that multiple types of presence emerged. Simi­larly, any post from me to the students I coded as learner-instructor interaction; however, within those interactions, multiple kinds of teaching presence materialized. There was evidence of all four types of presence in COMM 2004 (see Figure 3.5). While learner, social, and cognitive presence remained fairly steady in the second and third parts of the class, by pedagogical design, teaching presence was highest during Part 1 of the class and continued to decline. In the next few subsections, a description of each type of presence is given, a rationale for why text fragments were coded as each type of presence is explained and evidence from the text exemplifying presence is provided. 69 70 2500 l/l 2000 ■Mc01 E 00 42- 1500 1-X V■M 4- »01- 1000 .q ED Z 500 0 \ - - X ^ ------------------------------ 1 2 3 ♦ cognitive presence 581 307 353 ■ social presence 744 356 295 A teaching presence 2302 1160 685 X learner presence 1788 1277 1328 Figure 3.5. Four types of presence over time Cognitive Presence I found evidence of cognitive presence in the data set. A text fragment was coded as cognitive presence when it aligned with an element of the Garrison et al. (2001) ex­planation of cognitive presence as a heuristic process over time involving several steps: (1) triggering event, (2) exploration, (3) integration, and (4) resolution/application. I also coded when students engaged in creativity, critical thinking, and self-reflection, and when their interest/curiosity seemed to be piqued, as I saw them as additional, distinct types of heuristic processing. There were a total of 1,241 text fragments coded for cognitive pres­ence or 6% of all coded texts. As demonstrated by the line graph in Figure 3.5, cognitive presence occurred most frequently during Part 1 of the class (n = 581), decreased in Part 2 (n = 307), and then increased slightly in Part 3 (n = 353). There were a few important catalysts or triggers for cognitive processing. First, DB prompts and the content from the class emphasized in them served as important starting points for cognitive processing. Second, students' responses to the DB prompts and subsequent peer comments sparked students to heuristically process, brainstorm, seek out information, and reconsider their own ideas. Third, comments from the in­structor appeared to have trigger potential as well. Figure 3.6 depicts how these trigger moments seemed to occur in COMM 2004. Table 3.2 displays some exemplars of these trigger moments. Triggers were noted each time the gears in the class changed (i.e., the content shifted), and the level of participation in the DB posts increased (see Figure 3.7). These shifts in content and subsequent increases in participation were seen as important mo­ments for community renewal. Likewise, these shifts in content seemed to renew interest in the discussion, thereby maintaining cognitive presence and the sense of community experienced in the class. As will be discussed, there were additional triggers in each part of the class that also seemed to renew and maintain the community. Texts were coded as "curiosity being piqued" when students seemed intrigued, en­lightened, or surprised by content in the class or something one of their peers or instructor said in a post, as seen in the following example, which revolved around the University of Cincinnati Student Wellness Center: I had no idea they had over-the-counter medications! That is so helpful to know in case I ever get headaches or something on campus. Before your post, I only knew them as the place that gives out free condoms, but I'm glad they give out other ben­eficial things. What other programs do they provide? I think they should promote themselves more so more students know about what they have to offer. (2) 71 72 Figure 3.6. Process how trigger events occurred in COMM 2004 The code for "curiosity being piqued" peaked in the third part of the class. Coding suggested that many students had previously not been aware of certain environmental problems and hence became interested and aware of such problems, as seen in the fol-lowing example: I really enjoyed reading your paper. All of this information was new to me, so I was able to learn a lot. One of the most eye opening things about your paper was the information on how you can be affected by the water pollution. Consuming fish that were raised in polluted water is something that I had never put any thought into, but now that I think about it that is something that you have zero control over. After reading everyone's presentations and papers, it is scary to think about how many ways humans can be harmed by all of these environmental issues. It is so important for everyone to educate themselves (7) Table 3.2. Exemplars for trigger events (i.e., cognitive presence) 73 1. I was not sure if I wanted to follow a science blog or not, but after reading what you said I am definitely going to check it out. I'm sure that as long as I find interesting blogs that are creative and entertaining to read then I will not regret it. ' I responded to #5 too, but only talked about the negative aspects o f the media's use o f agenda setting. I didn't think about how this could be beneficial in many ways. 3 Prof. Miller: I have actually talked to my roommates about eating healthy and they agreed with me! We cooked a healthy meal yesterday. It saved me a lot of money! We are thinking about setting a schedule o f who will ______ cook during certain days. I appreciate vou giving me guidance!__________ Figure 3.7. Spikes in participation/trigger events in the DB when content shifted in the class. 74 There were additional opportunities for self-reflection in Part 3. For example, students reflected on where they positioned themselves on Julia Corbett's environmental ideology spectrum: I would fall under conservationism according to the environmental ideology spectrum outlined by Corbett because conservationism is the idea that humans are allowed to use Earth's resources but to treat them with care and to not over use them. For example going green and recycling is also an example of conserva­tionism. I would use resources when necessary instead of overusing them and not recycling them. Another example is if I was to buy a water bottle I would reuse it instead of just pitching it right away and when I do I recycle it. (6) Social Presence There were several instances when a text was coded as evidence of social presence among participants, including the following: (a) when participants projected aspects of their social identities or seemed like "real people", (b) expressions of emotion, (c) self-disclo­sure or open-communication (i.e., demonstrations of trust), (d) efforts to build interpersonal relationships, and (e) similarities drawn or group cohesion. There were a total of 1,374 text fragments coded for social presence, comprising 7.6% of all text fragments. As seen in Figure 3.8, most instances of social presence occurred in Part 1 of the class. However, there was additional evidence of social presence in Parts 2 and 3 as a result of personal self-disclosure about health experiences as well as open reflection about self-reported pro-environmental behavior tendencies. Table 3.3 contains additional exem­plars for social presence. Whether or not social presence is projected or experienced depends on several contextual variables, including the ability for participants to identify with the commu­nity in some way and communicate in a trusting environment (Garrison, 2009). Two 75 iso 300 ISO 200 LEO LOO SO U L f - group cohesion/similarity 292 L50 98 -B - interpersonal relationship building 9 1 3 projection of identity 133 11 30 y personal affective projection subtotal 305 154 144 Figure 3.8. Types of social presence coded in each part of the class ways trust was demonstrated in COMM 2004 were through self-disclosure and expres­sions of emotion. In Part 1, students projected their social presence primarily during the icebreaking assignment, when students were able to construct their own identities and disclose more about themselves, hopefully developing a sense of trust. For example, one student used extracurricular activities at the University of Cincinnati to enlarge her own identity: I have been skiing ever since I was 5 years old and been going every year. For the past four years, I've been out west with the University of Cincinnati Ski Club. I enjoy very much skiing because I am able to challenge myself physically. The best part is feeling sore after I ski the majority of the day. It feels like I pushed myself as hard as I could and feel rewarded in that aspect. I get an adrenaline rush every time I go down a very steep hill. (1) Another student discussed her role in her sorority, hobbies, and important people in her life: 76 Table 3.3. Social presence exemplars Group cohesion/similarity 1. Yes, it's cool that so many o f us are connected through a love o f the outdoors. 2. You are a mommy too-yay-me too! It's not easy balancing a family and school and/or work, so good luck and let me know how I can help. 3 . 1 also like country music and Luke Bryan is one o f my favorite singers too! I would say Brad Paisley is my second favorite. It's nice to see someone else who likes country music in Cincinnati, you don't get that very often. Interpersonal Relationship Building 1. Well if you would ever like to discuss course material in person, perhaps we could do it over delicious burritos/bowls (people who get tacos aren't human). 2. Either way, I think it's always good to be thinking o f ways to improve our lifestyles. Best wishes to you as well my friend. 3 . 1 hope that I will be able to make great friendships in this class and I hope that you are one o f them_______________________________________________________________ I am very involved in my sorority Theta Phi Alpha. I am Vice President of Exter­nal Operations, so I spend a lot of my time going to extra meetings for the execu­tive board or the external cabinet. I also go to a lot of our events like social events or formals. When I am not doing that I am spending time with my boyfriend and our kitty, Cooper. My boyfriend and I like to play tennis and racquetball. One of our favorite things to do is to cook. Occasionally I will spend a weekend in Columbus visiting my family and going out to nice restaurants and wine tasting with my parents. (5) Teaching Presence The third type of presence I coded f