509682 research-article2013 Ziegler et al.
AEQ64110.1177/0741713613509682Adult Education QuarterlyZiegler et al
Article
Understanding Informal Group Learning in Online Communities Through Discourse Analysis
Adult Education Quarterly 2014, Vol 64(1) 60–78 © 2013 American Association for Adult and Continuing Education Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0741713613509682 aeq.sagepub.com
Mary F. Ziegler1, Trena Paulus1, and Marianne Woodside1
Abstract Since informal learning occurs outside of formal learning environments, describing informal learning and how it takes place can be a challenge for researchers. Past studies have typically oriented to informal learning as an individual, reflective process that can best be understood through the learners’ retrospective accounts about their experiences. Although reports on the individual lived experience represent the privileged way of understanding social reality (including informal learning), the linguistic/discursive turn of the 1980s proposed a shift in our view of the function of language as creating rather than representing versions of the world. Accordingly, we propose resituating informal learning from a reflective process occurring in an individual mind to the meaning making that occurs in group conversations. We present an exploratory analysis of a single thread from an online hiking community to introduce discourse analysis as a framework to study informal learning as a group meaning-making process. Keywords informal learning, discourse analysis, online communities
Introduction Informal learning theory has proven useful for understanding adult learning, as adults engage in most of their learning outside of formal educational contexts. They learn in the workplace (Marsick & Watkins, 2001), by visiting national parks and pursuing 1The
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Knoxville, TN, USA
Corresponding Author: Mary F. Ziegler, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, A521 Bailey Education Complex, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA. Email:
[email protected]
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hobbies (Taylor, 2006), and even while shopping (Jubas, 2011). Increasingly, adults spend time on the Internet engaged in activities such as finding social support, building relationships, exchanging ideas, and demonstrating expertise (Äkkinen, 2005; Porter, 2004). Internet communities have a long history with a wide base of participants who engage in conversations that occur in online spaces such as asynchronous discussion forums. We suggest that considerable informal learning is taking place in these online conversations, yet studying it can be challenging for researchers as informal learning has typically been conceptualized as an internal process best understood by asking people about past learning (Eraut, 2010; Marsick & Watkins, 2001). Asking participants in an online group what they learned through surveys or interviews is often impossible as these participants typically use pseudonyms and are separated by time and space. The only evidence of what occurred online is the persistent transcript of the discussions themselves. An expanded conceptualization of informal learning as a group process and new research approaches may be necessary to understand the learning that occurs through conversations in online communities. Our purpose is to describe the informal learning visible in conversations in online communities and present discourse analysis as a method for studying it. To begin, we present informal learning as group conversation (Paulus, Woodside, & Ziegler, 2010; Wenger, 1998; Ziegler, Paulus, & Woodside, 2006). We explore the existing research on online communities and the theoretical relevance of informal learning for understanding the conversations in these spaces. Then, we discuss the challenges in researching informal learning, and finally, we illustrate how discourse analysis can address these challenges by presenting, as an example, an analysis of one discussion thread from an online community for Appalachian Trail (AT) hikers and backpackers.
Informal Learning as Group Conversations Informal learning “refers to the experiences of everyday living from which we learn something” (Merriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2006, p. 24). Although broad and somewhat ambiguous, the concept of informal learning has generated a substantial body of literature to explain it more fully. What emerged most noticeably from the literature was the lack of dependence on an expert or outside authority to set a learning agenda or determine whether learning occurred (Hagar & Halliday, 2006). Informal learning research highlights learning that occurs outside formal educational contexts; most studies view it as an individual process. Recently, however, the definition of informal learning expanded to include a group meaning-making process (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Sawchuk, 2008; Ziegler et al., 2006). For example, situated cognition, underlying the community of practice model (Lave & Wenger, 1991), positions informal group learning through joint enterprises, mutual engagement, and shared repertoire of resources in the community. Lave and Wenger’s work extended the concept of learning to include what occurs as individuals with a common interest talk to one another. Community of practice gained momentum as a conceptual framework for understanding informal learning as a group process. This perspective redefines learning
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as taking place between people rather than within the individual mind. Gray (2004), writing about informal learning in an online community of practice suggested, “shared learning and interest are what keeps these communities together . . . all participation . . . is considered legitimate learning and it is through participation that we learn not only how to do but how to be” (p. 23) a member of that community. Scholars emphasized conversation as the medium through which group learning occurs. Baker, Jensen, and Kolb (2002) defined “conversational learning” as a “process whereby learners construct meaning and transform experiences into knowledge through conversations” (p. 51). Stahl (2006) connected talk with group cognition, arguing that “meaning is created across the utterances of different people . . . [and] is not the cognitive property of individual minds but a characteristic of the group dialogue” (p. 6). Similarly, Ziegler et al. (2006) noted, “At the group level, individuals together create meaning through dialogue” (p. 315). From these perspectives, informal group learning can be conceptualized as a group meaning-making process. Since most research on informal learning positioned it as a process of individual acquisition and/or reflection, new research approaches may be needed to understand the informal group learning that is made visible through conversations such as those that occur in online communities. Next we link informal group learning and peer-initiated online communities.
Online Communities Research into online communities began in the mid-1990s across a variety of disciplines. Earliest investigations included Rheingold’s The Virtual Community (1994) and Turkle’s Life on the Screen (1995). Much of this early work described what happened in online spaces (Kollock & Smith, 1999). Porter (2004) described two types of online communities, organization sponsored and peer initiated. Organizationsponsored communities exist in universities, continuing education, or other formally organized groups. Organization-sponsored online communities have an articulated goal prescribing to some extent what types of conversations will occur. In contrast, a peer-initiated community grows from the ground up. The members themselves, rather than a facilitator or instructor, determine the content of their conversations. The research conducted on learning in online communities primarily focused on those that were organization sponsored (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000; Preece, 2000). Asynchronous discussion forums received considerable attention related to whether and how learning occurs since the online text-based conversation is visible and instantly archived, unlike face-to-face conversations. De Wever, Schellens, Valcke, and Van Keer (2006) reviewed 15 coding frameworks developed to make sense of these online discussions, noting that “a powerful theory to guide research is still lacking” (p. 23). In contrast, a parallel line of research studied online support group communities, which tend to be peer initiated. These studies examined the reasons people join online groups for support, what they gain, and what happens in the groups (Wright & Muhtaseb, 2011). For example, studies of the talk in online support groups explored
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identity development (Stommel & Koole, 2010) and the exchange of advice (Morrow, 2006). Unlike organization-sponsored communities, members in online support groups tend to be anonymous or use pseudonyms. In this way, traditional online support groups also differ from social media (such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) that foster interaction among people who are using their real identities. Although some adult educators noted the potential of online communities as sites in which to explore adult learning (Andreatos, 2007; Russell, 1999), few studies followed. Russell described SeniorNet as an example of an online learning community emphasizing “collective and participatory communication . . . it resembles nonformal/ informal models in that the learning process can take place anywhere, and is neither structured nor mandated in the top-down direction of traditional instruction” (p. 30). Similarly, Irving and English (2011) examined 100 websites of feminist organizations, noting that these can be powerful spaces for informal learning. They found, however, that most of the sites tended to be organization-sponsored and most did not provide content related to lifelong learning or advocacy. Irving and English (2011) noted that there were “innumerable missed opportunities for feminist organizations to share knowledge and engage in community-based learning” (p. 274). It was unclear whether or not the websites provided online discussion forums as a space in which to do so. Finally, Sandlin and Walther (2009) explored an online community for “voluntary simplicity” sponsored by the Simple Living Network. They analyzed discussion forum posts, newsletters, and interview data for how moral identity development and learning occurred and noted that “a kind of ‘collective learning’ is taking place within the voluntary simplicity movement” (p. 312); however, they did not explore how this “collective learning” occurred nor did they focus in detail on the actual discussions taking place in the community. One of the only studies to look at online discussions from an informal learning perspective was Gray (2004), who studied an online community of adult learning coordinators in Alberta. Through analysis of survey data, interview data, and discussion forum transcripts, she focused on the coordinators’ reasons for participating in the community, their identity development, and their moderator roles, noting, Through mutual engagement the group developed a shared repertoire of stories and cases that functioned as a dynamic knowledge source on which to base future practice . . . the online environment facilitated a space for the learning and enculturation of newcomers. (p. 32)
While these studies focused on asynchronous discussion forums (most members used pseudonyms), more recent research shifted to exploring social media interactions (Aydin, 2012). For example, Weber, Conceição, and Baldor (2011) studied the communication and relationship patterns among a group of 16 Brazilians relocated to the United States. Through interviews and a content analysis of posts on Yahoo! Groups and Orkut (a social networking site popular in Brazil), researchers found that the members formed a community of practice to share information and address their feelings of isolation. Although these authors identified a community of practice, they did
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not specifically study whether or how the community learned as a group in this environment.
Research Approaches to Understanding Informal Learning Most researchers who study informal learning tended to use retrospective accounts gathered through interviews or surveys (Gray, 2004; Sandlin & Walther, 2009; Weber et al., 2011). Eraut (2010) questioned collecting self-report data, claiming that asking people what they have learned is problematic. As principal investigator for a landmark longitudinal study (funded by the European Research Council) on how professionals learn (Eraut et al., 2005), he determined, Informal learning is largely invisible, because much of it is either taken for granted or not recognized as learning; thus, respondents lack awareness of their own learning. Resultant knowledge is either tacit or regarded as part of a person’s general capability, rather than something that was learned. (Eraut, 2010, p. 249)
If adults are not aware that they are learning (Ala-Mutka, 2010), then relying on selfreport data such as that gathered through interviews leaves much of the learning, especially the group meaning-making processes, largely unexplored. This is a key reason we consider peer-initiated online communities to be untapped sites of informal group learning. Online text-based conversations are persistent, captured, and studied in ways not easily replicable in face-to-face contexts. The online conversations are an example of what Stahl (2006) described as “group cognition [that is] is necessarily publicly visible” (p. 3). This public visibility makes peer-initiated online communities a venue for exploring the meaning-making process of informal group learning.
Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method The reliance on self-report data (Gray, 2004; Sandlin & Walther, 2009; Weber et al., 2011) hinges on the belief that social reality can best be understood through accounts of the lived experience of individuals. However, the linguistic/discursive turn of the 1980s (Rorty, 1992) challenged the notion that individual lived experience should be the privileged way of understanding social reality, arguing that language creates rather than represents lived experience. Thus, rather than considering an interview response to be representing an inner truth from within the interviewee, it should be viewed as a dialogic event in which truth is being created between the interviewer and interviewee (Potter & Hepburn, 2012). One way to explore the action orientation of written and verbal conversations is through discourse analysis. Discourse analysis as a theory (Howarth, 2000; Jørgensen & Phillips, 2002) locates social reality as that which is visibly constructed through text and talk, rather than in the invisible, individual mind (Potter & Wetherell, 1987). It is
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through our language choices that we build a version of the world (Jørgensen & Phillips, 2002) and by examining those choices and that version of the world that we can understand learning. Through discourse analysis we can focus on what the members make relevant in their talk. Sawchuk (2008) also suggested using situated micro-analytic approaches such as discourse and conversation analysis to understand informal learning. Discourse analysis as a method (Wood & Kroger, 2000) uses a participant orientation to understand how language choices accomplish specific tasks. For example, we can analyze recorded airline cockpit, courtroom, or classroom conversations to learn how groups accomplish air travel, justice, and learning. Although tape recording face-to-face conversations can be logistically difficult, the conversations in peer-initiated online communities are a readily available resource for investigating learning. Although researchers and theorists have documented that learning takes place informally through conversations (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Sawchuk, 2008), how group meaning making occurs in an online environment is less well documented. To better understand the process of informal group learning rather than the product of that learning, Ziegler et al.’s (2006) research identified a model showing specific aspects of the group meaning-making process. We argue that these aspects of meaning making are an example of informal group learning. This research examined an extended dialogue among women analyzing their life stories in an online community as part of a formal online course. The model resulted from a two-step analysis process. The first step was an analysis of the dialogue, using a phenomenological inquiry method (Polkinghorne, 1983) that resulted in four themes that represented the group meaning-making process: noticing one’s own experience, reinterpreting another’s shared experience, theorizing a more abstract representation for what has been shared, and questioning one’s own or another’s assumptions. Noticing was the first step of the learning process, bringing an experience to the forefront to be examined. Noticing focused on the self and making meaning of one’s experience in light of the other. Once an individual’s experience was “noticed” by the group, other group members reinterpreted the experience by identifying similarities or differences, requesting and providing clarification, or refuting a statement. Reinterpretation shifted the dialogue as participants moved from self to other. Theorizing occurred as the group translated concrete experiences into abstract conceptualizations by labeling, providing explanations with more detail, or making assumptions by drawing a conclusion or making a generalization. The final meaning-making aspect was questioning one’s own or another’s assumptions about the exchanges in the dialogue. Challenges to assumptions required additional information as evidence. Once we identified these four aspects of meaning making, we used discourse analysis to categorize the speech acts that corresponded to each meaning-making aspect. A speech act describes a specific action that occurred in the dialogue (Searle, 1969). The aspects of the dialogue and the speech acts together resulted in a model that represented the online group’s meaning-making process (see Table 1). Although this model was developed in the context of an online formal learning environment, this group meaningmaking process has relevance for understanding informal group learning also.
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Table 1. Aspects of Meaning Making and Its Process. Step 1. Aspects of meaning making from a phenomenological perspective
Step 2. Speech acts of the meaning-making process from discourse analysis
Notice: This is a focus on the self; noticing 1. one’s own experience, talking about one’s own experience in light of the other’s; could be implicit or could occur in the subject line of a posted message Reinterpret: This is a focus on the 2. other, as in a response to the other’s experience that has been shared; reinterpreting what another has said in the discussion or in the posted life histories
Describe: To give an account of or depict one’s own concrete experience Extend: To provide additional information or details about one’s experience
Theorize: This is a focus on one’s own 3. experience and/or a focus on the other’s experience; creates an abstraction for what has been shared concretely Question assumptions: This is questioning 4. one’s own or another’s assumptions
Find commonalities: To make similarities between experiences explicit Find differences: To make dissimilarities between experiences explicit Evaluate: To examine and judge the other’s experience that has been shared Refute: To contradict an earlier reinterpretation; to respond to what the other said about one’s own statement Request clarification: To request additional information in order to clarify; could be asking back about an earlier reinterpretation Provide clarification: To provide additional information to clarify Label: To assign a category or explicitly name a concrete experience Provide explanation: To develop or add details to what has been shared Make assumption: To draw a conclusion or make a generalization based on a theory Provide evidence about one’s own assumption: To identify one’s incorrect assumption and provide information about it Challenge the assumption of another: To request that another provide more information about an assumption
We next explore how researchers might use discourse analysis methods to better understand the meaning-making process of informal group learning in online conversations. We share an exploratory analysis of one conversation in a peer-initiated online community of long-distance hikers. We first describe in detail the community in which the conversation unfolded.
Understanding WhiteBlaze.net We, as the authors of this article, are all active hikers and backpackers outside our professional lives. Although we have insider knowledge of the hiking and backpacking
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community as participants, we are relative outsiders to this specific online community and to academic study of recreation. We drew on our mutual interest as we selected WhiteBlaze.net to illustrate how researchers can use discourse analysis to understand informal group learning. WhiteBlaze.net began in 2002 and describes itself as “a community of Appalachian Trail enthusiasts.” The user agreement outlines the goal of the community: To allow the open discussion of topics that a person interested in hiking may need to know. This includes the families of hikers, trail maintainers, trail angels, researchers, service providers, and any other individual interested in hiking. The goal is the positive exchange of information between users.
At the time of this study WhiteBlaze had 39,284 members, 69,985 discussion threads, and 1,234,604 total posts. The website contains discussion forums, photo galleries, hiking journals, useful links, a database of successful AT completers, advertisements, and a place for donations to keep the site running. We consider WhiteBlaze to be a peer-initiated online community, because although there are administrators and moderators of the forums, there are no official facilitators or experts guiding the topics of conversation. Members enter and leave the conversations at will. The user agreement outlines the administrator and moderator roles: to close, delete, or move threads; to deal with violations of the site rules; and to delete messages containing threats to other members. Registered members of the site have profile pages. Most members use pseudonyms; many are trail names. It is a common practice to adopt a trail name during one’s “thruhike” (a complete hike of the roughly 2,180 miles of the AT). The profile pages include the date members joined the site, the date of their last activity, the total number of posts and journal entries, and an avatar (graphical image) that represents them. The profile page is similar to those on social networking sites, with a list of “friends,” a photo gallery, and a place for visitors to post a message. Even though our institutional review board immediately granted us permission to analyze these posts as publicly available “data” such as that found in a newspaper, gaining access to peer-initiated online communities is not without ethical dilemmas. Many ethics boards are unfamiliar with online communities and Internet research, and thus their decisions to allow research access may not always protect those involved. McKee and Porter (2009) warned that failure to approach such research in an ethical manner could threaten future access to a community. They proposed a heuristic to guide decisions about choosing to conduct research in an online community (see Figure 1). Using the McKee and Porter (2009) heuristic, we noted that WhiteBlaze.net is a public site requiring no membership to read what is posted. The topic we analyzed— how to carry ground coffee—is not a particularly sensitive topic. We oriented to the community as a collection of archived texts, rather than as people. We did not interact with the members in any way. As hikers, the members of WhiteBlaze.net are not a particularly vulnerable population, and most members are posting under a pseudonym.
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Public vs Private
Topic Sensi vity
Degree of Interac on
Subject Vulnerability
Is Consent Necessary?
Private
High
High
High
Likely
Public
Low
Low
Low
Not Likely
Figure 1. Heuristic for determining informed consent in online research. Source. McKee and Porter (2009, p. 88). Reprinted with permission.
Real names are not displayed on the site. Based on these reflections, we proceeded with our analysis without seeking informed consent from the community members.
Group Conversations in WhiteBlaze.com The discussion forums are divided into six sections, with a total of 70 separate forums, each with numerous conversational threads occurring simultaneously. Figure 2 is an example of the Gear Forum, where hikers engaged in discussions about hiking gear. Figure 3 is an example of the first 2 messages in the 78-message thread we selected to illustrate our analysis. We first identified the most active forums (those with the greatest number of threads and posts) so that we could find the richest threads of discussion for analysis. We found 19 threads across six forums that had more than 30 messages posted over a 2-day period, resulting in a total of 1,108 messages.
An Example of Analyzing Informal Group Learning Using Discourse Analysis Analysis of the entire data set is ongoing, so we are not reporting our findings here; rather, we describe the meaning-making process of informal group learning visible in
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Figure 2. Gear forum thread view example.
conversations in online communities and present discourse analysis as a possible method for studying the informal learning occurring there. To illustrate the use of discourse analysis, we selected one discussion thread from the “cooking and food” forum titled, “How do you carry your ground coffee?” Participants in this thread exchanged 43 messages on this topic in the first 2 days, and 77 messages over the course of nearly 3 months. The first 66 responses occurred in the first 9 days. During the 3 months we tracked the thread, there were 1,045 “views,” meaning that many more people were reading than were posting to the thread. Although the original poster (OP) never returned to comment on the responses he/she received, some of the same members commented numerous times. This is not unusual in asynchronous online discussion forums such as these (Yun & Park, 2011). We selected this thread because on first glance it seems to be an unremarkable and straightforward exchange of information. However, to view the conversations only as a simple information exchange is to ignore the complexity of what occurs in these groups. Group members engaged in learning (i.e., a meaning-making process as described by Ziegler et al., 2006, in Table 1) described their own experiences and reinterpreted each other’s experiences. Initial concrete descriptions were eventually theorized through labeling and making generalizations. Members probed these theories by questioning assumptions evident in the conversations. Rather than simply answering questions, the group members justified the answers given and challenged answers given by others. These exchanges, we argue, do the discursive work of building a version of what it means to be a long-distance backpacker.
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Figure 3. Message view within the forum.
To illustrate this, we next provide a line-by-line micro analysis of excerpts from the posts to demonstrate how researchers can use discourse analysis to show evidence of learning. As Wood and Kroger (2000) described the discourse analytic process, the goal is to “explain what is being done in the discourse and how this is accomplished, that is, how the discourse is structured or organized to perform various functions and achieve various effects or consequences” (p. 95). Discourse analysis occurs through repeated readings of the data, identification of patterns, and making interpretations of what is being accomplished by attending to the language use. Discourse analysis findings focus on how language choices and discursive resources in the posts were used to accomplish specific tasks. Discourse analysis as a qualitative method is not necessarily generalizable to a wider population than that studied. We support our findings by reworking the analysis of representative excerpts to show what the language is doing rather than providing multiple examples of an abstracted theme.
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Noticing Excerpt 1 is the original post that launched the ground coffee thread that we will explore (see Figure 3). Hello. When I do my section hike next month, I’m going to take my GSI Outdoors Collapsible JavaDrip Slim Drip Coffee Maker thingy. Better than instant, and not much extra to carry. I wonder. How do you recommend I carry my ground coffee? Something vacuum sealed? Some of those bottles seem a little bulky. Have any other suggestions?1
With this post the OP first made relevant that she/he is an insider to the hiking community by using jargon (“section hike”) that only insiders would know (a section hike refers to those who hike the entire AT over time rather than all at once,) She/he has already decided to take a coffee maker on the hike, and by including the entire product name she/he demonstrated awareness that specific gear details are important to the community. The choice of “thingy” at the end of the product name was in sharp contrast with the previous details and might be poking fun at the community’s obsession with gear details. She/he made relevant two reasons for the choice of gear that we will see taken up throughout the thread—quality/flavor (“better than instant”) and weight (“not much extra to carry”). She/he ended the post by specifically asking for recommendations about how to carry the ground coffee—providing two possibilities that contrasted two of the values of the community with regard to gear—quality (maintaining flavor by being “vacuum sealed”) with weight (“seem a little bulky”). In terms of the aspects of the group meaning-making process, the OP engaged in noticing by describing his or her own experience of preparing for the long-distance hike through the concrete example of the gear dilemma. By ending the post with a question, she/he explicitly invites the community to reinterpret the initial description. This kind of questioning is less common in organization-sponsored communities where participants may be more hesitant to ask back or ask each other. However, in this peer-initiated community, peers rather than an instructor drive the learning—initiating threads, asking questions, and responding to questions.
Reinterpreting The first response to the OP’s question was Excerpt 2: “I just use a quart freezer ziplock.” Here the “just” worked to imply that no special gear is required and that an item most people have in their kitchens, a plastic zipper storage bag, would work just fine. Subsequent commenters reinforced this claim, such as in Excerpt 3: “A zip lock bag should do just fine. What will you do with the used coffee grounds? I carry instant coffee. Not a[s] good but lighter and can carry a bigger supply” and Excerpt 4: “No sense in over-thinkin’ things . . . just put it in a baggie . . .” Thus, more than simply providing requested information, the responses were also doing discursive work to establish what constituted a serious concern for the community (disposing of used coffee grounds, as we will see later) and what did not (how to carry coffee). That is,
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members used their language choices (“just,” “should do just fine,” “no sense in overthinkin’ things”) to establish that how to carry coffee is a settled, or even trivial, question and thus not something about which the OP should be overly concerned. We see reinterpretation begin in earnest in Excerpt 3, when the community member made relevant that he/she him/herself carries instant coffee (not ground coffee that creates waste) and accounted for that choice—he/she sacrifices quality and taste for weight (and, as we will see later, to create less of an impact on the environment). Subsequent commenters took up the instant coffee option, such as in Excerpt 5, “Starbucks VIA Ready Brew is pretty tasty as well.” This post proposed an instant coffee option with good taste, offering a possible solution to achieve improved quality and less weight. Through these responses, members of the community began to reinterpret the OP’s initial description, not only by offering new options quite different from anything “vacuum sealed” but also by laying the groundwork for what would be made particularly relevant—what to do with used coffee grounds.
Theorizing and Questioning Assumptions Excerpt 6 highlighted the issue of weight as relevant. This post opened with “ultralight style” to identify her/his orientation to the long-distance hiking community, followed by a description of his/her own style of making coffee. Ultralight style: Loose in the bottom of my pack. Then I shake some out into my Ti cup of cold water (or bum some hot water off other hikers stupid enough to carry a stove), stir, let settle, and enjoy the mmm mmm goodness while critiquing everyone else’s heavy gear choices.
Ultralight hikers are those whose goal it is to carry as little as possible on the trail. This post, with its overt critique of hikers “stupid enough to carry a stove” or with “heavy gear choices,” sparked visible points of tension in the subsequent posts, consistent with the theorizing and questioning of assumptions that takes place in group meaning making. Through this process the members contested the norms of the group. This is made very visible when Excerpt 6 drew a challenger in Excerpt 7: You don’t carry a stove . . . you will NOT get hot water from me. . . . I don’t cater to bums who are too lazy to carry a stove . . . call me stupid if you like . . . but I carry my own gear and don’t bum.
Both the “ultralight” (Excerpt 6) and “be prepared” (Excerpt 7) stances are recognizable long-distance hiking theories. The conversation here makes visible the tension between the “ultralight” hikers, who sacrifice everything for weight and instead “bum” what they need (e.g., hot water) off of those who are “stupid enough” to carry heavy gear (e.g., stoves), and the “be-prepared” hikers, who believe in carrying what they need and are unwilling to share their gear with the ultralight hiking “bums.” By engaging in conversation around whether it is ethical for hikers to go into the woods without
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being fully prepared, the community members make their own theoretical assumptions explicit and begin to question the assumptions of others. We see this theorizing and questioning of assumptions continue in Excerpt 8, as the original question in Excerpt 3 about what the OP would do with the used coffee grounds is taken up by a new member who provides an explanation of how to dispose of coffee grounds: Used coffee grounds? If there’s a fire ring, spread them thinly in it. They’ll dry out and since they’re woody material originally, they’ll burn nicely in the next fire. Otherwise, add more water and stir (to suspend the grounds) and fling widely into the vegetation away from campsites.
The member restated the original question and provided several options along with a justification for the first—they can be spread out in the fire ring because they will dry out, are organic material, and will burn. Another proposed solution was to dump them away from the campsite (known as “broadcasting”). However, this excerpt drew strong criticism from another member of the community in Excerpt 9: wrong.bad. no. dont. stop. wait. fire rings aint your trash can. ever hear of visual pollution? how bout food smells atracting animals? how bout running into [name] when leaving such trace? as far as broadcasting grounds in vegetation? no. you wanna leave no trace? learn to do that. you want trouble, just toss coffie grounds all over every single campsite for miles and miles and thousands and thousands of hikers for years and years.
The “leave no trace” (LNT) ethic is another theory of long-distance hiking that is wellknown in this community. It means that when travelling through nature you should leave no trace of your presence. The extreme way that Excerpt 9 opened (“wrong. bad. no.stop.wait”) along with the justification for the response (visual pollution, attracting animals, leaving a trace), took up the LNT ethic as an issue at the heart of what it means to be a long-distance hiker in that it should drive gear decisions. But in Excerpt 11 we see that even the meaning of LNT is contestable: come on now! i’m all for LNT but coffee grounds are nutrient rich for plants, they repel ants and some say fleas. I throw my coffee grounds in my flower beds at home. you’re not gonna see ‘em—no eye sore.
The opening “come on now!” implied that the previous posters were unreasonable in their claims about what LNT allowed. The individual began by signaling agreement with the LNT ethos (“I’m all for LNT”) before listing the reasons why it is actually good to dump coffee grounds (nutrient-rich, repel ants/fleas, not visible). The assumptions behind, and very meaning of, LNT are contested and constructed through the conversations. Stating and questioning assumptions are a part of the group meaningmaking process. In online communities such as this and, we argue, in all informal group learning environments, there is no official facilitator or instructor available to provide the “right”
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answer. Rather, it is the members themselves who, through conversation, engage in a constant noticing, reinterpreting, theorizing, and questioning of the underlying assumptions of the group. This does not mean, however, that there are no appeals to authority made as the members engage in this learning process, as we see in Excerpt 10: I had a guy go off on me at [location] for broadcasting my grounds into the brush, away from the shelter. Thankfully I was hiking with a [State name] forest ranger at the time and he convinced him that coffee grounds compost rapidly and cause no harm to the environment.
While the hiker who disagreed with the writer of Excerpt 10 is referred to as simply a “guy,” the hiking partner, in contrast, is referred to by his status as “a forest ranger.” The forest ranger is treated as having greater knowledge of the “right” way to dispose coffee grounds. However, this appeal to an authority who has the “right answer” is not accepted by all the community members. In Excerpt 15 a member responded, “Since coffee grounds neither put out or prevent forest fires, I don’t think that falls in a [State name] Forest Ranger’s job description.” In this illustration, we selected four aspects of group meaning making to show how a researcher might use discourse analysis to identify the process a group uses to learn informally. We have noted numerous examples of members engaging in aspects of the group meaning-making process that go beyond noticing and reinterpreting into theorizing and questioning assumptions. (Paulus et al., 2010; Ziegler et al., 2006), whereas in organization-sponsored online communities such as those found in formal learning environments, researchers seldom found discussions to go beyond noticing and reinterpreting (Rourke & Kanuka, 2007) to include theorizing or questioning the assumptions of others.
Conclusion and Implications Our purpose in this article is to describe the informal group learning visible in conversations in online communities and present discourse analysis as a method for studying the informal learning that occurs there (Ziegler et al., 2006). The conversations in these communities emerge from the members, are not guided by an expert, persist over time, and enable researchers to see learning as it is happening rather than relying on retrospective accounts of past learning collected through self-report data. Entering these communities as researchers should be guided by ethical practices such as those outlined by McKee and Porter (2009). As discourse analysis does not require intervention or interaction with the participants, the persistent conversations can be oriented as archived texts that provide insight into the informal learning that has occurred. Our analysis illustrated how the community constructed a version of what it meant to be a long-distance hiker through their talk. As Gray (2004) said, participants learn not only how to do but also how to be a member of the community. Community members made meaning together as they noted their experiences, reinterpreted these experiences together, theorized by creating abstractions and explanations, and questioned the assumptions of others. This type of informal group learning is implicit in the sense
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that the group may not recognize its talk as learning (Ala-Mutka, 2010; Eraut, 2010; Hagar & Halliday, 2006). We suggest that meaning making through conversation expands the conceptualization of informal group learning. What is noteworthy about this type of learning, and what makes it important as an area of study for adult education, is that it is peer initiated and controlled, showing how people learn through talk when there is no one in the role of the expert “other.” Discourse analysis (Potter & Wetherell, 1987) offers a way to understand learning that is tacit and outside of the learner’s awareness (Eraut, 2010). In conclusion, in peer-initiated online communities such as WhiteBlaze.net, members engage in particular versions of “everyday living from which we learn something” (Merriam et al., 2006, p. 24). Areas of research of interest to adult educators might include studying peer-initiated online communities in social justice (Byrne, 2007), health support (Wen, McTavish, Kreps, Wise, & Gustafson, 2011), feminism (Irving & English, 2011), and recreation and leisure (Chesney, 2004). Studying these conversations through discourse analysis is one way to see the meaning-making process of informal group learning as it unfolds. Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Note 1.
All excerpts are reproduced verbatim from the discussion forum; spelling and grammatical errors have not been corrected unless they obscure the meaning in which case corrections appear in brackets [like this].
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Author Biographies Mary F. Ziegler is an associate professor in adult learning at the University of Tennessee. She teaches graduate courses in all aspects of adult education. Her primary research interests are in the areas of adult literacy and online learning. Trena Paulus is an associate professor at the University of Tennessee, teaching courses in discourse analysis and qualitative research methods. Her book Digital Tools for Qualitative Research is forthcoming from SAGE Publications. Marianne Woodside is a professor in counselor education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She teaches masters and doctoral students in counseling. Her research interests include examining the teaching and learning experience in a variety of settings.
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