Research suggests that the solitary learner’s learning preferences might be a mismatch with collaborative instructional settings. A question is therefore posed: “In online learning environments that require collaboration, how do solitary learners experience their own learning?” It is important to answer this question to understand and develop effective online learning environments for solitary learners. This phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of 5 solitary learners in an online collaborative learning environment. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, field observations, and document analysis. Findings revealed that solitary learners prefer online learning discussions for the value of the reflection they enable, but still prefer individual accomplishment of course-specific tasks. Three themes described the participants’ experiences: a preference for internal interactions for learning, a willingness to engage in collaboration but not in an interdependent way, and a preference for interacting academically rather than socially.
INTRODUCTION
During the early days of distance education, independent learning, as opposed to in-group learning, was the dominant pedagogical assumption behind the delivery of correspondence courses (Moore, 1989; Wedemeyer, 1971). Recently, advances in the Internet and communication technologies, in addition to the expansion of a social view of learning, have powered a paradigmatic shift to collaborative pedagogy in distance education. The belief now has become widely accepted that in order for a student to learn, he or she must collaborate with others (Cole, 1996; Johnson & Johnson, 1994; Vygotsky, 1978). In this context, Web-based distance education practitioners have put forth great efforts in grouping and pairing students in different learning activities in order to honor the need to learn in socially negotiated spaces through intellectual tools that are acquired during the course of interactions. For many, it has become a belief system—that learners learn best when engaged in the tasks of social negotiation—even more than a simple instructional tactic. Learning is conceptualized as a collective, participatory social process where a series of multistranded interpersonal transactions mediate the exchange of knowledge (Cole & Engestrom, 1993; Moll & Greenberg, 1990).
However, it is possible there may be some negative effects of the collaborative learning paradigm. As Huang (2002) notes, “collaborative learning is in conflict with individual differences” (p. 32). When teamwork and collaborative learning are required, the instructor may experience difficulty in taking into account individual learning preferences and capabilities (Westera, 1999). The inherent nature of online learning environments which rely heavily on collaboration can be in direct conflict with the learner’s need to act independently from a solitary perspective. Actually, research (Carrier & Melvin, 1982; Coggins, 1988; Griggs & Dunn, 1996) indicates that there are learners whose learning preferences or strengths mismatch collaborative learning environments in any medium. These learners are termed solitary or intrapersonal learners who, by temperament, achieve more through individual work or independent thinking (Hopper, 2003; McClanaghan, 2000; Oldham & Morris, 1995). Given this potential mismatch, we ask, “What happens to solitary learners in online collaborative settings? What is their experience?”
Few formal studies have targeted this question. A recent article by Hopper (2003) examines this phenomenon, but primarily through personal experiences rather than field investigations. In general, the literature has focused far more on the merits of collaborative tactics and the benefits rather than the potential negative implications for learners’ experiences. As is the case with many relatively new and popular movements, collaborative online learning has enjoyed very little critique. We believe, therefore, that a research study which carefully and respectfully examines the experiences of solitary learners in online courses deserves serious empirical study.
Therefore, this research explores the lived experiences of solitary learners in online collaborative instructional environments. The following specific questions will be posed: (a) What are solitary learners’ lived experiences within online collaborative learning environments?, and (b) what are solitary learners’ perceptions of their experiences?
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Only one published article, which is in circulation, directly addresses and focuses on the phenomenon of solitary learners in online learning environments. In his article, Hopper (2003) warns that collaborative learning may go overboard in failing to support solitary learners. Hopper has raised concern over the phenomenon theoretically, but not fully explored it through empirical research. There is also a wealth of information available for individual versus collaborative learning environments (Johnson & Johnson, 1994; Lou, Abrami, & d’Apollonia, 2001; Slavin, 1996), however, they only synthesize the empirical research on the general effects of social context and do not deal specifically with the solitary learner, or knowing more about what solitary learners need.
An examination of the research focused on online collaborative learning helps to illuminate the current study. Roschelle and Teasley (1995) define collaborative learning as “a coordinated, synchronous activity that is the result of a continued attempt to construct and maintain a shared conception of a problem” (p. 70). Recently, the online environment has come to rely heavily on collaborative learning models (Palloff & Pratt, 1999). Collaborative learning in online settings has been a research focus in distance education and explored by many scholars. Among these scholars, some (e.g., Miller & Polito, 1999; Sandmire, Vroman, & Sanders, 2000; Stitt-Gohdes, 2003; Wang, Hinn, & Kanfer, 2001; Weller, 1995) have investigated whether learners’ learning preferences affect the efficacy of online collaborative learning. Their findings remain mixed. Orr and Davidson (1993) found the learning preferences of introverts and extraverts did not influence students’ performance in collaborative group learning. However, Sonnenwald and Li (2003), in their evaluation of online-based scientific collaboration in higher education, found that students with a strong individualistic learning style, or who worked with a student with a strong individualistic learning preference, reported a more negative perception of the collaborative system in comparison to students with collaborative learning preferences. These mixed findings among primarily quantitative studies cannot present a complete portrait of the online collaborative learning experience for various learners.
Existing experimental studies that tackle the general issue of the mismatch between learning preference and instructional situation have also helped our exploration of solitary learners’ responses to online collaborative learning. According to Witkin, Moore, Goodenough, and Cox (1977), students enter a learning situation with their learning preferences already developed. If they meet a learning environment at variance with that preference, it is likely the student will reject the learning environment. Hayes and Allinson (1997) reviewed 19 studies that investigated the effects of matching styles to instructional situations, and found in 12 studies there was support for the proposition that mismatching style and situations decreases learning performance.
Finally, learning preference literature has guided this investigation. Learning styles theory asserts that we all learn and process information in our unique ways (Jonassen & Grabowski, 1993). A key to getting students actively involved in learning lies in understanding learning preferences (Curry, 1983; Kolb, 1984). For this study, Witkin’s (1977) field-dependence/field-independence cognitive styles and Myers-Briggs personality types (Association for Psychological Type, 2000) have been foundational for our research question. According to Witkin et al. (1977) and Riding and Rayner (1998), field independent people are intrinsically motivated and are more likely to enjoy individualized learning, whereas field dependent ones are extrinsically motivated and are more likely to enjoy collaborative learning. Oldham and Morris (1995) suggest that in Myers-Briggs personality types, people of INTJ (Dominant Introverted Intuition with Auxiliary Extraverted Thinking) or INTP (Dominant Introverted Thinking with Auxiliary Extraverted Intuition) type tend to be solitary learners who are most comfortable alone. DiTiberio’s (1996) research review and Orifici’s (1997) empirical study also confirm that Myers-Briggs personality types can predict students’ social interaction conditions in the learning environment. Specifically, extraverted students may prefer interpersonal learning conditions whereas introverted students may prefer individual learning conditions (Orifici, 1997).
Surely learning preferences are not the sole variable in making a learning environment engaging (Curry, 1990). However, there certainly should be some merit placed on the validity of the learners’ personal experiences. Knowing more about the experiences of those who may feel that their learning preference is out of synch with the dominant pedagogical tool of collaborative online learning is an important addition to the literature and a necessary preparation to a learner-centered, Webbased learning environment design. Additionally, when considering the varied results generated by quantitative study, a qualitative examination of solitary learners’ experiences in online collaborations will further illuminate the phenomenon of mismatching between learning preference and instructional situation.
METHOD
This study is a phenomenological examination of the solitary learner in collaborative online learning environments. Using phenomenology, this study is “intended to construct an animating, evocative description of human actions, behaviors, intentions, and experiences as we meet them in the lifeworld” (Van Manen, 1990, p. 19). In alignment with a phenomenological approach, we have focused on the experiences of solitary learners in the online learning environment and not on a comparative examination of their experiences in contrast to those of other learners. Extensive data from individual in-depth interviews, online activities observation, email messages, transcripts of bulletin board and chat room discussions, students’ assignments, and other course materials have been collected. The researchers subsequently conducted an analysis of themes in order to explore “the deep meaning of individual subject’s experiences” (Rossman & Rallis, 1998, p. 72).
Setting Background
In phenomenological research, the participants may be located at a single site, and must be individuals who have experienced the phenomenon being explored (Creswell, 1998). In this study, participants who displayed solitary learning preferences1 were selected from an ANGEL-based online course that endorsed a collaboration-oriented learning system “Computers as Mindtools” is an online graduate course delivered by a large Midwestern university via the ANGEL course management system. The course is offered entirely online as part of a graduate program in educational technology. In this course, students learn the unique contributions that computer technologies (e.g., concept maps, spreadsheets, information search tool, etc.) can make to the learning and cognition process. The course has been offered seven times and has a typical enrollment of approximately 30 students. Most instructional and learning activities in this course involve intensive online interactions and collaborations using both synchronous (chat room) and asynchronous (bulletin board) conferencing tools.
Students in the course were required to post their reading syntheses to the message board for each of four sections, read all of the peers’ postings for that section, and then select at least three messages to respond to for each of those four sections. Each response would be indicated by the writer as “challenge,” “elaboration,” or “how I am influenced by the message” (course syllabus, March 8, 2004). After students had written their responses, they could edit the text of their original posting to include peers’ feedback. Around 20% of the final grade depended on the frequency and quality of students’ postings to peers, and how they had “included peers’ feedback in their final reading syntheses” (course syllabus, March 8, 2004).
Group work was also emphasized in a team project. Students worked in teams of three or four. Each team created three mindtool projects focused on the implementation of certain computer tool in a classroom or training environment. Teammates codeveloped every mindtool project by each making a preliminary post to their team message board with a first draft of a project idea, interacting with teammates with critiques and recommendations, jointly finalizing the project document, and then posting revised documents to the class message board. Around 30% of the final grade depended on students’ collaboration efforts in teamwork—”team agreed on a development schedule” and “respond to all teammate postings with thoughtful feedback” (course syllabus, March 8, 2004).
Additionally, the course was not lecture based. Instead, the instructor let the students self-explore the subject topics through collaborative discussion and application projects. In the course introduction page, the instructor claimed, “My goal is not to convince you of the value of Mindtools, but to get you engaged in a collaborative exploration process that will help you collect the data you need to reach and defend a conclusion” (course introduction, March 6, 2004). As observed, online instruction was conducted in forms of informative feedback and questioning, through bulletin board and course e-mails.
Although Wertsch (1991) has suggested that online learning environments offer the designer/instructor the chance to shape the conditions for dialogue, this particular course did not attempt to shape the course particularly for solitary learners, but rather encouraged what we consider to be a high degree of collaborative activity that has become common among online courses. As is typical of online course study, participants were located in many individual physical sites, but they had still been learning and interacting with each other within a single online course setting— the course as a virtual field space (Bianco & Carr-Chellman, 2002).
Study Participants
Creswell (1998) notes, “The purposeful selection of participants represents a key decision point in a qualitative study” (p. 118). He also advocates for “criterion sampling” in phenomenological studies. In criterion sampling, all participants should meet the criterion to attest that they have experienced the phenomenon under examination. Because we wanted to focus on the experience of collaborative online learning from the perspective of the solitary learner, it was essential that we find solitary learners who were embedded within a collaborative environment. In this study, criterion sampling was set mainly through the MBTI Personality Types Test (Association for Psychological Type, 2000) and the Cognitive Styles Analysis (CSA, Riding & Rayner, 1998) which was administered by mailed instruments at the start of the course. These two instruments acted as prescreening criterion, singling out solitary learners as participants. They were selected for the following reasons:
The instruments are capable of indicating solitary learning preference, as the researchers (Oldham & Morris, 1995; Orifici, 1997; Riding & Rayner, 1998; Witkin et al., 1977) have suggested.
The validity and reliability of the two instruments have been widely utilized by empirical research (Atkins, Moore, Sharpe, & Hobbs, 2001; DiTiberio, 1996; Riding & Rayner, 1998)
MBTI Personality Types Test has been cross-culturally validated (Jackson, Parker, & Dipboye, 1996; Sipps & Alexander, 1987).
Based on the MBTI and CSA tests results, five students from “Computers as Mindtools” were purposefully sampled because they strongly displayed INTJ or INTP personality in the MBTI test and field-independence cognitive style in the CSA test. As literature (Oldham & Morris, 1995; Riding & Rayner, 1998; Witkin et al., 1977) suggests, these specific styles denote high inclination toward solitary learning preference. The investigators affirmed this selection by e-mailing the five learners and directly inquiring about their learning preference. In support of their MBTI and CSA scores, the five participants also selfreported that they preferred individual work in both online and offline learning settings. All participants were protected through appropriate Human Subjects protocols. They were diverse in age (from 30s to 50s), and cultural background (one Korean, one Chinese, and three Americans) but represented more females (four) than males (one). One common feature was that they were all graduate students majoring in education, and generally believed themselves to be experienced online learners and committed to learning.
Data Collection and Analysis
For this study, the process of collecting information relied primarily on in-depth interviews. The primary researcher followed a protocol of first conducting repeated (two) individual interviews with each participant, followed by either face-to-face or online observations of participation in the course, and finally examination of related documents. All data were collected while the course was ongoing. A semistructured, conversational style of individual interviewing was adopted (see Appendix A for interview protocol). The investigators utilized an interview protocol with open-ended questions to explore respondents’ stories and make interviewing multiple subjects more systematic (Hoepfl, 1997). However, the actual interview process was still emergent and flexible. Complementary questions emerged when interviewees raised additional issues during their descriptions. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with two participants who lived in close proximity to the school area and telephone interviews were conducted with three participants who lived far from the university. Although this variability in method is not optimal, it is commonly necessary in the online research environment to be more flexible in order to effectively study the setting (Bianco & Carr-Chellman, 2002). We are certain that there is a qualitative difference in the data received from these two methods; however, the results are represented faithfully between these. There was no attempt to deal specifically with the differences that might emerge from this variability or to deal with nonverbal missing data. With each participant, two 1-hour iterative interviews were conducted. All interviews were tape-recorded.
Concurrently, observation and document analysis were employed in order to obtain knowledge of the context in which events occur and see things that participants themselves might not see, or might have been reluctant to discuss (Patton, 1990). The observation of the five participants in this study took two forms: distant real-time online observation and face-to-face in-field observation. For the online observation, the researcher logged onto the course site and read through participants’ postings in bulletin board and chat room. A semistructured observation protocol (see Appendix B) was developed to guide the attention during observation, though the actual observation was open to any situational changes. The unit of analysis was the individual solitary learner experience. The lead researcher also personally observed two participants during the learning process at their study rooms. Apart from doing these observations, the investigators also collected and coded course administrative documents (e.g., syllabi, course handouts, general course broadcast e-mails, and course evaluation surveys), student project papers, and class e-mails to further examine the subjects’ learning experience. It should be noted that the three data collection practices (interviewing, observation, and document analysis) were interactive and simultaneous, providing for triangulation of data (Patton, 1990). The purpose of collecting this variety of data was to seek information and supporting evidence regarding the experiences of solitary learners in the online environment being studied. It was also possible to extend the interview protocol as a result of learning more from the documents and observations. Thus, all compelling findings from the observation and document analysis instigated new questions in interviewing, and vice versa.
According to Van Manen (1990), phenomenological researchers do thematic analysis to determine salient themes that stand for the essence or structures of experience. In this inquiry, we employed constant comparison of participants’ responses and activities with the goal of organizing the data into systematic categories of analysis by seeking recurring themes. Thus, something was determined to be a theme if it was seen throughout the data in several cases across respondents as identified during the constant comparison thematic analysis process. The statements or meaning units that emerged as possible commonalities from the data were forwarded as initial themes (Creswell, 1998) and coded using Nvivo software. We then refined these themes by removing overlapping ones, capturing the main thrust of each theme’s meaning, and re-examining them through member checking (Guba & Lincoln, 1994) . Through this data coding process, general themes emerged and were synthesized based on the context.
Researcher Positionality
As Van Manen (1990) points out, the problem of phenomenological inquiry was that our preunderstandings predisposed us to interpret the nature of the phenomenon. To bracket these predispositions, we were explicit here. The first author of this study is a student who has taken many online courses and has, at times, felt less than completely comfortable with the approaches that were employed—collaborative or otherwise. The second author of this study has taught online courses and has, at moments, had concern over the primarily instrumental nature of the dominant literature in online learning. However, she has also employed collaborative learning experiences in online and face-to-face courses she has taught. These tendencies certainly impact the data analysis and the resulting findings as they are part of the lens brought to the study. However, it is important to understand that these feelings did not remain unbracketed, but rather were part of the interpretation of the findings that emerged. Additionally, the authors applied member checks—involving the participants in the inspection and rectification of transcribed interviewing and observation data (Guba & Lincoln, 1994). Neither researcher was involved in the course as an instructor or had any grading/evaluative responsibilities in the course itself.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
Solitary learners experienced both cognitive and affective responses to the online collaborative learning environment in this course. The cognitive response involves their strategies to construct knowledge in a collaborative learning context, and the importance they placed on independent learning. The affective response includes their perception of the relationship between fellow students and themselves.
Specifically, these responses are intertwined within three general themes (containing four subordinate patterns) that have emerged through the process of data generation, analysis, and comparison of participants. These salient themes and patterns, with support from the participants’ voices, are discussed next.
Prioritizing Internal Interaction
Interacting with content.
The participants, who prefer solitary learning activities, prioritized independent reading and reflecting. In other words, they interacted more internally with content than externally with fellow students or instructor. For instance, in describing her time arrangement in the online course, P5 said:
I spent most time reading the textbook and other required articles. Averagely, I spent around 4 hours a week reading offline materials and thinking about my project, then probably 1 hour reading through the postings on the (discussion) forums when they come in.
This description indicated that significantly more time and effort were expended reading content materials. The participants also claimed that they learned first and most from reading articles and from personal reflection. P4 described:
I would like to pick up concepts first before I could do any other stuff. By reading the textbook and writing reflections, I could build up a concept structure on what the Mindtool is and how we can apply it in different contexts. Discussion is good, but it is not as necessary as reading. I mean, my understandings were mostly developed through reading the textbook. If I could not find answers from the textbook, I would go to the library or Internet to search additional materials.
As these words revealed, independent reading is deemed the primary learning method: P4 tended to construct new knowledge primarily through reading the textbook or additional references that she found on her own.
Such a pattern has been echoed by other participants. Particularly, when doing the “End-of-Course Evaluation,” unlike the other students who voted “Interact with teammates” or “Read the mindtool attribute postings of classmates” as the top favored class activities, the solitary-styled participants ranked “Read chapter 1 and 2 then write an 800-1,200 word mindtool definition” and “Read an article about elaboration, post five examples” as their favorites. In the course site’s comment section, the participants explained their voting:
I think this course should encourage students to put more emphasis on this textbook. I had a fairly well-developed concept of the mindtool by reading the textbook. The feedback from other students validated my definition, but they did little to modify or add to my original definition of a mindtool. (P1, Course Posting)
I did read other groups’ postings to see how they get started and organized it [the project]. It was helpful but I am more interested in reading and reflecting on my own first. (P3, Course Posting)
While it was interesting to read other classmates’ ideas, sometimes I felt confused by too many different opinions. I didn’t know which one to believe. And frankly, this exercise [reading others’ postings] had little effect on my concept of the mindtool by this point. I would read the book several times and figure it out. (P5, Course Posting)
Based on these explanations, it can be interpreted that interaction with peers did support the participants’ learning process, but in a minor way. The participants constructed their understanding primarily through intrapersonal interactions with content. They sometimes interacted with peers to testify or validate their own understandings but would not necessarily need the group agreement on their understandings. This performance pattern is in agreement with what Damon (1991) points out:
Even when learning is fostered through processes of social communication, individual activity and reflection still play a critical role. Sometimes ... individual activity may build on collective questions and insights. Other times, however, individual activity actually may need to resist the collective illusions created by a group. (p. 392)
Prioritizing critical thinking.
Apart from intrapersonal interaction with contents, the participants stated that it was necessary for them to do a careful pondering before posting any messages, which meant their critical thinking tended to precede interpersonal interaction:
And that’s why I liked the [discussion] board: it is because it gives you opportunity to think about what you are going to say just before you blurt it out. Sometimes I will start to write a posting and then decide that “well, I don’t want to say that” so I will delete it, I won’t post it. (P1, Interview)
It [bulletin board discussion] was not as fast as a class discussion, but I believe the responses were more thought out and appropriate. (P2, Interview)
It is hard to get across which you are trying to say without careful thinking or something, so I will try to reread what I typed in, I will rearrange sentences, it’s more like typing a memo. And then I will send it. Usually I try to be conscious on what I am posting. (P3, Interview)
I prefer to think, read first, and then discuss. (P4, Course Posting)
I prefer online discussion to face-to-face one. With online, you can have a time to think it over before responding to the other persons. (P5, Interview)
It was clear from these statements that critical thinking was an important part of the preparation for discussions. This is somewhat antiintuitive because we would expect that perhaps solitary learners would prefer not to engage in online discussions, but instead they see it as a preferable mode to face-to-face class discussions in which their solitary reflections are often bypassed or truncated. During the thinking phase, the participants reasoned or interacted with themselves through reflecting (“reread what I typed in”), evaluating (“well, I don’t want to say this”), and decision making (“so I will delete it” or “I will rearrange sentences”). Only after this internal interaction would they go ahead and respond.
Thus, cognitively, the participants employed intrapersonal interaction with content and critical thinking as the major approach to constructing knowledge. Although they did interact with their peers to test their own understandings of the content, the participants did not tend to coconstruct their understandings and were reluctant to rely on group negotiation for their understanding development. This finding agrees with what Hopper (2003) suggested, “Some students in some courses simply require the efficient content mastery” and “[t]hey ... tended to keep their own counsel and trust their own minds” (pp. 26, 27). Additionally, Moore (1989) contended that there were three types of interactions: learnercontent, learner-instructor, and learner-learner. Here we see the participants prioritized the learner-content interaction to other forms of interaction. The learner-content interaction involved “internal didactic conversation” (Moore, 1989, p. 2) when learners talk to themselves about the information and ideas they encounter in texts.
Involving in Collaboration but Not in an Interdependent Way
The participants valued collaboration opportunities in the online course, especially the perspectives-sharing process:
The nature of the project was that it did require participation from the other members’ in the group just so that we can get feedback on how our mindtool was being used, so if I were to do it myself, it would be really hard to get feedback from somebody who understand what I was doing. (P2, Interview)
This activity [team project] engaged me to reorganize my cognitive thinking about mindtools ... I had a chat with my team member for brainstorming. She really helped me think more creatively. (P4, Course E-mail)
I think when I am working with the group, and I am having that feedback back and forth, it lists more information pulled more out of me and I get more information from other sources besides what I have, so I get more knowledge than what is in my head, more experiences that other people might have that I wouldn’t have had myself. (P5, Interview)
These statements indicated that the participants valued their involvement in collaboration for sharing perspectives with fellow students. Informative feedback from peers, especially from those who were experts (“who understand what I was doing”), mediated the participants’ learning by acting as an additional knowledge source (“besides what I have”) and a context that facilitates critical or creative thinking (“pulled more out of me” and “think more creatively”). As Wertsch (1991) has suggested, in group work the situation itself may exert a strong mediating effect on individual cognitive and conceptual processes.
However, this mediating effect was not sufficient to fully draw the solitary learner into interdependent collaboration. All five participants expressed their strong preference for individualistic tasks within online learning environments. Reluctance to be interdependent in terms of timing and labor was one apparent reason that they preferred to be individually responsible for their assignments:
For my own work, I’d say I prefer to work alone. In an online environment, it’s often difficult to really get to know your teammates and understand their work styles and ... well...their dependability and accountability. I work full time and go to school full time—I feel less pressure if I only have to coordinate and depend on me. (P1, Interview)
Because I tend to know what my ability and capability levels are, and I would rather rely on just myself to accomplish an assignment versus the other people, because I’ve been disappointed so far (sigh) My time is limited. It is very difficult to depend on some other’s schedule. I have to work ahead. If I have to wait for others’ pieces before I can do, I cannot work ahead. It is difficult for me. (P2, Interview)
Although these logistical concerns may be the case for many learners, they are particularly piqued for solitary learners. Obviously, the participants trusted their own capability more than their teammates’. They preferred individual assignment because they felt comfortable working alone and “felt more in control” to work at their own pace (P1, P3, & P4, Interview). In the course’s end-of-course evaluation, P5 wrote, “On the whole, with both groups, I feel I could have produced a project of equal or higher quality by working on my own.” Differently, a nonsolitary-styled student wrote, “As before, I think projects get better through collaboration. We can always learn from each other. If not it is just me sitting at a computer doing work alone, I don’t prefer to learn that way.” This difference suggested that, particularly for the solitary learner, group collaboration was more an optional than a critical condition for learning. And, as the interview statements indicated, this optional condition involved higher pressure, more coordination efforts and, too often, disappointment. Therefore, the participants displayed reluctance to collaborate, especially when it involved interdependence of time or effort.
Due to this reluctance, the participants demonstrated two specific patterns in participating in team projects: concern over teamwork timing and concern over division of labor and responsibility.
Concern about teamwork timing.
The participants were unwilling to depend on the others’ timeline in completing a task. They commonly displayed a concern about the timing for teamwork. As observed, on the group discussion forums, the solitary learners tended to initiate the negotiation of team schedule. Typically, they volunteered to be team leaders, with an intention “to get it done and out of it anyway” (P5, Interview). They posted their speculations of the timeline to the whole team. They softly pushed the others to abide by the schedule by posting messages like “how is everything going ... we have only one week left for the finalization” (P3, Course Posting). Then, in their emails to the instructor, most participants complained their teamwork experiences were not as positive as they hoped, because “work progress was delayed as teammates did not do their work on time” (P1, Course E-mail). Solitary learners, thus, expressed a strong desire that the instructor should specify assignment timeline and monitor students’ teamwork progress. For example, P2 said:
I know that we have assignment timeline in this course content, but sometimes it is a little confusing to put them together. So if he (the instructor) could just say “here is where we are, here is what is coming up next, just to give ... just to make sure everybody is in the same track.
With this request, P2 implied that fellow students had different understandings of the assignment timeline, which might lead to delays. The participant hoped to avoid this confusion by having more frequent monitoring and direction from the instructor.
Concern about labor division and sense of responsibility.
Pressed by their concern for the progress delays caused by time interdependence, the participants demanded a clear labor division before the teamwork:
Having labor division is very necessary. Everybody then will understand what to do and when to do it. (P1, Interview)
Usually, when I collaborate with people, you know, especially at work, we do good job of defining, you know, evening out roles and responsibilities at the beginning. So it ends out being fair, you know, break out the work. (P2, Interview)
They hoped that by using labor division or responsibility specification, teammates would contribute equitably and the entire project would turn out “fair.” When solitary learners were asked which factors foster a positive collaborative experience, they cited “sense of responsibility” most frequently:
Responsible teammates are necessary for good collaboration. (P3 & P4, Interview)
We should follow all the instructions that were laid out regarding the responsibilities as the project leader. (P2, Interview)
I think I have a strong sense of responsibility. Individually, I may wait to the deadline to do my work. But in teamwork, I have to do it right ‘cause others need my work to continue. And I just don’t want to let them down. (P3, Interview)
Here again, we might anticipate these sorts of responses and concerns from many online learners, whether they are solitary learners or simply ambitious learners, but for the solitary learner, the concern over responsibility is immutable. P2 and P4 pointed out that labor division could not ensure fair participation: “Although the rules were laid out, people would not interpret them as the same, so they did not do the same.” Therefore, it was no wonder that P1 claimed “I enjoyed sharing perspectives with my group members, but not co-developing a group project.” In other words, the participants were willing to be involved in collaboration but not in an interdependent way.
Although the participants valued peers’ perspectives that mediated their learning process, the participants displayed an unwillingness to share solutions through dialogue, debate, negotiation, and compromise, which were key procedures for collaborative learning proposed in socio-cultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978). On the contrary, they tended to individualize collaboration by converting a collaborative task into multiple units of individual work: performing labor division, each person being responsible for his or her share of the work, and being time and effort independent of one another within the team. This finding has not been directly addressed by previous research, but it concurs with the learning styles theory that solitary students are more independent learners (Oldham & Morris, 1995; Witkin et al., 1977). What is very important here is that the independent learner is finding ways to make the online learning environment friendlier to his or her learning preference, but potentially bypassing some of the important benefits of collaborative learning as a theoretical construct.
Interacting Academically Rather Than Socially
The interactions among the participants, as P2 and P5 described, “have been on academic level.” In coding the participants’ online discourses, we found that the predominance of the messages they posted or responded to was specifically centered on the course content. Among solitary learners, very few postings were offered to fulfill a social function, such as the exchange of personal information or feelings. This finding was also confirmed by our interviewing data. For instance, some participants said:
I don’t know. I see this more as...I guess my interactions have been on a professional level. I haven’t been contacted on a personal level, nor have I contacted anyone on a personal level.... Maybe because people are just so spread out that, that has an effect on how much you want to invest in developing a relationship that would probably just last over a couple, you know, several weeks. (P2, Interview)
I think we were in touch academically, not necessary socially. We had little social talk. What is the point? I probably will never meet these people. Why bother some social relationship? (P5, Interview)
These explanations indicated that timing and physical distance were two practical concerns that deterred personal interaction among solitary learners. However, we also found some evidence that solitary learners did not necessarily value the social bond with peers. They wondered about the value of social talk (by saying “what is the point”) and deemed the investment in developing social relationship as extra or nonnecessary (by questioning “why bother”). This devaluing of in-class social relationship contributed to their concerns for the academic quality and fair investment in online communication.
Concern for the academic quality of discourse.
The participants cared a lot about the quality of the online discourses. During online and in-field observation, we noticed that the participants did not respond to all the postings. Actually, they first had a quick viewing of all new messages that were on the bulletin board, and then purposely selected a few messages to read carefully and/or to which to respond.
Generally, the participants responded to fewer messages and responded less frequently than did the other students. When asked why, the participants explained:
When I respond, I respond to the ones that I feel that I have a comment that is worthy of making posting. I don’t necessarily always want to put down “yes I agree” “no, I don’t”. I want to have something that I can add to the conversation. So I read a lot more postings than I respond to. I don’t respond to all the postings. I don’t think that is necessary. (P4, Interview)
The messages that I tended to respond first are ones that are practically based, usable in the real world. (P5, Interview)
Clearly, the participants communicated selectively based on their evaluation of whether the discourse was really constructive or not. At the same time, they wanted to post meaningful messages to peers. By “meaningful,” they meant being able to inform or being able to help. For instance, the participants explained the usual occasions when they would post messages:
Let’s say somebody asked questions that I thought I had an answer for or suggestions I might post that. Or maybe somebody made a comment that I could maybe add additional information to or my own personal opinion that were my expand on that comment, I might add that. (P2, Interview)
I try to make sure that my postings add something to the discussion/body of knowledge and I have little patience for postings just for the sake of posting (good job, I agree, etc.). (P3, End-of-Course Evaluation)
Usually when someone who are new, need help with something, I would like to help and tell. (P5, Interview)
This concern over the quality of online discourses explained why the participants stated that it was helpful for them to do a careful pondering before posting any messages:
It is hard to get across which you are trying to say without careful thinking or something. (P3, Interview)
If you just say something is good you don’t really commit yourself to explaining why, so it can make it look like a non-answer. Perhaps if these types of replies mentioned a few aspects of why they thought the posting was good would make it more useful! (P1, End-Of-Course Evaluation)
As these messages revealed, the participants cared about the content or the knowledge density of a discourse. They believed that a worthy discourse was filled with “valid and important information” rather than “gossiping” (P3, Interview). They also used “being usable in the real world” as a criterion to judge the value of a message and consequent quality of the discourse. Therefore, they felt disappointed with a simplistic exchange of “yes, I agree” or “good job” which supported only social fulfillment instead of “shared creation of deeper knowledge” (Salomon, 2002, p. 72).
Concern for fair investment in peer communication.
The participants assessed the payoff of a communication. They interpreted peer communication as a compensated action of “giving and taking” with a sense of fairness rather than a voluntary behavior. For instance, P1 complained about the frequency and quality of the feedback he got:
I think I’ve given more than I got in return. I mean they did not email or post messages to me often enough. Even when they did post or email me, they did not write enough. I feel a little frustrated, you know.
The participants were sensitive to peers’ different levels of participation and interaction. They read this difference as a sense of unfairness. P5 noted, “People participate at different levels, you know. I am in the middle, in terms of posting and giving feedbacks.” As a result of this sense of unfairness, most participants expressed “feeling disappointed” and found themselves “spending even less time on online activities now and focus[ing] on my offline reading and completing assignment.”
Therefore, the participants perceived the relationship between peers and themselves to be academic rather than social or personal. They questioned the necessity of personal interaction, and felt disappointed with messages that did not fulfill their academic needs. The participants’ attention to academic sharing in discourse has supported the propositions by Hopper (2003) and Kearsley (2002) that independent learners communicate in ways that support subject content rather than social chat. This is vitally important to an understanding of dynamics in online learning environments: some learners seek out social fulfillment, whereas others mainly take collaboration as an opportunity to advance their learning.
Perhaps most important in these findings is the sense that participants felt forced into interdependence in the collaborative learning environment. They did not enjoy feelings of safety or control when they had to rely on others’ schedules and efforts in completing a collaborative task. Finally, they perceived peer support as a give-and-take process in which a sense of fairness is essential. Being “frustrated” was their response to peers’ differing levels of participation and interaction. These findings are not well addressed in previous research on collaborative learning, such as Johnson and Johnson’s (1994) social interdependence theory, which claims that social interdependence usually facilitates students’ learning.
LIMITATION
This study represents an initial exploration of the experiences of solitary learners in online environments employing collaborative learning approaches. We believe that knowing more about the ways that other learners interacted in the setting might be a limitation on the current examination of solitary learners. It was beyond the focus and, therefore, limited scope, of the study to examine all participants’ reactions within the online class environment. However, knowing how typical or atypical these experi
ences were for solitary learners would offer more of a comparative opportunity that is not afforded by the focus on the lived experience of the solitary learner, and thus limits the study.
CONCLUSION
This qualitative inquiry, as an attempt to do a naturalistic description of online collaborative learning through the lens of solitary learners, is an important complement to the existing literature in collaborative learning and learning styles. Although there are present limitations, such as the examination of only a few learners within a single course context, the findings are compelling. Practically, the findings may inform other solitary learners taking online collaborative learning about experiences they may encounter. Learning more about one’s own learning through metacognitive understandings of the potential impacts of online learning environments and their tendency toward collaborative learning approaches could be important for any solitary learner about to embark on a new learning experience. Therefore, it may be possible for designers of programs and courses to communicate to all learners the level of collaborative experiences that are built into courses or degree programs in online environments. Because the online environment is different in terms of access to the instructor or designer of the course, there may be fewer opportunities to communicate problems with mismatched learning preferences for solitary learners. Therefore, some advanced understanding of what may be coming could be helpful for building solitary learners’ anticipation.
But perhaps the most important implication of this work is to inform online learning environment designers to be sensitive and cognizant of needs (not only expectations) of solitary learners as they create future distance education programs. As designers and educational scholars, we must also understand the conflict that is produced in a system that rewards individual effort when embedded within a collaborative learning context. Students are given individual grades, and many of them have learned, through their years in formal education, how best to navigate the system to their own best advantage for their learning and accomplishment. Collaborative learning, and constructivist collaborative learning environments in particular, tend to directly conflict with these coping strategies, and for solitary learners, this conflict can become debilitating. Their learning can be compromised by the needs of other learners, both social and logistical. These implications are fundamental to designers’ ability to navigate the needs of all learners to create online learning environments that encourage solitary learners to make the most of their educational experiences.
What does this mean for the practice of instructional designers who wish to take the findings from this study and apply them to the creation of online learning environments? The primary thing to take from this study is to recognize and deal with the conflict inherent in solitary learners, who find themselves embedded in a collaborative online learning environment. This sensitivity alone may go a long way toward helping to create more solitary learnerfriendly environments. We believe it is possible to create more flexible online learning environments that allow for learners to choose more solitary experiences, though we recognize that this innovation may be more timeintensive for instructors who count on collaborative learning for certain scalability in online environments. A possible outcome might be to consider differentiating spaces for various sorts of needs to help solitary learners in their quest to focus interactions on learning rather than support. So, creating more specific spaces where social interactions are encouraged may help. Allowing for options within assignments may be a first step in this direction. Ensuring fairness across learners regardless of style is another important way that instructors can ensure that solitary learners understand the value of collaboration while also feeling valued as learners. In addition, it is important to allow solitary learners an opportunity to see the ways in which their focus on academics and labor are rewarded. Specifically, there may be some concerns among solitary learners that their lack of social interaction may penalize them in participation grades, so valuing the quality of the discourse and the academic nature of the collaborative learning activities that are required may help solitary learners to feel more comfortable in the online space. Balancing the respect designers and instructors have for all learners must confront the basic belief structures that guide the continued development of collaborative online learning environments. Based on the findings of this study, it is important to allow for both a fundamental belief on the part of the instructor/ designer for the value of collaboration in the learning experience and also for the solitary learner’s experience without unfair penalty within that environment.
NOTE
This means that students who did NOT display clear solitary learning preferences were not included in this study. While it could be useful for more robust comparative statements, the inclusion of students who were not solitary learners was not deemed appropriate for this qualitative study. Therefore while other learners’ public participation is used to discuss the solitary learner, they were not included in human subjects approval, and therefore the comparative statements are tentative.
APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW PROTOCOL
Are you satisfied with your current learning experience in this course? Why?
What made a good and a bad online communication/interaction experience?
How did this experience affect you?
What feelings were generated by the experience? What instances made you feel that way?
What mentally changes or states were you aware of at that time?
How did you participate in online communication/interaction? Could you tell me what you did, what you didn’t do, and how you felt?
How often did you view the course messages? How often did you respond?
Can you talk specifically about when you communicate/interact, with whom you communicate/interact, and why?
What things encouraged you to communicate/interact?
What discouraged you from communication/interaction?
How did you develop an idea of what and how to write in the online communication message?
Are you satisfied with your teamwork experience in this course? Why?
If you were an instructor, how would you, based on your experience, redesign this online course?
APPENDIX B: OBSERVATION PROTOCOL
Online Real-Time Observation
What messages were posted most by participants?
What topics were referenced or responded most by participants?
How active did participants participate in posting or responding?
At what contexts will participants post or respond?
What is the content of the posting by participants?
Personal Observation
What is the learning environment like?
What is the learning time?
What did the subject do? For instance:
Log-in
Reading (Instructor messages, posts, emails, materials, others)
Writing (Posts, emails, notes, others)
Thinking/Reflecting
Other.
How did the subject look like when they conducted the above activities?
