Conflict in the virtual learning community
Hayriye Tugba Ozturk, Alberto Ramirez Martinell
Lancaster University, United Kingdom
The concept of the virtual learning community offers an emancipated learning culture in educational research. Through its basis in liberal and democratic pedagogic values, communitarian notions such as negotiation, shared goals, historicity, identity, plurality, autonomy and participation lie at the basis of the concept. In contrast to the learning abilities of the community, there is often the potential for conflict in the attainment of the learning experience, as here defined as a blockage in reaching consensus in a decision making process either overtly or covertly. This learning community idea, as it aids and hinders learning, is not new in education, but the explicit involvement of technology has led to a focus on the influence of technical matters , which has been empirically addressed. To address conflict in a technology-enabled learning community, a pilot study was conducted on third year undergraduate students enrolled in a Computer Education and Instructional Technology programme. This followed an action research methodology. A four week lecture was designed according to learning community principles, and students were introduced with their respective learning communities. At the end of the study, a focus group was conducted with students, an interview was done with the academic tutor, and students who did not participate in the study were asked to write an essay. It is found that conformism, power relations and feelings among members such as anxiety, satisfaction, happiness, security play crucial role in experiencing conflict. This research contributes to the virtual learning community concept through an empirically-based conceptualization of conflict issues as they arise in a virtual context. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.references provided in uploaded full research paper