A Discussion by Any other Name: Disentangling Words and Practice in Online Conferencing

It is possible that the pedagogical benefits of a discussion board or any asynchronous communicative tool may not be realised as inscribed in terms like 'collaborative learning environment' or 'discussion board' due to two things: first, as instructors, we focus on what the technology can do and should do and ignore what is done when the technology is used in practice; and second, as researchers, we focus on coding messages into categories and mapping online activities into models that causes us, again, instead of seeing what is done, to try to fit our practices in situ into codes. As both instructors and researchers, we try to adhere to a constructivist view of teaching and learning. This article is about what is happening - the practice of blended/online learning and communication environment and tool (i.e. discussion board) as the technology-in-situ. It disentangles the word 'collaborative' from 'technology' and, in particular, the word 'discussion' from 'board'. Our very notions of discussion or collaboration and our understanding of the so-called collaborative learning environments define the ways in which we plan for an online activity. The author argues that constructivism has become a byword influencing pedagogy, its methodologies including designing so- called learning environments in ways that hide what is really happening when we are online. The case of the discussion board is described to illustrate that the board online can be other things too. Teaching strategies use discussions to stimulate and engage students in classroom activities. In the current literature, we call this the promotion or practice of collaborative learning, framed and advocated through our theorising that relates to different versions of constructivism/socio- constructivism and notions of 'communities of practice'. In the current practices of teaching and learning under the notion of blended/online learning, our classroom discussions have 'moved' and have been extended online. Teachers and students have been introduced to discussion boards and 'collaborative learning environments'. Teachers have been told and convinced (perhaps not fully) that the asynchronous nature of a communicative tool like a discussion board (DB) is going to support collaboration among their students online. And yet, based on teachers' experiences and researchers' findings, online discussions 'fail' (e.g. Gunawardena, 1995; Hallett & Cummings, 1997; Heath, 1998). Why? The reasons we too often read or hear about have to do with the students' lack of skills and experience; the tutor's inability to moderate online and the lack of verbal and social cues in computer-mediated communication (e.g. Gunawardena, 1995; Muirhead, 2000); and the use of tasks that are ill-suited for collaboration (Kirschner, 2005). This article does not disagree with the reasons mentioned here. However, the study that provides empirical evidence for this article takes a different route of investigation: first, it attends to the assumed and taken-for-granted 'talk' inscribed into the technology as collaborative, particularly in terms of DB as a board for discussion; and second, it turns our attention away from models of collaborative learning that take our eyes away from what is happening online. It proceeds to do so by divorcing (only partially) our theories and methods from a constructivist approach. Then, a case of the discussion board is briefly brought