NALL Working Paper #46-2001
Online Learning for Labour Movement Activists
Peter H. Sawchuk
Faculty of Continuing Education
University of Calgary
Online Learning for Labour Movement Activists
(1)
Abstract: The paper reports on the findings of research seeking to
understand the informal dimensions of online learning in the labour movement. It
draws on analysis of online learning workshop participation in specially
initiated sessions amongst labour activist/educators from across Canada.
Findings are based on the analysis of original interview data and survey data as
well as content and interaction analysis of online postings. Various barriers to
effective participation are discussed as are possible functions of online
learning/communication in the labour movement. It argues that there is strong
evidence to suggest that online learning can be a valuable addition to the
education capacity of the labour movement, and that an important part of this
contribution revolves around a recognition of informal learning, the linkages
between the online and the offline world, and the unique goals of the labour
movement. Focusing on the different informal dimensions of the learning process
helps us understand that online learning perhaps offered the 'best of both
worlds' in terms of written and oral learning cultures within the labour
movement.
Introduction
It's the old think globally act locally. You're working collaboratively in
your community with people on issues… [With online learning] you can link
with other people who are doing work, look at their strategy see if there's
something you can learn, access information. You know, when you're trying to
research a campaign, if you can make a link with someone else who's been
working on privatization in Australia or the UK for example, it's enormously
useful and powerful… (Activist - Edmonton, Alberta)
The lessons of collective action by workers have traditionally been learned
on the job and in the streets…. Any non-formal, structured education
programs remain, even today, secondary to the learning that members gain
through voluntary engagement in action. (Martin, 1998:72)
These two quotations, each from Canadian labour movement activists, help
introduce and ground several of the central themes of this paper.
That is, they introduce the potential of computer technologies to aid in the
activity and development of the labour movement, and they remind us that the
heart of labour movement learning has always been rooted in the 'informal' and
the everyday forms of collective action and participation. Online learning is
conceptualized as having many variant dimensions: including formal and informal
structure; individual and collective planning; cognitive as well as social
elements. In this project I asked, how did activist's broader life and labour
movement activity affect their participation and informal learning? Are there
less formalized goals that were or could be achieved in online learning
environments? Can online learning be used to facilitate the goals of the labour
movement generally in the context of informal online and offline learning?
Before moving on to a discussion of the data, however, it is important that the
project be situated broadly in terms of type of 'social learning' analysis it
takes up as well as a more fundamental question: how are the labour movement's
interests in online learning unique? Answering these questions helps to situate
this study in a rapidly expanding body of literature in the area of online
learning and distance education.
While its roots are arguably over a quarter of a century
deep, it is over the last decade, with the development and flourishing of the
World Wide Web, that serious discussions of online learning amongst educators
has exploded. Recently, reports from Europe, the UK, Australia and South African
trade union educators (see Sawchuk and contributors, 2001) suggest the ongoing
relevance of more deeply understanding the relationship between labour
education, online learning and informal networks of activity. In Canada,
rank-and-file workers and unionized workers in particular have shown significant
interest in as well as an often under-estimated capacity to make use of computer
technologies with a variety of communication and educational purposes in mind
(Sawchuk, forthcoming a). And, rooted in their own perspectives and goals,
discussions of online learning has spread to Canadian labour educators.
As Taylor (2000; forthcoming) tells us, labour educators in
Canada have had a long and intense interest in the use of educational technology
that can be traced back to the 1930's with the use of radio and film strip. By
the 1970's the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) had developed a substantial
audio-visual department within its Labour Education and Studies Centre.
According to Taylor, perhaps the most successful use of educational technology
prior to the computer-age was to be found in the labour-based radio programming
and Trade Union Film circuit produced by the Workers' Educational Association (WEA)
in the 1940's. By the 1980's and 90's Canadian labour's experience in drawing on
educational technology resulted in a Canadian union, the Canadian Union of
Public Employees (CUPE), being the first in the world to develop a union-based
computer-based communication and later online learning system called 'Solinet'.
Characteristically, with the explosion of the World Wide Web , CUPE again led
the way for unions in Canada with the linkage of its Solinet network to the
Virtual-U conferencing system. It was in fact the Virtual-U system that was
utilized to examine the linkages between online learning, activists' informal
learning and the Canadian labour movement in this research.
The purpose of the
Informal Learning Practices within
Union-Based Telelearning project was to investigate the informal learning
practices amongst Canadian trade union activists surrounding the trial use of
new online learning technologies as part of the CLC's labour education and
training activities. Trial workshops for labour activists were used to generate
the project's data. The data included transcripts of these online learning
workshops, online surveys of participants on their activities and experiences
within the workshop, interaction analysis of online behavior as well as
telephone interviews with participants. The survey and the interview samples
largely involved different sets of participants while the interaction and
thematic analysis of the entire workshop transcript involved the all
participants. This workshop involved 49 labour activist/educator participants as
well as two facilitators. The response rate for the survey was over 30% (n=17)
and interviews were conducted with 12 participants. The telephone interviews
specifically involved a stratified sample of participants based on key variables
amongst participants in the workshop: participation level during workshop;
gender; region of Canada; and large city versus small urban or rural settings.
Taken as a whole the data allowed a sound mix of depth and breadth of analysis
as well as a form of triangulation that allowed opportunity to verify
conclusions. All data was drawn from one particular workshop entitled
'Organizing for May Day Celebrations' selected from a series of online workshops
for labour educator/activists developed within a larger, related research
initiative entitled "Union-Based Telelearning project"
(2)
Together these data allowed detailed understanding of the
range of informal practices that accompany the more formalized online course
delivery that are most useful for trade unionists. Core research questions
revolved around the following:
- the nature of informal/formal learning linkage in online learning
environments;
- whether online educational technologies could be useful for the labour
movement;
- the nature of the intersection of "off-line" with
"on-line" communities of practice within the labour movement;
- the use of a combinations of educational resources to facilitate
trade-union learning;
- the forms of software architecture used to facilitate the delivery of
labour education for adult, trade-union learners;
- the level of match between online learning outcomes and the educational
principles and cultural values espoused by trade unions.
I focused on the relationship these learning practices in general, and online
learning specifically, and related these to the educational principles and
cultural values espoused by trade unions such as mutuality, collective action
and solidarity. The analysis of the data drew on critical reflection on a
variety of bodies of literature including computer-mediated learning (e.g. Nardi,
1996), online facilitation (e.g. Feenberg, 1989; James and Rykert, 1997; Palloff
and Pratt, 1999), theories of Human-Computer Interface (e.g. Bodker, 1991), and
the "Collective Resource Approach" (CRA)
(3)
(e.g. Ehn & Kyng 1987; Ehn, 1988; Bansler, 1989; Kraft, 1992) and
"Democratic Rationalism" (Feenberg, 1999) approaches to technological
development as well as labour and adult education research. The project
specifically built on previous online, labour education research by Taylor (e.g.
1996a; 1996b; 2000), Briton and Taylor (e.g. 2000), as well as Sawchuk (2000;
2001; forthcoming a; forthcoming b). In general, the project provided important
information to labour educators but also contributed to more general adult
education and online learning literatures. As I'll outline below in the summary
of findings, the project provided important new information on informal
computer-mediated learning within the context of trade union education.
One of the basic arguments underlying this research is that
the labour movement has a unique interest in online learning, how it functions,
its outcomes and its future development. As Briton and Taylor put it,
From the outset, the communication and education-telelearning tools we were
interested in developing were those that not only enhanced individual learning
opportunities but also fostered collaboration, cooperation and contributed to
community - in particular, the learning opportunities of workers' and the
global community of organized labour. (2000:3-4)
Some of the dimensions of this unique interest include the fact that, for the
labour movement, explorations of online learning requires a firm grasp of its
own roots and traditions in the area of education, learning and social action.
In addition, unlike the schooling system, the labour movement's interest in
online learning is not governed by a concern for credentialization. Rather the
labour movement looks at online learning in a way similar to that expressed by
distant education writers Henri and Kaye, as "the development of 'knowing
how to do' and 'knowing how to share' [that] is not restricted to the simply
transmission of knowledge" (1993:29). As other online learning scholarship
has noted, learning in this context cannot be understood as knowledge transfer
but as 'engagement in practice, in which people deal with dilemmas and problems,
make use of tools, share ways of doing things, and utilize previous
knowledge…" (Calvani, Sorizio and Varisco, 1997:272). Again, for the
labour movement, this type of learning includes a process in which workers make
meaning of their lives 'as workers' and thus the labour movement is interested
in ways online learning can contribute to an expansive proletarian narrative in
the context of local, regional, national and now globalized capitalism. Online
learning can form a part of the labour movement's capacity to meet the challenge
of 'distance' which is necessary for effective responses to national as well as
international issues. This motive for overcoming the challenge of distance is
different from the purposes of expanded commodity sales or heightened control
over others. It is a concern to overcome the challenges of distance for the
purposes of democratizing communication and ultimately collective, democratic
action. Online learning in the labour movement heightens the need but also
provides opportunity for working-class people to collectively meet the challenge
of computer access/use in all its forms (cultural as well as material). In this
way, no analysis of online learning amongst subordinate groups cannot begin
without a firm understanding of the barriers and possibilities of technology and
learning amongst subordinate groups.
Following up on the final point above, according to
Statistics Canada's General Social Survey dealing with internet use (Statistics
Canada, 2000), with an estimated 13 million people (53% of those aged 15 and
over) using the internet in 2000 (over three times the 1994 rate), and a further
27% of non-users expressing an interest in becoming users, the interest in
electronic communication and online learning in Canada is remarkably high.
However, the labour movement is extremely diverse, and key constituencies
important for the labour movement to flourish including those with lower income,
those with lower formal education, and women, experience consistently lower
levels of computer access and use. Among individuals 20 or older, 13% of those
with less than a high school diploma used the Internet, compared with 79% with
university education (Statistics Canada, 2000).
In this study computer access and use was not limited
to simply home computer ownership. As we'll learn more about below, computer use
occurred across work, union hall, district labour council as well as in the
home. In terms of computer access and use in the workplace in Canada generally,
Statistics Canada (11-001E, 2001) reports that one-quarter of all workplaces
made major investments in new computer technology (>$2,500/worker) affecting
more than one-third of all workers in Canada in 1999, though "formal
training comprised only a small part of the overall computer learning
activities" (p.6). Workers are increasingly encountering computer
technology in the workplace though it is unclear how exactly this affects
discretionary access and use. At same time, at home, as reported in
American
Demographics (AD), not only does web-based computer-activity continue to
soar generally, but the class-based demographics are undergoing a significant
shift as well. The average socio-economic status, educational attainment of
users is falling, and blue-collar use is accelerating.
True, the clusters with the greatest access to the Internet are still home to
early-adopting, upscale Americans. But the cluster whose surfers spend the
most time online at home left some analysts agog: Mid-City Mix, a
working-class, African American lifestyle whose residents like to chat,
exchange e-mail, and hang out at entertainment and sweepstakes sites. The
other top clusters for online longevity include Norma Rae-ville and Back
Country Folks, characterized by people with lower incomes, modest educations,
and blue-collar jobs. Norma Rae-ville residents, who are predominantly black,
single, and concentrated in the South, spend 12.6 hours online each month, 26
percent more than average Americans. As a simple rule of thumb: The lower the
user's income, the longer he or she is likely to spend online.
http://www.demographics.com/publications/ad/01_ad/0103_ad/ad010301.htm).
A survey for America Online and American Demographics indicates that social
relationships are actually strengthened by online use (see Forecast, December
2000). Harris Interactive has found that 48 percent of people say they
communicate with their friends and family more often because of the Internet,
compared with only 3 percent who said that their contact decreased.
http://www.demographics.com/publications/ad/01_ad/0103_ad/ad010301.htm).
At the same time, echoing other Statistics Canada reports, there remains a
'digital divide' with recognizable class dimensions. Reddick et al. (2000)
report:
From 1997 through 1999, higher income households were three times more likely
than lower-income households to have home access…. [B]arriers and obstacles
to access are aggravated for those in the lower social classes who have less
resources or skills available to overcome them. (Reddick et al. 2000:1-2)
Reddick et al. (2000), in fact, predicted a 'plateau' effect would occur at the
turn of the century resulting in the types of relative growths figured in the
Weis report (2001). However, both of the surveys provide a description rather
than a explanation of the role of computers and computer-based learning amongst
working-class groups, and both largely pre-figure the uses that this online
learning can be oriented towards.
Turning to discussion of online learning specifically, in
their review of online learning research Briton and Taylor (2000) indicate the
need to move beyond mere frequency and extent of use statistics of participation
can tell, "what we needed was not more data, but an analytical model that
would help us understand the relationship between context and [online
learning]…" (p.20). Moving towards a useful analytical model in these
terms requires an explicitly social analysis. The communities that make up the
labour movement as well as individual workplace communities, both virtually
invisible in the context of mainstream computer access and use literature, are
central to developing a clear understanding of online learning amongst workers.
Recent findings reported in Canada (Sawchuk, forthcoming a), the UK (Hakken,
1993) and the U.S. (Schön, Sanyal and Mitchell, 1999) indicate that the
effective use of computer technology by working-class groups is intimately
related to the relationship this use has with community life
(4). Indeed, understanding the partially divergent findings above and
recognizing the range of unique interests that the labour movement has in online
learning is in many ways the foundation of this research project. It explores
informal learning in relation to the online communications and it requires a
close look at how computers are actually used by working-class people as a
socially situated practice, one rooted in forms of collective, communal
relationships.
Highlights from the Survey of Workshop Participants
The key themes that emerged from the survey data
provide important lessons for the future development of online learning in the
Canadian labour movement, and helped to orient the telephone interview schedule.
First, although a self-selection bias cannot be discounted
(5), the activist/educator involved in the workshop had a computer
literacy levels (understood as previous experience using computer-based
communications) exceeded the general population in Canada. Prior to the online
workshop, computer communications was not new to any respondents and the vast
majority had well over two years experience. There was no gender differences in
this regard, nor were there differences related to participants living in rural
and small city centres vs. large city centres.
In terms of the technical features of the hard- and soft-ware,though all
participants found video and soundthough all participants found video and sound
feature of the online learning experience interesting, the majority felt these
features were not necessary
for the educational experience.
Figure 1: Labour Activist Access to Computer Communications
Graphics (i.e. still pictures) however were
thought to add to the online communication and were consistently rated as an
important element of the process that should be expanded. Here people felt
pictures of one another, still pictures of events discussed, and so on helped
the communication process (see interaction analysis below). Likewise the
inclusion of additional web-links was very important as well.
Figure 2: How important for your
learning were the online responses by other participants?
One
of the most important themes to emerge from the survey data related to issues of
access and use. Amongst respondents both home and workplace computers were used
to participate (see figure 1). The majority had access to home or home as well
as workplace computers for the purposes of workshop participation while just
under a fifth (17%) had access to work computer only. In addition, factors that
significantly affected respondent's ability to participate in workshop included
family life, work, activism. Work and activism were thought of as the most
significant barriers. Taken together these material factors affect practice both
in terms of space and resources and in terms of time to meaningfully engage in
the online learning experience are issues that must be seen as relevant to
understanding how online takes place amongst unionists. Activist/educators had
to actively strategize around the when and the where of online learning, and
these factors were in fact anticipated to be even more important were the
workshop to be of longer duration and/or were they to want to engage in
workshops on an ongoing basis. In other words, these material factors would
become increasingly important if online learning was to be used as an ongoing
educational activity.
The other major theme to emerge from the survey data dealt with the forms of
participation and communication that occurred in the workshops. Participants
indicated that communication with other participants as well as non-participants
beyond the formal structure of the workshop was crucial. The workshop provided
about half the participants with an introduction to people they didn't know but
communication amongst these 'new comrades' moved beyond the workshop. Though
they cannot be isolated from the more formal aspects of the workshop set by the
facilitators, it was the informal dimensions of learning that were the primary
focus of this research. This produces something of a fine, possible artificial
line, particularly in the context of this workshop since its overall method was
based in emergent discussion rather than a planned curriculum such as one might
see in a typical online educational course. In any case, as figure 2 shows it
was this emergent discussion that was most valued by participants. Respondents
to the survey also indicated that informal learning on their own was important
in order to keep up (figure 3). Overall ranked the most important factors in
their learning as follows:
1) responses of other participants,
2) responses of facilitators,
3) trial and error (technical matters),
4) offline communication with someone not in workshop,
5) online information not from workshop,
6) unplanned communication with someone not online and not in workshop,
7) online communication with someone not in workshop,
Figure 3: How important to your learning was
informal, trial and error practice on your own?
According to the survey data, with one exception,all respondents indicated the
experience as valuable both in terms of itsknowledge development interms of May
Day activities around the country, and for its ability to add to an
understanding of the potential of online learning for the Canadian labour
ovement. Indeed, with one exception all respondents indicated an interest in
learning about facilitating online learning as well.Further analysis of the
survey material is available in Sawchuk (forthcoming b), however a final key
area of discussion which I'll explore further in the discussion of interview
data below involved survey respondent's concern about how learning in the
virtual world could be translated into useful action offline, in the real world.
Highlights from Interviews with Workshop Participants
Of course understanding the potential and pitfalls of online learning for the
labour movement requires a firm grasp of its roots and traditions. In listening
to interviewees, it became apparent that the most productive way to proceed is
to seek to enhance the face-to-face labour movement culture with selective use
of technology. The heart of labour education today, let alone labour education
historically, is rooted in viva voce, literally by the living voice of
participants. This, at once, suggests potential problems related to the largely
textual character of current online learning technologies which may not
necessarily find resolution within emerging broad-band capacities. As outlined
more extensively in Sawchuk (2001; forthcoming a; forthcoming b; forthcoming c)
the semi-structured telephone interviews with labour activist/educators
participating in the workshop allowed several important theme areas initiated in
the survey analysis to be clarified and probed. It also allowed several new
themes to emerge. Below I illustrate key findings in these data that focus on:
the role of informal learning; barriers within online learning amongst
activist/educators; understanding the interaction dimensions of online learning
for the labour movement; the functions of online learning in the labour
movement; and, linking online learning with offline action.
The role of informal learning. Informal learning has always been
a necessary mainstay of educational practice for subordinate groups such as the
working-class. While organized forms of educational activity are available
within the labour movement, it remains an understood truism that the heart of
labour and working-class learning is in the union meetings, union events,
struggles on the street, picket-line, in the community and workplace (e.g.
Spencer, 1994; Heron, 1996; Taylor, 2000; Sawchuk, forthcoming a). The shifting
composition of the labour movement including rising levels of formal education
comparable to those in Canadian population generally have hardly changed this
fact.
In research interviews, activist/educators involved in the online workshop
highlighted the importance of informal learning in the labour movement and
suggested a potential misconnect between the learning culture of unions and the
virtual, communication space provided by online learning.
It will not serve a useful purpose if people are just sitting there staring at
screens and they don't know who they're talking to… The traditional way of
doing things, getting together, getting in the room, feeling the tension,
feeling everything, what people, you know you've been to conventions yourself,
you can see the emotion and everything, you don't see that on-line. You don't
see people's faces, and I know that's important to me, you know? Computers are
a tool, they have a place, just like the tools that came before, [but] they're
not to be substituted for what we really need. (Activist - Peterborough,
Ontario)
Being in a group to learn, for me that's better… because even if you go
for coffee with three or four people participating, you talk about 'Oh I did
this' or 'I did that' or 'I found this screen.' You know that kind of thing is
where you get a chance to say 'Jeez I really had trouble this way' and
somebody else says, 'Well why don't you do this.' That's what I found lacking
in this workshop. It was not so much the national nature of it, but the
disconnection from the people. (Activist - Winnipeg, Manitoba)
Activists consistently felt that online learning could be a useful tool if it
was explicitly designed and used to compliment rather than replaced existing
traditions in the labour movement. Comments from activist also suggested that
traditions of learning in the labour movement will not transfer to online
learning environments without the careful attention of both workshop designers
and participants themselves. The critique of labour movement online learning
experience in comments such as the ones above highlights the need for a better
understanding of the dynamics of informal learning in virtual space as well as
the relationship between thislearning and practical activity offline.
Critiques aside, while the workshops were intentionally designed with adult
education principles in mind - such as beginning from participant's own
experience and the development of emergent learning themes - collective,
participatory forms of informal learning and knowledge construction were said to
have occurred through online participation, e.g.
[This] guy from BC was thirsty for information and people started providing it
to him, and that gave us all the resources. To me, that's an example of where
these on-line workshops really do work. Someone has an interest or concern and
they're learning about something and other people contribute to it, and then
the rest of us participate in that process by seeing how those answers work.
(Activist - Edmonton, Alberta)
Examples such as these were more or less typical. They describe how patterns of
information sharing that emerged in unplanned ways in the online learning
environment resulted in some of the most useful learning experiences for
activist/educators.
An extension of this concern about the character, dynamics and purposes of
the informal dimensions of online learning was discussed in research interviews
in the context of distinctions between computer-mediated communication (CMC)
generally and online learning as a specific form of communication. Labour
movement activists were largely uncomfortable with an artificial barriers
between these communicative processes. Stimulated by the knowledge and
experience of online learning there was an interest in seeing these two areas
more tightly interwoven in order to link everyday and informal learning with the
stream of information available in the online workshop as well as other labour
education initiatives.
Key barriers within online learning amongst activist/educators. Participants
also helped identify the kinds of barriers that shape the online learning
process amongst labour activist/educators. Combining the interview findings with
the survey data we see an even clearer picture of the effects of scarce
resources of time, space and human energy amongst labour activist/educators.
I just think it's a big, endemic problem with the labor movement, people are
already overworked and over-stressed, and I don't think there's any
technological things for that, you know, you'd end up just spending more time
over the keyboard, and, I mean already doing stuff by email certainly
facilitates all that work already, but you know, all of us come in the
morning, to minimally a dozen messages, if not twenty or thirty of them, so by
the nature of your day if you say maximum I could do an hour of emailing a
day, loads of things drop of the bottom of it, and I don't see anyway anybody
else can help fix that problem. (Activist - Edmonton, Alberta)
As I discuss below, online learning can be streamlined with explicit training in
effective means of participation, but more importantly here we should note that
some of the most valuable learning occurred amongst activists who faced the
greatest barriers of time and distance. These were participants in more isolated
locations such as Northern Ontario, rural Saskatchewan, the more isolated areas
of British Columbia and so on. These were activist/educators who operated away
from the major urban centres, however they were also women activists,
particularly those with children in the home who also were juggling prime
responsibility for work in the home.
I think for the smaller cities it's an issue because of the fact that those
who want to participate are not able to as the courses aren't available in
their towns. If enough people aren't taking them then the course doesn't go
on… I didn't find [the workshop] isolated you at all, if anything it made
you feel less alone… Well the best possible scenario would be to in a
classroom setting, but because of the fact that all of these commitments are
there and you've got your kids going to school and stuff for me it's better to
do it on-line like the way that we did it. (Activist - Eliot Lake, Ontario)
In addition to these substantial barriers to participation in labour education,
it should be recognized that activists in general remain, as they have been
historically, over-burdened and over-extended with responsibilities. As one
person put it, "there are not 76 hours in a day. Haven't figured out the
solution yet" (Activist - Toronto, Ontario). In this way, the broader
structure of people's everyday lives as a whole deeply affected how well
educational and communication tools will work for them. Nevertheless it was
clear that as a substitute for traditional labour movement learning, online
learning is a poor one. However, where the traditions of face-to-face
educational activity and direct action are more difficult to organize due to the
lack of time, space and other resources, the addition of online learning was
felt to have the potential to make a particularly important contribution to the
work of activist/educators.
Recognizing the current online learning technology for what it is, i.e.
asynchronous textual communication, raised a number of basic but important
questions amongst activists in our research. In a variety of direct and indirect
ways, echoing basic literature in the field of online learning, activist
indicated that reading, writing, typing and functional levels of computer
literacy were essential to the success of the medium. The absence of any of
these produced significant barriers to effective participation, though at the
same time participation could also be seen as a productive way to developing
these skills. To this core list of barriers we can add the effects of people
having access to widely varied types and levels of soft- and hard-ware.
Paralleling the survey findings that advanced video or sound capabilities
weren't essential to the educational value of online learning, most interviewees
recommended the use of 'lowest common denominator' technologies. Organizations
such as the International Labor Organization in Europe have been quick to seek a
remedy to this latter barrier with development initiatives such as their recent
'Course Reader' software (Belanger, 2001). However in general it can be said
that any progressive programme of online learning. Interviewees felt that this
issue needed to be addressed head-on in order to avoid simply reproducing
(indeed accelerating) patterns of exclusion which run in opposition to the
purposes of the labour movement and affect the most vulnerable most deeply.
Beyond technological and computer literacy capacities amongst participants,
the extensive reading and writing requirements of this form of online learning
also was discussed as something of a barrier. Most interviewees talked about
being 'blown away' by the density and mass of the discussion, and having to
develop "survival skills" to deal with the amount of material to read
and respond to.
Oh yeah, they would, very, some people would suggest, some people had
expensive equipment, you know, obviously, at their disposal, yeah some of them
had pictures, we could download wonderful pictures that they would either scan
or located, I don't know I'm not a computer technician, but they would tell
you and then I would always go to that site, and you'd learn quite a lot, they
had the Winnipeg General Strike pictures, and it was really quite nice.
(Activist - Peterborough, Ontario)
Although there's some people now that are super technologists, they send
you an email with a page clipped out, and I admire them for their ability to
do that, but not everybody can do that kind of thing…. Well, you can sort of
make a comparison here between a live conference and a virtual conference,
where in a live conference they would hand out material, they would give you
lots of resource material to read on your own, and some stuff they want to
draw your attention to that would be part of their package, and some stuff
was, you know here's an article or a series of articles that you may want to
check out. That's very difficult to do by computer… there was an awful lot
of reading that didn't make a lot of sense, but there was an awful lot of
reading to be done. So people take the time to write in their opinions, and
some of them were short and to the point… [but] some people just got
keyboard diarrhea. (Activist - Winnipeg, Manitoba)
In this context, skilled forms of participation and explicit guidelines for
communication could be seen as important means of getting through online
material. These could include better indexing or 'threading' systems and
training in their use so participants can get to the material they want and not
have to 'wade through' the materials they don't. This also suggests the need for
attention to how the design of online communication requires a deep respect for
the complexity of the communication process we take for granted in face-to-face
talk.
Interaction analysis of participation.
A less obvious barrier to participation concerned the notion of
"communication literacy". As authors like Winecki (2000), Feenberg
(1989), Bakardjieva and Feenberg (2000) and others have noted, participants in
online learning interaction are quick to feel discomfort and confusion in these
environments because of the relative dearth of communicative information that we
take for granted in face-to-face talk. Issues such as topic continuity and the
development of shared understanding of the situation are problematic in online
learning and cannot be fully addressed strictly by better facilitation, clear
expectations and conventional workshop planning. While these areas cannot be
ignored, what is still missing is an understanding amongst participants for the
unique needs of asynchronous, text-based communication. Specifically,
participants need a basic appreciation for, though not necessarily a
comprehensive understanding of, the mechanics of interaction, turn-taking,
explicit framing and re-framing of the situation, and so on. Researchers in the
tradition of Conversation Analysis beginning with Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson
(1974) and now extended to online communications (e.g. Winecki, 2000)
specifically demonstrate this taken-for-granted complexity and the ways that
breakdowns can occur. Feenberg explains it this way,
Engaging in face-to-face conversation involves complex forms of behaviour
called 'phatic' functions by semiologists. When we say "Hey, how's it
going?" we signify our availability for communication. We usually close
the conversation with another set of rituals, such as, "I've gotta go.
See you later." Throughout our talk, we are continually sending phatic
signs back and forth to keep the line open and to make sure messages are
getting through. For example, we say such things as, "How about
that!" or reply, "Yes, go on." Looks and facial expressions
tacitly reassure interlocutors that they are still in touch, or on the
contrary carry a warning if the communication link is threatened by technical
difficulties or improprieties. All such phatic signs are bypassed in computer
conferencing. Even standard codes for opening and closing conversations are
discarded. (Feenberg, 1989:23)
The absence of so many of the tacit signals and the ability amongst participants
to re-invent the machinery of interaction results in a significant barrier to
effective participation. Face-to-face interaction is extremely fragile and
online interaction is much more so. But more than this, as the original work of
Garfinkel (1967) demonstrates so well, breakdowns in fact will often involve a
crisis of 'interpretive trust' producing a sense of 'moral violation' amongst
participants as the foundation of human communication is breached.
Building on this theme of an appreciation for the capacity and fragility of
online communication, in the interviews as well as in examinations of the
postings within this research it became clear that participants who had
expectations of something more than a basic information exchange, consistently
responded that they needed 'to know' the other person, have a sense of 'where
they were coming from', and 'trust' that that there were shared expectations for
things to proceed smoothly. Specifically, analysis of postings revealed barriers
in the form of ambiguity of communication and a lack of shared framing of the
situation. Bakardjieva and Feenberg (2000) suggest that the problem of the
missing cues can be partially resolved through the use of priority indicators,
notifications, reminders, feedback mechanisms, tools for participation tracking
and statistics, and so on, but they go on to indicate the importance of stable
identities for 'authentic communication' as well. Taken together such
recommendations fit fairly well with the kinds of comments provided by the
labour activist/educators in the workshops:
Well I find that it's a barrier because, I don't mind the on-line thing… I
find that being an interactive person, I like to interact with other humans,
you don't get the same feel of the individual… I'm not a pen-pal type person
anyway, and so it's kind of nice, even later on, if you did get together with
people for a workshop, then, even after, we know each other, we know what we
look like, there's something important to that, to me anyway, and you can then
maybe communicate better on a course with people that you know afterward.
(Activist - Peterborough, Ontario)
I know a lot of the people personally so to them I was interacting email
wise differently then the people I didn't know that I had never met personally
because I could sort of read between the lines on what they were saying, I
knew their intent better than the people I didn't know…. when it was people
I didn't know, I'd never met personally, there was a certain isolation to it,
there was a certain clinical approach to it, you know here's just letters on
the board, but people I knew, I sort of knew what they were talking about, you
know I could visualize that person talking, you know, whether you could do
that with their picture up on the thing every now and again, that I don't
know. It's going to be a difficult one to overcome, but it's something we've
got to seriously look at. Because there has to be a way to break that
isolation barrier when a person just participates, well even look at what
we're doing now. (Activist - Winnipeg, Manitoba)
Beyond attention to software design that recognizes the informal, communicative
dimensions of the online learning process, practically speaking what's required
is that participants be given tools to understand and maintain interpretive
trust. These issues then should be seen as having important, practical value for
the use of online learning in the labour movement and elsewhere.
Perhaps a broader point on the role of communication in labour education
involves the relationship that online learning has to the communication culture
of the labour movement itself. As many writers have noted in the context of both
historical and contemporary analysis (e.g. Thompson, 1963; Palmer, 1987;
Montgomery, 1987; Martin, 1995; Heron, 1996; Stephan-Norris and Zeitlin, 1996),
the establishment, reproduction and development of the labour movement has
always been rooted in a predominantly oral culture. While written documents can
and do play important roles in organizational life of trade unionists, in North
America in the last 50 years particularly, the heart and soul of the labour
movement still seems to remain dependent upon oral exchange. Recounting his work
in the labour movement, Martin (1995) has put it,
I had begun to see the written word as a last resort for internal
communication. I came to realize the weight of history in this stance. In the
early days of Canadian unions, activists, communicated orally among themselves
because their work was a 'criminal conspiracy in restraint of trade.' For
outside interaction… written text is central. Collective agreements and
labour legislation - formal, dense, and detailed - dominate the encounter of
unions with employers and governments…. On paper, union input tends to be
precise and defensive; in verbal communications, off the record, unionists are
more eloquent and spontaneous. (p.40)
Expanding on this theme, we can look more closely at the differences between
oral and written communication in the context of online learning in the work of
Feenberg. He discusses oral and written traditions in terms of repeatable and
retrievable texts respectively. The key distinction between them is that whereas
retrievable texts (such as a book or a diskette) allows the potential for
individual control, repeatable texts require the presence of other human beings:
Texts 'stored' in human memory, however, are 'accessed' through 'repetition'
or performance. In cultures which rely heavily on repetition of basic texts,
the function of performance is frequently assigned to special individuals, and
access to the text is not under individual control but regulated socially
through participation in public functions and audiences. (1989:24)
Both forms of communication culture have strengths, and of course it is a
mistake to see them as completely distinct. Nevertheless, it can be noted that
written culture based in retrievable texts offers individual choice and broad,
albeit largely one-way, dissemination of information. Oral cultures and reliance
on repeatable texts are associated with the socialization of information use,
the potential to develop solidaristic relations of information exchange and
collective forms of informal learning. Feenberg goes on to suggest that online
learning straddles the line between these oral and written cultures to,
potentially, offer the best of both worlds in several ways. As interviewees
seemed to suggest as well, online learning fits with the spontaneous, collective
and even emergent nature of oral exchanges that is the heart of the labour
movement as well as one of its most personally satisfying aspects. At the same
time, it provides a potentially retrievable record for future reference while
possibly helping to overcome the barriers of space and time in many ways.
Functions of online learning and communication for the labour movement.
Under this broad heading, the first theme to be noted arises directly from
the previous discussion of the labour movement's unique interest in online
learning technologies. As Canadian labour historian Craig Heron (1996)
describes, the labour movement has always had an interest in class consciousness
as both a 'resource' and a 'project'. Consciousness of class processes and one's
position in them are a resource upon which solidarity and collective action is
based, and the building and spreading a critical consciousness of class
relationships is also an ongoing goal or project for the labour movement's
development. In exploring online learning then it makes sense to examine the
degree to which the medium has the capacity to contribute to class consciousness
or what could be called a 'working-class narrative', i.e. a means of
understanding one's activities vis-à-vis story-telling and oral culture as part
of broader class processes in society. In a recent paper examining online
learning in the labour movement, Briton and Taylor contextualize the importance
of online learning technology for more than simply delivering more information
and more educational programmes to union members. They discuss the potential for
online learning technologies to contribute to the very principles and values of
the labour movement as a whole.
The question, then, is not simply one of identifying the [online learning]
technologies that result in high participation levels, but of identifying the
set of minimal beliefs that provide the foundation for learning and [the
technologies] that best facilitate the cooperative and collaborative ideals of
that learning community. (Briton and Taylor, 2000: 14)
As with labour education generally, online learning is not organized around the
need to accredit individual skill or knowledge. It is voluntary, social-movement
based learning which, as we've seen above and elsewhere, consistently faces the
pressure of relevance in the context of the jam-packed schedules of
activist/educators, and limited resources of the labour movement as a whole.
Relevance, however, can come in several forms: relevance to direct action and
organizing; as well as relevance to the production of the kind of meaning and
understanding in people's lives that energizes beyond the immediate context.
Interviewees in this research consistently spoke of this process of
meaning-making. One activist put it this way.
When people suddenly discover that there are some roots to [the labour
movement], because of course it's never taught in school, they really find
that fascinating… It's a funny sustaining kind of thing, it's less that it
helps your activism instantly, but it does I think help in the long-term as
people find the energy to keep going. (Activist - Edmonton, Alberta)
The ability of activist/educators to stay engaged in their work as activists and
to find and create relevance through this engagement is generally rooted their
commitment to trade unionism as a social movement. What we see however is that
this meaning-making is personally energizing and can be carried out through the
use of online learning environments. A recent article by Garrison (2001)
suggests that online learning can contribute to this 'affective', interpretive
side of educational and communicative processes, and thus applied to the context
of labour movement activism, we can begin to see that online learning can play
an important role in the development of greater class consciousness. The
production of a proletarian narrative is central to this process, and it helps
to create the type of mental 'distance' from one's life necessary to not only
understand it critically but to give it greater positive meaning.
Beyond the use of online learning to contribute to the development of class
consciousness activist/educators interviewed indicated that the medium could be
vitally important to furthering the principles of union democracy as well.
We've got email for everybody so you can send out stuff right away and not
only that, that's organizing and educating right there, if you can get the
information out to people you're talking about meetings, you're giving them
information prior to the meeting so that they know what they're going to talk
about when they get there, our local has a website… and then people can go
and see what's happening. We get enormous amounts of email from every social
action… I think that it helps the leadership better define their goals, and
so that's worthwhile in the sense of providing more education for the
membership as well. (Activist - Sudbury, Ontario)
Making use of websites, online communication and online learning in close
connection with more traditional organizational and educational activities in
the labour movement could be a powerful force for informating members and
leadership alike promoting open and informed debate and a more participatory
form of union democracy.
Likewise online learning and communication were thought to be a relevant tool
for organizing the unorganized. Comments by interviewees paralleled issues
raised recently by Joseph (1999). Drawing on key labor law cases in the United
States (E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co., 311 NLRB 893 and Timekeeping
Systems Inc. v. Lawrence LeinWeber, 323 NLRB 30) the author outlines,
[w]ith unions increasingly using the internet to strengthen their hand in
organizing, it is not surprising that employers are seeking legal roadblocks
to limit these efforts. Indeed, employee's use of company e-mail for union
activities has created new questions and legal challenges for unions,
employers and workers alike. The use of e-mail in organizing campaigns offers
many advantages - especially the ability to quickly reach a large number of
people…While so far the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] has not
directly addressed the issue of a union's right to organize through company
e-mail, the related rulings are encouraging, in part because they have shown
that an employers attempt to exclusively restrict an employee's use of company
e-mail for union-related activities is a violation of the employee's rights
under the NLRA [National Labor Relations Act]. (p.1-2)
Though pushing the scope of the workshop activities and this research project,
clearly online organizing directly addresses the informal dimensions of online
learning. Such issues represent the next generation of the study of informal
learning in the online world, as well as problematize the distinction between
communication and learning per se. When asked directly, interviewees in the
research largely rejected any clear distinction between online learning and
online communication. Several went so far as to say that the separation between
the two was unproductive for the purposes of learning in the labour movement.
I: Can I ask you, did you draw a distinction between educational initiatives
and broad communication, like labor communication initiatives?
R: I don't philosophically and personally, I think the labor movement draws an
incredible distinction, and it's not one I'm terribly fond off, it's basically
the difference between education and propaganda. (Activist - Edmonton,
Alberta)
Maintenance of a distinction between communication and educational policy should
be seen as a barrier to understanding how learning, in all its forms, is
implicated in the development of the labour movement. What activist such as the
one above indicate is that the arbitrary separation of the two narrows the
potential of online learning/communication to make a real contribution to
development of the labour movement into the 21
st century.
Linking informal online learning with practical action offline.
I've begun to outline the different ways that informal dimensions of online
activity can be conceptualized and studied, but in general terms we could say
that online informal learning occurred in the 'crevices' of the formal structure
provided in the workshop. To conclude this section I want to return to a key
theme of the research identified at the start, namely, how can online activity
be linked to real outcomes for the labour movement. Interviewees themselves
outlined that for online learning to be useful participation had to translate
into practical action beyond cyber-space.
You know, and you don't have to learn a ton of things, although I have to
admit I learned quite a few things, but you know [it] was good because then I
shared it with my fellow activists. (Activist - Peterborough, Ontario)
I got some interesting information but there was a major failure in the
fact that I couldn't share it with the other activists in Sudbury and I saw
that as very important. I mean you're going back to the core value of the
labor movement. You're in a meeting, you're talking with other activists,
you're sharing information with them, you know you're trying to get it out to
people and use that as a tactic for organizing… (Activist - Sudbury,
Ontario)
The insertion of experience and information gleaned from the workshop needed to
be easily transferred to the offline world. The solution that emerged from the
perspective of interviewees revolved around the creation of 'tools' that could
be (formally or informally) created within online activity, and then transferred
to the offline world. Workshop facilitators made important attempts to organize
the creation of such tools in the form of summaries, but more and more creative
means of transference need to be discovered. Participants themselves made
attempts at moving their online learning into their local contexts but mixed
results were seen. Many created reports of ideas, news and tactics and took them
to their local labour councils, workplaces and unions, e.g.
You'd see an article [in the workshop] and then you'd bring it up, say at work
or something, mention this article and then people expand from that on what
things or experiences they have heard about and so conversation gets going.
(Activist - Prince Albert, Saskatchewan)
Others, such as one activist from Eliot Lake (in Northern Ontario), transformed
these ideas into tools to educate during a local strike support barbecue
commenting, "I think basically my ideas came from the ideas that were
floating around out there through the workshop itself." The ongoing
challenge however remains: what are the full range of options for the
development of more productive linkages between online learning and labour
movement action.
Conclusions
The conclusions and recommendations of this research are fully outlined in
Sawchuk (forthcoming b), however here I can highlight key theme areas in
relation to the research questions posed from the beginning. The study
explicitly outlines a range of ways of conceptualizing and reporting on the
nature of the informal dimensions of online learning. We saw, for example, how
the unplanned online discussions were critical to the success of workshops. We
saw how the use of resources from outside of the workshop played a role in the
learning that went on, and we saw how the taken-for-granted, tacit dimensions of
communication were both part of the learning process and a source of
considerable struggle for participants. Features of the software architecture
itself can play an important role in successfully overcoming barriers of
communication according to the literature and the analysis provided by this
research. In general terms, there is strong evidence to suggest that online
learning can be a valuable addition to the education/communication capacity of
the labour movement, and that an important part of this positive contribution
revolves around a recognition of informal learning, the tacit dimensions of
participation, the broader context of participants lives, and the linkages
between the online and the offline world. Focusing on the different informal
dimensions of the learning process helped us understand that online learning
perhaps offered the 'best of both worlds' in terms of written and oral learning
cultures within the labour movement. And finally, as was indicated, there is
relatively strong evidence provided by this research that online learning
technologies can be an important addition to, not a substitute for, existing
practices of the labour movement.
REFERENCES
Bakardjieva, M. and Feenberg, A. (2000) Groupware for Community: Ethics by
Design. Unpublished monograph.
Bansler, J., (1989) "Systems development in Scandinavia: Three
theoretical schools" Office: Technology and People, 4(2).
Belangé, Marc(2001) Union Course Reader Initiative. Turin, Italy:
International Labor Organization.
Bodker, S. (1991) Through the Interface. Hillside, NJ: Erlbaum.
Briton, D. and Taylor, J. (2000) Online Workers' Education: How do we tame
the technology? (Progress report of the "Union-Based Telelearning
Project") Athabasca University, AB, Canada.
Ehn, P., (1988) Work-Oriented Design of Computer Artifacts.
Arbetslivscentrum, Stockholm.
Ehn, P., & M. Kyng (1987) "The Collective Resource Approach to
Systems Design" In Bjerknes, G., P. Ehn & M. Kyng (eds) Computers
and Democracy. Avebury, Aldershot, UK.
Feenberg, Andrew (1989) "The written world: On the theory and practice
of computer conferencing" in R. Mason and A. Kaye (eds) Mindweave:
Communication, Computers and Distance Education. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Feenberg, A. (1999) "Distance Learning: Promise or threat?" Crosstalk.
(winter).
Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Garrison, Randy (2001) "Critical Thinking, Cognitive Presence and
Computer Conferencing in Distance Education" American Journal of
Distance Education. 15(1).
Hakken, David (1993) Computer Myths and Class Realities. Boulder:
Westview.
Heron, Craig (1996) A Short History of the Canadian Labour Movement.
Toronto: Lorimer.
James, Maureen and Rykert, Liz (1997) Working Together Online.
Toronto: Web Networks.
Kraft, P. (1991) "Total Quality, Total Control" Paper presented to
the Information Systems Seminar, School of Management, SUNY-Binghamton.
Martin, D'Arcy (1995) Thinking Union: Activism and Education in Canada's
Labour Movement. Toronto: Between-the-Lines Press.
Martin, D'Arcy (1998) "The Case of Education in the Labour Movement:
Pre-1970" in Selman, G., Selman, M., Cooke, M., and Dampier, P. (Eds) The
Foundations of Adult Education in Canada. Toronto: Thompson Educational
Publishing.
Montgomery, David (1987) The Fall of the House of Labor: The workplace,
the state and American labor activism, 1865-1925. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Nardi, Bonnie A. (ed) (1996) Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory
and Human-Computer Interaction. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Palloff, R.M. an Pratt, K. (1999) Building Learning Communities in
Cyberspace. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Sacks, H., and Schegloff, E. (1974) "Opening Up Closings" in
Turner, Roy (ed) Ethnomethodolgy. London: Penguin.
Sawchuk, Peter H. (2000) Working-Class Computer Literacy: Learning,
Culture and Communities of Practice.Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation,
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education / University of Toronto, Canada.
Sawchuk, Peter H. with Elaine Bernard, Linda Cooper, D'Arcy Martin, Doug
Miller, Mike Newman, Barb Thomas, John Sterling (2000) "Global Perspectives
on Labour Education into the New Millennium" (Symposium) Adult Education
Research Conference (AERC) Proceedings. Vancouver, Canada, June 1-3.
Sawchuk, Peter H. (forthcoming a) Adult Learning and Technology in
Working-Class Life. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP.
Sawchuk, Peter H. (forthcoming b) Online Learning for Union Activists:
final report of findings of the 'Informal Learning Practices within Union-Based
Telelearning Project'. Toronto: NALL Research Network.
Schön, Donald A., Sanyal, Bish and Mitchell, William J. (eds)(1999) High
technology and low-income communities : prospects for the positive use of
advanced information technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Statistics Canada (2000) General Social Science Survey: Internet Use.
Ottawa: Statistics Canada.
Stephan-Norris, Judith and Zeitlin, Maurice (1996) Talking Union.
Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Taylor, Jeff (1996a) "The Solidarity Network: Universities,
Computer-mediated Communication, and Labour Studies in Canada" in Teresa M.
Harrison and Timothy Stephen (eds) Computer Networking and Scholarly
Communication in the Twenty-First-Century University. Albany: State
University of New York Press.
Taylor, Jeff (1996b) "The Continental Classroom: Teaching Labour Studies
Online" Labor Studies Journal 21(1) (Spring).
Thompson, E. P. (1963) The Making of the English Working Class.
London: Penguin.
Winiecki, Donald (2001) Keeping the Thread: Adapting conversational
practice to help distance students and instructors manage discussions in an
asynchronous learning network. Unpublished monograph, Boise State
University.
ENDNOTES
1.This paper is based on the
Informal Learning Practices
within Union-Based Telelearning project and has been funded by the Social Science and
Humanities Research Council of Canada's New Approaches to Lifelong Learning Research Network. I gratefully
acknowledge the support of the Canadian Labour Congress and particularly the
insight and energy of labour movement
activists and educators who participated.
2 Principal Investigator of this project is Jeff Taylor (Athabasca
University, Alberta, Canada).
3.CRA, sometimes called the Scandinavian approach,
attempts to reconcile the development and use of specific technologies with the needs,
perspectives and values of working people and their unions (see Kraft, 1992 for
a discussion of CRA in the context of
North America).
4.I suggest it is an exploration of actual practice with
an eye toward the existence of more or less stable community structures (e.g. local union, stable
paid-work community, neighborhood life and so on) that explain the difference between Reddick et al's notion of
Type 1 (so-called 'near-users' who have interest and skill but face material obstacles), Type 2 (have basic skills
but see little benefit and face material obstacles) and Type 3 categories of
non-users (lack of basic skill, see
no relevance and face significant material barriers) (see page 3 of Reddick et
al, 2000).
5. It is doubtful that those completely unfamiliar with
online communications would volunteer to have taken part in the study.
