According to Douglass and Moustakas (1984), the first phase in
any qualitative study, the researcher must look at her bias and preconceived notions of
what she will find before she begins her research. Here I had to look at my preconceptions
and attempt to gain clarity of vision. According to Ihde (1977), this requires that
looking precede judgment and that judgment of what it 'real' or 'most real' be suspended
until all the evidence (or at least sufficient evidence) is in (p. 36). When I began this
research, I believed that first-year composition students did not perform as well in terms
of course completion as those in the traditional classroom due to my own experiences.
However, the literature available does not support this. Thus, I attempted to find
evidence that proved otherwise. This suspension of judgment allowed me to follow and hear
what the students were truly saying to me.
The impetus for the study was my active and continued belief
that computers are excellent tools for students. Since 1987, I have been using and
promoting the use of computers. My interests and professional expertise with computers is
manifold and has been both positive and productive. I regularly use email to correspond
and exchange documents with colleagues. I have participated in several successful online
collaborative projects and have been using electronic communication as a way for students
to send weekly journal entries to me since 1991. Thereafter, I took every opportunity
available to connect my students with the Internet.
Having had these experiences with using electronic teaching as
a portion of some courses, I was led to teach entire courses online. Now I teach them
regularly. In the Winter of 1998, I taught three different online English classes,
technical writing, introductory literature, and first-year composition class, along with
my other traditional classes. Although this bias was positive, it did not blind me to how
computer use can be frustrating and non-productive.
Another bias that I brought to this research project was my
interest and belief in active teaching and learning practices. Learners must be active
participants in the construction of knowledge. With the vast amount of information
available online, students need to discern and discriminate between differing sets of
information. Thus, they must be given opportunities to engage in sense-making. Good
learning situations require students to engage in their learning processes through
experiential activities.
Throughout this process I also learned how critical it is to
give students direction in their explorations of cyberworld, as stated previously,
"the computer as writing space constitutes a new writing space with qualities unlike
those of previous space of handwriting and printing" (Bolter, 1991, p. 17). Most
students can find a plethora of ways to waste time with chatlines and multi-player dungeon
and dragon games, instead of gathering information pertinent to their lives. As Dyrli and
Kinnaman (1996) reminded us the newness of an experience often supercedes structure. Yet,
I believed, and still believe, that an educator's duty is to facilitate student
self-discipline, critical reasoning, and discernment into a productive avenue.
