Emergent Leadership In Online Communities Of Inquiry

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Emergent Leadership In Online Communities Of
Inquiry

• Making Leadership
• Lessons Explicit
• Michael DEredita
• Robert Heckman
• Chingning Wang
• Syracuse University
• School of Information Studies

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Agenda

• Introduction
• Background
• Research Questions
• Method
• Results
• Implications

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Introduction

• When working online, students engage in many
  collaborative activities
• Many of these activities are relatively
  unstructured
• Leadership is often not assigned or related to
  status
• In these cases leadership emerges
• Can we leverage emergent behaviors for a greater
  learning effect?

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Background Relevant literature

• Communities of inquiry
• Communities of practice
• Emergent leadership
• Constructivist perspectives on education

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Background Online communities of inquiry

• The community of inquiry model has gained
  attention in asynchronous learning network
  research
• Content analytic approaches have been developed
• Communities of inquiry have much in common with
  communities of practice
• Structure and leadership in communities of
  practice has been studied

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Background Communities of Practice (CoPs)

• Structures are emergent
• Structures are potentially predictable
• The crux of CoP practice and identity (Wenger,
  1998)
• Practice is both fluid and emergent
• Identity is constructed

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Background Emergent Leadership

• A functional approach to leadership
• Theory identifies leadership behaviors on two
  dimensions
• Social/group maintenance
• Task
• In FTF groups
• Leaders are those who communicate most
• Social and task leaders are rarely the same person

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Background Constructivist Education

• The Nature of Knowledge (Foote et al., 2001)
• Consists of episodic constructions (DEredita
  Baretto, 2003)
• The Role of the Teacher (Foote et al., 2001)
• Facilitator
• A Context for Learning (Foote et al., 2001)
• Environments that allow for autonomous, creative,
  empowered learning

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Research questions

• Are community of inquiry leadership patterns
  similar to community of practice patterns?
• Can emergent leadership behaviors be distributed
  in a community of inquiry?
• Do distributed/multiple leaders assume the
  specific roles of social and task leader?

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Method

• Four undergraduate residential classes
• Unstructured online assignment
• Descriptive statistics to identify leaders and
  structure
• Content analysis of asynchronous discourse

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Method Class setting

• IST 355 Concepts and Issues in Information
  Management and Technology
• IST 466 Senior capstone course
• Undergraduates Juniors and Seniors
• Average class size 35
• Residential class supported by WebCT
• Discussion-based classroom setting

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Method Assignment

• Democratic class management
• Plan the agenda for a three-week portion of the
  course
• Identify topics of greatest interest to class
  (4th wk)
• Assign students to groups to research topics (5th
  wk)
• Schedule research presentations (6th wk)
• Each component had a deadline
• Task to be completed within WebCT bulletin board
  environment -- no in-class time

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Method Content Analysis

• Content analytic scheme builds on
• Community of inquiry model (Rourke et al
  Garrison et al Heckman and Annabi)
• Emergent leadership theory
• Coding scheme identified 3 categories of
  leadership behaviors
• Task-Process
• Task-Product
• Social/Group-building

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Method Descriptive Statistics

• Number of utterances as dependent variable
• No normal distribution of data
• Box-and-whisker plots
• Outlier 1.5 (IQR) 3rd Quartile
• Assume leaders to be outliers (i.e. those who
  communicate most)

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Results Assignment

• All 4 classes met the deadlines
• All 4 classes presented results as requested
• Some refinement of topics were made throughout
  the entire semester
• Observed some movement between bulletin board,
  chat rooms, and small group discussion in class
• Observed general discomfort with lack of
  structure

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Results Descriptive Statistics
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Results Content Analysis

• Emergent leadership patterns were consistent
• Leadership was shared All groups had 2 or 3
  leaders
• Leaders performed both task and social leadership
  behaviors (contrary to emergent leadership in FTF
  groups)

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Results Group 1 Utterances
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Results Group 2 Utterances
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Results Group 3 Utterances
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Results Group 4 Utterances
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Conclusions

• Community of inquiry leadership patterns are
  similar to community of practice patterns.
• Leadership behaviors can be distributed in a
  community of inquiry.
• Distributed/multiple leaders do not necessarily
  assume the specific roles of social or task
  leader.

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Implications Future Research

• Less formal, more emergent even in an on-line
  environment
• Application of Weick (1995) Sensemaking
• Provide context, or problem, around which to
  organize Ongoing (Direction)
• Learning BOTH how to solve problem and how to
  organize Identity (Reference)
• Reduce the range of choice to make outcomes more
  predictable Plausibility (Choice)
• Allow for an opportunity to reflect and learn
  from actions Retrospective (Construction of
  Knowledge)

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References

• DEredita, M., Barreto, C. (2003).
  De-mystifying tacit knowledge for practical
  application in the workplace. Proceedings of the
  4th European Conference of Knowledge Management.
  
• Foote, C.J., Vermette, P.J., Battaglia, C.F.
  (2001). Constructivist Strategies Meeting
  Standards and Engaging Adolescent Minds.
  Larchmont, NY Eye on Education.
• Weick, K. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations.
  Thousand Oaks, CA Sage Publications, Inc.
• Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice.
  Learning, Meaning and Identity Cambridge
  University Press.