Constant companions: Instant messaging conversations as sustainable supportive study structures amongst undergraduate peers

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.09.026Get rights and content

Abstract

Universities are facing severe cuts in funding and a transformation of both the economic model underpinning higher education and the relationship between students, tutors and universities and the traditional forms of support for students’ learning may be eroded. At the same time, mobile communications, instant messaging and social networking are now widespread amongst students and offer possible opportunities for developing new models of support. This paper reports on the use of instant messaging amongst peers, as part of a study of digitally-mediated communication and collaborative activities, crossing formal and informal boundaries, amongst campus-based undergraduate students, at a large university in the UK. It is argued that instant messaging conversations offers a means of sustainable peer support for students by demonstrating how they emerge from everyday practices, drawing on existing relationships and shared histories and redrawing the boundaries between formal and informal settings and practices. The importance of time is highlighted, showing how longitudinal, dialogic conversations were important for both practical and empathetic support. The potential of the instant messaging conversations in supporting the co-creation of artefacts, meaning making, motivation and affective support are also demonstrated, drawing on detailed examples of authentic conversations. However, such peer support practices remain largely invisible and therefore need acknowledging, fostering and encouraging, working alongside students to understand and develop these ideas so that peer support in universities can build on the existing practices of students themselves.

Highlights

► Instant messaging regularly took place, sometimes lasting several hours, or throughout the night. ► These instant messaging conversations provided both emotional and practical support for peers. ► Shared culture and histories helped create shared understanding. ► Students mutually ‘marked’ their progress whilst working on their assignments for the modules. ► Motivation increased, through offering and receiving empathy and reassurance.

Introduction

This paper has been written at a time of unprecedented changes and threats to higher education in the United Kingdom and many other countries. Teaching and learning in universities are facing severe cuts in funding. Reduced funding is likely to threaten formal support mechanisms and result in increased class sizes, loss of personal tutors, student-staff ratios and the provision of tutorial support and formative feedback. Against such a backdrop, part of the role of universities will be to empower students to become more self sustaining both in their studying practices and in ‘being a student’.

The paper argues that the ways in which students themselves use and adapt to technological tools will be an important aspect of developing sustainable studying and support structures for students. Such structures should enable them to flourish and develop as scholars despite the constraints on support from academic tutors and institutions that will follow the reduction in funding and new economic models. It also argues that this approach offers a hopeful prospect for the future where students and academic staff are repositioned in a ‘community of inquiry’ model of higher education, as Brew, 2007, Streeting and Wise, 2009 have been calling for.

A case study of third year undergraduates studying at a UK university will present evidence of existing practices amongst students using instant messaging for peer support. This draws on cultural–historical activity theory (CHAT) (Engeström, 1987, Engeström, 1999, Engeström, 2001) in combination with concepts drawn from computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL). An analysis of examples from these practices will illustrate how students use digital communication tools to offer help, assistance and affective support to each other and to work together on the co-creation of knowledge. It will also show how affordances of instant messaging tools supported the students in sustaining their conversations and how such support can be argued to augment other forms of support available. The paper will also consider the implications of these findings for all those engaged in university learning and teaching.

Section snippets

Peer support for learning

Learner support was traditionally regarded as additional or complementary to formal teaching and learning offerings (Tait, 2000). Thorpe (2002) argues that when students are working online and expected to collaborate, the boundaries between support, course design and collaboration become blurred. Thorpe comments that learner support is not a term that is used very much within campus-based higher education, where it tends to refer only to handling exceptional needs for a minority of students.

Digital habitats

Mobile communications, instant messaging and social networking are now widespread amongst undergraduate students (Conole et al., 2008, Jones et al., 2010, Judd and Kennedy, 2010, Smith et al., 2009). Many of these different communications tools have been merged or integrated into hybrid environments. Instant messaging for example, can be accessed using a mobile phone or through a social networking site such as Facebook. It can be argued that we inhabit ‘digital habitats’; landscapes of

Cultural–historical approaches to student engagement in learning

In this section Cultural Historical Activity Theory or CHAT will be introduced and applied to the study reported here through examples. CHAT has developed from Vygotskian perspectives (Engeström, 1987) where cognition is socially, historically and culturally situated, mediated by tools, signs and interaction with others (Vygotsky, 1978, Wertsch, 1991). This is critical for understanding student engagement in communication and collaborative work where language, social interaction and context are

Methodology

Some research methods used in ICT-based research into the learner experience concentrate on preferences and generalisations rather than looking in detail at what people do, leading to a superficial level of analysis (Shih, Feng, & Tsai, 2008). More research that explores the lived experience of students in higher education is needed (Ellis and Goodyear, 2010, Selwyn, 2007) in their various ‘learnplaces’ (Goodyear, 2008) and ‘in the wild’ (Hutchins, 1995). In higher education, students

The network of activity systems

In order to provide an overview of the CHAT meta analysis, this section presents the network of activity systems relevant to this context. For each of the two modules in the study, a series of goal-oriented actions and projects were undertaken by students as part of the planned activities for that module. This can be understood as the module work system. However, activity systems operate within networks of interacting activity systems which produce multiple perspectives and dialogues (Daniels,

Everyday practices of students

As part of the historical and contextual analysis within the CHAT framework shown in Section 5.3, interview and questionnaire data were thematically analysed to identify personal backgrounds, relationships to community, the rules and practices of using digital communications tools over time.

Instant messaging conversations

In this section, key findings relating to the emergence of peer support through the instant messaging conversations are presented. Data were analysed using the analytical framework discussed in Section 5.3. In particular, it presents key findings from the discourse analysis undertaken but also draws on thematic and dialectical analysis. In each section from 8.1 onwards, findings are firstly presented as discourse analysis from a CSCL perspective, followed by a CHAT interpretation of the

Discussion

From the joint perspectives of CSCL and CHAT, the findings have shown that instant messaging conversations were the most frequent and constant form of communication during the two modules in this study. They were characterised by their length and continuity of conversations over long periods of time where participants can drop in and out as they need. The importance of this temporal mediation in supporting and sustaining personal relationships, trust and intimacy amongst participants has been

Conclusions

The paper has shown how students have used and adapted instant messaging to support both social and study-related conversations as a hybrid activity crossing boundaries between social and formal work related activity systems. It has shown how the affordances of instant messaging and the cultural practices of the students influenced the way in which these conversations were conducted. However, perhaps the constancy of the conversations over time and the shared history and social relations

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the students and staff who took part in the study reported here and especially to the members of the two study groups whose commitment and hard work are much appreciated.

I would also like to thank those attendees at the CAL 2011 conference in Manchester, UK in April 2011 who attended my presentation, Dr Marie Joubert, the Editors and anonymous reviewers of this article for helpful comments and suggestions.

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