Learning Communities' Dark Side: Lack of Instructors presence and surveillance

Negative Side: Lack of Instructors' surveillance:

Online learning communities are dynamic wholes (Shaffer and Anundsen cited in Palloff & Pratt, 2007) in which the way the online medium is used depends largely on humans needs. However, in online learning communities, there are rules and guidelines in order to provide participants with the safety and comfort they needed to continue in the community. It’s an Instructor’s responsibility to take into account the different situations that emerge in a community and get ready to face them.
This does not always happen. For example, many online forums are created and then in few months, they disappear. The reason is that the host is absent. Participants need to “feel” the host’s presence; as Nancy White noted: “People take their cue from you. If you participate daily, they are far more likely to follow suit. If you are invisible, they will disappear as well.”
To be an online host or facilitator (in online learning communities) demands a lot of responsibility. Facilitator or Instructor’s presence is vital to helps create an environment in which people will feel comfortable and be able to participate.
Also, students need to feel present themselves. But, in order to get to this stage, it is the job of the instructor to manage and supervise the building of the learning community from its beginning.
As we know, online learning communities are virtual, no face-to-face encounters happens (at least in a normal basis). Face to face contact is crucial to the development of social interactions that include: commitment, openness, freedom, equality etc. In online courses, members depend on each other to achieve the learning outcomes for the course. If a participant logs on to a course site and there has been no activity on it for several days, he or she may become discouraged or feel a sense of abandonment. Without support and participation there is no online learning community.
As Palloff and Pratt (2007) noted, we continue to see many distance education programs in which the instructor posts lectures and attempts to control the learning outcomes by directing and dominating the process. This is one of the reasons for the lack of student’s participation. If the instructor, for example, was posing closed questions that did not stimulate discussion or the instructor were dominating the discussion, there is no possibility for the student’s to feel motivated to participate.
It is also possible, in this kind of environment, that students look for a social connection or (lurking) instead of learning connection. It is for this reason that instructors needs to remain actively engaged in the process in order to gently guide participants who stray, coaxing them back to the learning goals of the course (Palloff & Pratt, 2007).
Instructors need to be aware of those issues, as well as the emotional and psychological issues. If a participant perceives communication to be ephemeral, the stakes of communication seem smaller. As Pallof and Pratt noted “People feel less committed to what they say, less concerned about it, and less worried about the social reception they will get…” (p.47). To avoid this, instructors must pay direct attention to community building. It helps create a foundation that supports the purpose for being there and reinforcing the creation of a safe and secure environment in which to work.

References:
Palloff, R. & Pratt, K. (2007). Building online learning communities: Effective strategies for the virtual classroom. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.