Last post I looked at the similarities between the behaviours shown in a children’s playground and those within the online classroom. These social behaviours can determine the way a learner engages with the class and the content, and in particular for this series’ the induction and orientation process.

A quick overview of terminology – last post we identified a few different approaches, so for ease of referral, let’s label them! Our learner who doesn’t want to move from their comfortable social network or activity, content on their online roundabout, will be the “Blinkered Learner”. The learner that starts of quite shy but can really engage when drawn out will be the “Reticent Teamplayer”. Then we have the “Active Leader”, those who seek to draw others into their activity. And finally we have the “Social Loner”, a seemingly mismatched term, but that fairly accurately describes those who will take part in the group only as long as they are comfortable, and will happily seek out their own individual approach/activity/etc if they are not.
(I will also mention that these are not the only types of online learner, I’m sure, but for sake of focus we will retain just these four for the purpose of this article).

When we look at the social presence we would like our online learners to achieve, we can see that each of these personalities have their own place within that presence, and each have their own strengths and weaknesses that, when combined, can provide a potentially strong and complete social and online presence for the class.

The best example of this is the Blinkered Learner. We’ve seen that they are happy in their own particular space, and don’t want to venture farther. This may manifest within social media as a limit on which Social Network Sites (SNS) they choose to use, and it may similarly become apparent within the orientation process when we see them sticking to just taking quizzes (for example) while never posting in forums. There can be a variety of reasons for this type of behaviour. On the SNS front, there can be negative behaviours that cause the Blinkered Learner to have concern over which SNS they engage with, including cyberbullying and comparison depression, as discussed by Son, Lee, Cho and Kim (2016). The Blinkered Learner may also suffer from levels of social anxiety – not being confident in engaging with a new social group, and often feeling that they are the only ones to suffer from such a feeling. Of course, there is also the anxiety surrounding their learning – new students being unsure about the content they are learning. In particular those who are returning to education after a period away (a group which contains a great majority of our online learners) can worry that they are not capable of learning at the same level as their new colleagues.

Orientation is, of course, the place to address these concerns and help our Blinkered Learner grow out of their bubble and engage more effectively. By providing them with small challenges, effectively letting them dip their toes in the online waters, we are providing a safe environment within which they can grow their confidence before being faced with the need to step out of their shelter within the full gale of their formal learning.
Our other learner personalities can provide their own strengths to also assist with this. Our Active Leaders can step in and encourage the Blinkered Learner to participate. The Reticent Teamplayer understands the social anxieties that they Blinkered Learner may initially face, so can sympathise and perhaps provide a mutual support network that will ease the Blinkered Learner into the group. Even our Social Loner, who has a level of comfort within the group, can help by showing how they have developed that level of comfort.

The Social Loner has some similar weaknesses to the Blinkered Learner, but at the opposite end of the learning process. They will start off working in the group quite happily, but over time will find the learning or social activity moves in a direction in which they are not comfortable. At this point they will isolate themselves from the group, either temporarily for the duration of a particular activity, or more permanently. Some Social Loners simply are not interested in engaging in particular forms of activity (“I don’t do Twitter”), while others may feel that the overall social direction of their colleagues is developing faster than they are comfortable with. Whatever the reason, it is important for their learning that they re-integrate within the group. This makes the extended orientation we have previously discussed even more crucial – while our Blinkered Learner could be addressed quite early on in the first semester, our Social Loner’s behaviours may not become apparent until very late in the process.
The Blinkered Learner can reciprocate the support our Social Loner provided them early on, reminding them of what helped them to work more effectively within the group. Meanwhile our Active Leader and Reticent Teamplayer can encourage participation in a variety of ways, dependent upon the type of activity.

The Active Leader can often be seen as a very positive role, providing structure and encouragement to the social group. They are often viewed as the solution-finders, the problem-solvers and the bedrock for the rest of the group to lean upon. While this is all very often true, this can take its toll on the Active Leader, who can experience burn-out more quickly than other learners due to the burden that others, and often they themselves, place upon their shoulders. Often Active Leaders will take too much responsibility upon themselves, and may be unwilling to share the load due to suffering from levels of perfectionism. From whatever level of good intention this may be generated from, it can often lead to other members of the group feeling inadequate, particularly our Reticent Teamplayers who might now be in a position to want to take on more responsibility and social leadership.
While it is great to encourage the development of Active Leaders within the group, it is also necessary for them to be able to share that leadership role with others in the group, particularly allowing those of other personality types to take on various types of leadership to help them develop a more rounded online social persona.
Often we will look to the Active Leaders to help the Blinkered Learner and Social Loner develop, but we can also use the experience of these personalities to provide the Active Leader greater focus on the areas in which these learners are comfortable, while also teaching them how to work with these different personalities more effectively.

Finally, our Reticent Teamplayers. They start off in a similar position to the Blinkered Learner, but mostly through a lighter level of social anxiety. They aren’t sure where to start within the new social group, but with a bit of encouragement from the rest of the group, and often more specifically the Active Leaders, they will engage quite happily. Some may be comfortable just being part of the social collective, while others will develop more of a need to develop a leadership role.
To my mind, the Reticent Teamplayer is the most well-rounded of the personalities we have discussed, but also the most likely to take on aspects of the others, as they interact and develop most quickly.
Orientation can be really important for these learners, to help them to adapt in positive ways, without falling into some of the pitfalls the other personality types suffer from.

A good orientation process will see all of these personality types grow, adapt and learn from one another, with the aim to create both strong individual learners and also a well-rounded social group.

References

Jung-Eun Son, So-Hyun Lee, Eun-Young Cho & Hee-Woong Kim (2016):
Examining online citizenship behaviours in social network sites: a social capital perspective,
Behaviour & Information Technology, DOI: 10.1080/0144929X.2016.1143032

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