Within the nexus of
            student
            teacher
            computer
            university
            internet
I stand reflecting
            on the questions
            of teaching and learning
            wondering…
            Did I do it right?

The end of human science research for educators is a critical pedagogical competence: knowing how to act tactfully in pedagogic situations on the basis of a carefully edified thoughtfulness.  (van Manen, 1991, p. 8)

        When I began the journey, I thought that I understood what it was like to experience an on-line learning environment from my own experience and from the experiences of other students who shared a similar experience.  As I explored the phenomenon through hermeneutic phenomenological reflection, it began to deepen into unexpected twists and turns.  I began to see it from a whole new perspective, one rooted in the existentials of body, space/place, time and relations.  It was a surprise, for example, to consider the importance of the body on-line when at first glance one could say the body does not exist inside a computer screen.   Or, time began to take on a shape closely tied to interface.  Time is no longer restricted to the categories of synchronous and asynchronous, but expanded into a screen time connected to presen(t)ce.

        The insights born out of the reflective process on the phenomenon of student experiences in WCC moved me quite naturally to think about and question what it means for pedagogy.  In this chapter, I will explore some pedagogical possibilities that arose for me from the research.  How does a phenomenological look at on-line environments contribute to pedagogy?  What is the call to action that has emerged from the exploration of students’ experiences in a WCC?

        As the faculty considered my research reflections, the question emerged, “What did the students learn in the WCC?”  It became apparent that content learning was not part of the students’ description of their experience.  Why is it missing?  It is an educational environment.  Should we expect learning to occur through teaching?  While learning is implicit in student descriptions of particular conferences, particularly those discussions that engaged them, they did not describe “learning” explicitly.  They described the interactions with the faculty, with other students, their sense of time, their sense of body, their sense of the on-line space.   Perhaps, the question is one posed by faculty or administrators and not one a student would pose?  If I am an instructor for a course and charged with students learning a specific content area, I want to know at some level whether I have succeeded.

        If I ask students to describe their experience in a WCC, I am asking them to stand inside the experience and re-member it for me.  They describe the experience as it flows by them.  It is a picture that captures what was important to them--events that stand out.  Perhaps, the questions, “What did your learn?” or “Did you learn anything?” do not occur because they require the students to stand outside the experience and evaluate it rather than describe it.   What the students found valuable in their descriptions did not appear to be what they learned.  As I think about my own educational experiences, I would have to admit that when asked to describe a course for another student, I would probably not describe in detail what I had learned.  I would describe the faculty and their teaching, the books and reading materials, activities in class, the assignments, and the interactions with other students.  While I learn something in each class, it would not be explicit in any of my course descriptions unless I was asked to stand outside of the experience and evaluate my own learning.  My learning is what I take away from the class--a new understanding of an area of knowledge.  What is valuable to me is shaped by what I find interesting.  It may not be what the faculty hoped I would learn.  If I learn something different from what the faculty want me to learn, have I learned anything?

        Learning is based on either self or Other e-valuation.  Evaluate comes from the “Latin word e, from, and valere, to be strong, to be worth” (Webster’s 1979, p. 632).  Who is judging the worth?  If the students do not mention learning, would that mean they did not learn anything?  Does it mean the efforts of the faculty to teach on-line were a failure?  Or, does it mean that the research method or question did not evoke a self-evaluation of learning?  I did not ask the students if they learned anything on-line, or if the on-line environment played a role in their learning of the course material.  I did not pursue it because it was not part of their descriptions of their experiences in a WCC.  If I went back and asked the question now, what would their answers tell me about their experience in a WCC?   Would it reassure faculty that the use of an on-line environment in teaching was worthwhile?  Would it determine that the faculty failed to use the environment to support learning?  Or, would it reveal what the students found valuable and what they did not?  At this point, it is speculation.  In IET, the students were engaged in course topics in a traditional classroom, in projects, and in the WCC.  Would it even be possible to separate what they learned in the WCC?

        Integrating on-line technology into instruction is a constant process of change. Not only do the tools that have been familiar change in look and feel, but new tools are always on the horizon.  Faculty must constantly re-evaluate the technology they are using to teach.  For most faculty, the task of knowing what is available becomes quite daunting.  I can take hours to design my course around on-line activities, resources, and discussion methods that take advantage of a particular tool or collection of tools.  I not only learn the skills necessary to create and make the materials available, but I also seek to improve the interaction and collaboration between the students.  Within a year or less, new tools are developed or the old tools that I have finally begun to understand become unrecognizable with interface and functionality changes.  What is best for my course?  I am hesitant to begin again.  I have put hours into designing my materials in a particular tool.  I don’t have the time or the energy to rethink my course once more in a new on-line tool that “may” be better.   It becomes a merry-go-round faculty often may not want to start to ride.  After all, the lecture method in-class does not change--at least in method.  It is much easier to go with what you know and believe works.

        For some faculty, who embrace technology in their teaching, they become enamoured with a particular technology and believe it is the only technology to use.  They advocate its use and will not consider other forms of technology in their teaching.  In this case, they do not move with the changes, but cling to what they know, what they understand, where they have put all of their work.  They rarely consider if it is the best pedagogical tool, the experiences of their students in this environment, or the students’ experiences as a guide to their use of technology in their teaching.

        In this research study, the students used WCC.  It is a web-based bulletin board that is very limited in its capabilities.  The textual manner of interaction is not enriched with graphics or sound.  The students found themselves relying heavily on their imagination to construct the Other in discussions.  It is clear from the student experiences that they did not feel engaged in or connected to the course discussions in the WCC.  The software is frozen at a particular point in its development as well as limited in its asynchronous functionality.  The research is, therefore, frozen in the same manner.  With the rapid rate of technological change, does the study then have any value? Can I apply what I have learned in this study to other learning technologies?

        Are there technological tools that can create learning environments more engaging for students than the WCC used by the students in this study?  In other words, perhaps the issues described by students throughout the study are embedded in the inadequacies of the WCC.  Certainly, there are graphical and textual software programs that are spatial in nature.  For example, Active Worlds is a 3-D interactive graphical world that is both synchronous and asynchronous.  MOOs, Multi-User Object Oriented, and MUDs, Multi-User Domains, are types of software that create spaces through the creation of objects.  They rely predominately on synchronous communication that is textual rather than graphical.   Haynes and Holmevik (1998) describe the use and theories associated with educational MOOs in their book: High Wired: On the Design, Use, and Theory of Educational MOOs.   Would a MOO or a MUD have engaged the students more?  Certainly, it is a speculation.  What would the speculation offer?  For me, it is a call to use phenomenology as a method to explore student experiences in other on-line environments--to seek to make all on-line learning environments humane places to learn.

        The students’ entrée into the world of a computer is through an interface generated by software.  The interface is viewed on my screen.  The interface is the face that is between the computer and me.

In ancient times, the term interface sparked awe and mystery.  The archaic Greeks spoke reverently of prosopon, or a face facing another face.  Two opposite faces make up a mutual relationship.  One face reacts to the other, and the other face reacts to the other's reaction, and the other reacts to that reaction, and so on ad infinitum.  The relationship then lives on as a third thing or state of being.  The ancient term prosopon once glowed with mystic wonder.  The word suggests spiritual interactions between eternity and time.  (Heim, 1993, p. 78)

The software translates an operational machine code to a graphical interactive environment.  Computer interface worlds change with the click of mouse.  Each world is based on a functional metaphor that creates the illusion of coherence for the user.  Metaphor comes from the “Greek metaphor, a transferring to one word the sense of another, from metapherein; meta, over, and pherein, to hear” (Websters, 1979, p. 1132).  Lakoff and Johnson suggest “that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” (1980, p. 3).

        For example, the entry-level metaphor on the computer is based on a desktop.  A word processor is based on a metaphor that represents a piece of paper and icons that represent writing and graphic tools.  How is the representation of information as well as interaction between the user and the computer limited by metaphor?  The functional interfaces are designed primarily with the primacy of the individual user (Johnson, 1997).  While file spaces are accessible by more than one person, the document is limited to the editing or control of one person at a time.  How does this functional interface shape the depth of possibility in creating a collaborative environment?

        WCC is a software that resides on a server and is accessed through an Internet browser.  While some educational software depend on academic metaphors, the WCC software used by the students is based on a bulletin board metaphor.  The students post a message and wait to see if a message is posted underneath or attached to it in response.  When I post a message to a traditional bulletin board, I have to wait until someone reads my message and chooses to respond.  The bulletin board is public and communications are separated by time.  While the metaphor is simple and functionally designed for communication between people, it still remains embedded in an individual action. Does the WCC interface metaphor provide a broad enough scope for pedagogical possibilities?  Does a bulletin board metaphor provide the possibility for in depth discussions between others?  Can it promote collaboration?  What interface metaphor would create collaborative pedagogical possibilities?

        Brenda Laurel (1993) suggests Aristotle’s Poetics as a means to extend possible structures for interface design.   Turkle, using a theater metaphor, suggests we project personal dramas onto the screen.

It is computer screens where we project ourselves into our own dramas, dramas in which we are producer, director, and star.  Some of these dramas are private, but increasingly we are able to draw other people.  Computer screens are the new location for our fantasies, both erotic and intellectual.  We are using life on computer screens to become comfortable with new ways of thinking about evolution, relationships, sexuality, politics, and identity.  (Turkle, 1995, p. 26)

        Time is recast on the screen in a WCC.  The location of a message determines its presence and if it is present.  Students thought the current conversation in the WCC was located within the last two or three messages posted.   They felt it was the logical and appropriate thing to respond to these last messages.  When one considers that messages are posted in the order they are received by the server, the order is quite arbitrary within a thread or discussion.  For the students, the interface shatters the continuity of any meaningful conversation.  It is fragmented and disrupts in depth conversations.  How can we recast a collaborative learning environment to focus on the quality and the interconnection of the conversation rather than its location on a timeline?

        The interface is the key to the ease of collaboration and interactivity in a WCC.  If I can not understand what I see on the screen, I can not interact with my computer.  It is almost as if there is a foreign language on the screen.  If you do not know the language, you can not “speak” to the computer.  How does an interface welcome students to “Be-in” a computer-generated space?

At the level of the individual, it is proper to speak about one or more intellectual intelligences, or human intellectual proclivities, that are part of our birthright.  These intelligences may be thought of in neurobiological terms.  Human beings are born into cultures that house a large number of domains--disciplines, crafts, and other pursuits in which one can become enculturated and then be assessed in terms of the level of competence one has attained….  During socialization, intercourse occurs principally between the individual and the domains of culture.  But once one achieves a certain competence, the field becomes important.  The field--a sociological construct--includes people, institutions, award mechanisms, and so forth that render judgements abut the qualities of individual performances.  (Gardner, 1993,  pp. xvi-xviii)

        Gardner, by choosing to emphasize cognition, may be privileging his view of learning.  For example, Gardner does not mention taste or smell as an intelligence.  The bodily-kinesthetic intelligence represents bodily motions and the ability to handle objects.  It does not represent a bodily knowing.  Gardner also does not seem to capture an intuitive or global wholistic knowing.  How are these different from his intelligences?  Are they intelligences?  If not, why?

        The concept of intelligences or learning styles (or preferences) has posed important pedagogical questions.  Do faculty teach from their perferred or developed intelligences?  Our culture places a stronger emphasis on the development of verbal and mathematical intelligences; how does that shape learning for students who have strengths in the other intelligences?  In an on-line environment, what pedagogical challenges do multiple intellligences pose for faculty and students?

        In my exploration of students’ experiences in a WCC, body and spatial themes are common.  It is possible to map support of the intelligences from the students’ descriptions of their experiences in a WCC.  Since the WCC is textual and on a screen, the visual and linguistic intelligences are supported in the environment.  The verbal aspect of the linguistic intelligence is experienced as if it were aural.  The web-based graphical nature of the navigational system incorporates spatial intelligence.  Musical intelligence is not supported in this version of the WCC software.  There is no sound.  Logical-mathematical intelligence is supported through logic and problem solving.  Problems and ethical tensions within schools offer the ground within this program to stimulate this intelligence.  Personal intelligences, both inter- and intra- personal are supported in a WCC through dialog and reflection.  The on-line environment requires the interactions to be textual and asynchronous.  The students struggle with the delays in time between connections in conversations.  Are the intelligences supported differently on-line than in the classroom?  What is missing?

        Students’ descriptions of the body in a WCC include all the senses metaphorically except taste and smell.  What is there about taste and smell that would be absent, even in metaphoric terms, from an on-line environment?  Perhaps it is because the discussion  topics were not about food or tasks (e.g., chemistry) that would require a sharp sense of smell or taste?  Or, perhaps it is because smell and taste are difficult to describe?  Perhaps, taste and smell require physical intimacy that is not perceived on-line?  The on-line environment is textual (and therefore verbal or linguistic) and relies on this form of description to communicate.  Perhaps, smell and taste are not perceived as an important component to help students understand course materials?  Perhaps, it is all of these things? What role do smell and taste play in our experiences?  What pedagogical gaps do the absence of these senses expose?  What pedagogic importance could these senses have?  If I were blind, would taste and smell be more important in my learning process?  Could I include taste and smell within an on-line environment?

        What does it mean to “be-in” a place?  When we interact with the computer there is a sense of being both here and there (Levy, 1998).  I am here in front of my computer; and yet I am engrossed in surfing the Internet.  I am there inside the computer moving with each link from place to place.  Students rarely felt they were “in” the WCC.  They sat in front of their computers and either read messages or printed them out to be read later.  The interaction in the WCC was more of an interaction between me, my computer, and the WCC.  Students rarely felt a sense of involvement to the extent they forgot they were sitting in front of their computer.  How do we create learning environments on-line that invite students to “be-in?”

        I know that I am in a place because I sense my body to be there. Merleau-Ponty (1964) suggests that the body can be anywhere that I can imagine it to be.  The more senses that I engage in an on-line activity, the more I can imagine my body to be there.  Students had a strong visual sense of the text and occasionally could connect an image of a face to a name.  Faces can be captured through pictures of each student.  If I make them available when their name is clicked it would help the students to connect with the Other.  Sound is another important connection for students to recognize a person.  If I can hear the voice of the person who has typed the message in a WCC, I would have a better sense of the person through tone, phrasing and inflection.  Since sound has a present quality, what I can hear the voice of the other students in my imagination, they are more present to me.  While sound technology still has problems in file size, messages left in a WCC in text and audio files would make the discussions more engaging and personable.  I feel more like I am right there, in the WCC, talking to a person.  Touch, smell and taste are difficult to reproduce in a WCC.  Yet they add important sensual qualities of presence to a conversation.  The more sensual the connection with the other, the easier it is for me to enter in to the WCC and join the person in a conversation.  How can I enhance the image of the Other using all of the senses?

        When I think of being drawn into a textual environment, I can’t help but think of a good autobiography or narrative that captures the life of a person.  I find myself there, living their experiences throughout the book as I read it.   I become so involved that I forget my physical body for periods of time and live in my imaginary body.  The narrative with its rich sensual description grounds me in a place.  Without a place, my imagination could not connect to the Other in the text.  There is no imaginative bridge for my body to move.

        In the academic environment, we have left little room for students’ stories.  We engulf our students in the content--leaving little time to get to know them and to build a course place.  They almost become objects--skin and bone shells who are receptacles for our content.  Students, when given the opportunity, will tell their stories to anyone who leaves them a safe place to share.  They come alive when they relate those things that move them.  Their descriptions are often sensual and very descriptive.  I find myself transported to the places they describe.  We gather there in the story, in a place.

        Even if a WCC interface is designed to be pedagogically supportive, it can only provide a space to begin.  I can walk through a building and feel its boundaries and physical spaces, but it does not make it a home--a place I feel I can be.  What makes a building into a home?  A class-room is just a space.  I can line up the chairs and stand in front--making deposits in my students and taking withdrawals out periodically--checking to see if the “content” deposit was entered into their “knowledge” accounts.  Or, I can encircle the chairs to encourage an open and sharing environment.   Either way, I turn the class-room space into a pedagogical possibility where it is not the space but a place where students gather together to learn. Is the class-room the best “interface” for learning?  Should we adopt a class-room metaphor as the interface for an on-line learning environment?  Does it promote the collaboration and interaction--a learning community--striving to understand?   What makes a WCC more than a space; what makes it a place where students come to gather to learn and grow together?

        The Greeks understood that a place, chora, is a receptacle for the sensory experience and the seat of phenomenon-- a feminine and nurturing concept.  A place unifies the physical and the moral, a location of shapes, powers and feelings.  I am part of a place physically and emotionally.  It is part of my lived-experience--part of my story.  My story becomes part of place through the collective myth.   A collective story that captures the sensuous feel and energy of a place.  It names the depth of a place, and makes it recognizable as a collective.  How is a myth created?  Does it begin with a single story and include the stories of others until the story of the place is created?  Or is the community story created in a gathering that re-members a common experience?

        While topos is the location of a place, chora is the essence of a place.  In a WCC, topos is the software shell, the possibility for creating a pedagogical place, while chora creates a pedagogical environment of care.  How does space and place shape student learning?  How do students perceive their bodies in a place?  Does their perception of their bodies rely on Other?  Do students need a place to understand the world and their place in it?  How do we create a chora in a WCC?  How do we build a collective myth to describe an electronic place whose reality is dependent on an interface representation of electronic signals?  Where do we start?

        If we take a cue from the Greeks, a collective myth captures a physical and sensuous feel and energy of a place.  A sense of the place and community is tied to its collective story.  In a WCC, students begin in a space that is devoid of community.  It is an empty shell.   As students begin to share their experiences, the community begins to take shape.  Students begin to weave connections between other students, the faculty (if they include their stories), and the course material as it becomes meaningful.  Myths are multi-layered.  They are containers that hold the community’s reflection of itself.  The myth is firmly embedded in the socio-cultural context.   The community gathers together in a place constructed from its stories.  Is it possible to build a community myth and therefore a place to gather in a WCC?  How would myth-making shape the learning process in a WCC?

A conversation may start off as a mere chat, and in fact this is usually the way that conversations come into being.  But then, when gradually a certain topic of mutual interest emerges, and the speakers become animated by the notion to which they are now oriented, a true conversation comes into being.  A conversation is structured as a triad. There is a conversational relation between the speakers, and the speakers are involved in a conversational relation with the notion or phenomenon that keeps the personal relation of the conversation intact….  The conversation has a hermeneutic thrust: it is oriented to sense-making and interpreting or the notion that drives and stimulates the conversation.  (van Manen, 1990, p. 98)

The third and final type of conversation is discussion.  In the discussion, we have one person who starts as the sender and multiple receivers.  While it is important that all receivers take turns as senders, in the discussion the initial sender still usually maintains control of the conversation. (Shank & Cunningham, 1996, p. 29)

        In the IET WCC, the conferences varied in the methods applied to student discussions.  For example, the “pop culture” discussion was open-ended and loosely structured, while the epistemology discussion was tightly structured where students were required to make four 250-word posts to the WCC space.  How does the structure of the assignment determine the discourse and the interaction between students on-line?

        A return to the Body Matrix section is helpful to consider how students experience information in a WCC.  The dominance of sound as one of the body metaphors used to describe student experiences suggests students understand the exchanges between students as informal conversations.  They become engaged in the discussion when they can imagine the Others’ “voice” and “hear” them “speaking.”   Students shift to visual metaphors of reading and writing when they objectify the sense of person into written, textual pieces.  They “read” the text not “hear” the “voice” of the Other.  A text can be printed out.  When responses become long, what is said becomes text--a paper to read.

       Students in the epistemology conference viewed the assignment like a mini-paper where they were required to demonstrate they understood the topic of epistemology as it applied to authority.  The discourse of a paper is very different from a conversation.  For a paper, the discourse follows a formal writing structure that is evaluated not only on its content, but on rules of writing.  Writing is not interactive.  I write something for evaluation, not for discussion.  I begin with a thesis statement and argue a position.  A conversation does not begin with a conclusion, but moves through the ideas between those involved in the conversation.  The conversation moves to make sense of the topic of conversation.  The epistemology conference was not interactive.  Students performed for the faculty.  They waited for comments on their papers and defended or adjusted their writing based on faculty evaluative responses.  The conversation never deepened beyond their initial positions.  By the nature of the formal structure of the conference, students did not engage one another in the topic.  In essence, there was no discussion because it was not a conversation.

        The pop culture discussion was more informal in its structure.  Students discussed the ideas that interested or engaged them in the topic.  The structure encouraged conversation.  There was a give and take that moved with student discussion without a forgone conclusion.  The students interacted with one another exploring the topic. Students were interested if they had been “heard” by both faculty and other students.  Did their ideas make sense?

        In the classroom, good discussions occur when students are engaged in the material and struggle back and forth with each other to understand a topic.  There is the sense that there is no pat answer.  The faculty often guide students within the topic if they veer into misconceptions, but the discussion has its own momentum.  How do we create discussions?  What structures stifle discussions?  How would these structures compare to an on-line environment?   How do faculty create environments that encourage students to discuss a topic and create a deeper understanding to the material?  How does the type of discourse contribute to the interactions and the collaborations on-line?

        The IET goals of empowering teachers to reform their school quite naturally comes into tension with student evaluation or assessment.  The students and the faculty are embedded within the account-ability structures within the university.  In an effort to broaden the view of evaluation, the faculty of IET created “targets of quality” based on ideas from the Total Quality movement.  These targets are a matrix of five areas and three levels of understanding against which the faculty invite teachers to assess their own work.  Faculty assess students’ work by using these targets.  They write copious notes on all students’ work.  Assessment is seen as a process of continuous improvement.  Did the students have the actual power to evaluate their own work in IET?  While the students could reflect on their own assignments and assess their own work, IET faculty grade them.  Is there a way for faculty and students to stand outside the power relationships that evaluation imposes on the faculty-student relationship?

        Students felt watched by the faculty on-line.  For the students the faculty were always present even though their actual “presence” on-line may have been minimal in terms of concrete responses.  Why did they feel watched?  Within our structure of education, faculty are expected to evaluate student work and grade it.  This act of judging, standing outside the student work and measuring it against a set of criteria, left students with the impression they were being watched.  If I am being judged for my performance in a task, it leads me to “perform” based on what I understand the criteria or “script” to be.  If I respond in a manner that is scripted, is it possible for me to feel truly free to contribute?  How do faculty shift the impression of watching to one of freedom to converse or discuss in the WCC?

        Most on-line systems offer a way to track students in a WCC.  In IET, one of the faculty created a system that automatically counted the participation of the students.  It did not count the number of times the students entered the WCC space, but counted the number of times they posted a message.   At first, the students did not know they were being monitored by the computer.  When the faculty member showed the results to the class with names and numbers of responses posted, the students were upset and felt like their space had been invaded.  It is understandable that the students felt they were always being watched, because they were!  Given the moral frame of IET, was it moral to “count” the students without letting them know?  This action reinforces a technical education model and begins to shape the messages posted.  Do the students only participate when they post or are they part of a class when they enter the space and only read the messages?  If membership in an on-line community is based on the number of times a person posts, what is the appropriate number of times the faculty should post?  Is there a number of times faculty should post to each student?  With the emphasis on number, can we escape the technical model?

        IET did not use the computer record of postings to evaluate the students.  It was used to encourage participation and highlight student account-ability to the discussion space.  If participation is not evaluated, the student account-ability becomes an intrinsic, not extrinsic motivation.  Is there a pedagogical orientation that will shift student motivation from extrinsic (grades) to intrinsic (community response-ability)?  Does the existence of evaluation within an educational program inhibit the formation of the community?

        If you ask most educators who are using on-line methods as part of their courses what stimulates students to participate in discussion spaces, they will tell you that on-line participation must be tied in a substantive way to a reward--which often translates into an impact on their grade.  If I build a discussion space on-line to enrich my students’ experience of the course topics, they will not come without an extrinsic reward.  Does that mean they do not value the on-line space?  Is it an argument for eliminating on-line components from courses?  In my own experience, I would have to say, “no.”  Students today have lives filled with demands on their time.  I suspect if they could pass a course without attending class, the attendance in many classes would be small.  What is it that motivates students to be part of a learning community?  How can education reward students for learning intrinsically--motivated by values that not only include personal interest and growth, but extend into a response-ability to the community?  How do we shift an educational system from watching to response-ability, from extrinsic to intrinsic motivated values, from power-over to power-with?   How do we transform watching into caring (Heidegger, 1962/1952)?

A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo. … Between things does not designate a localizable relation going from one thing to the other and back again, but a perpendicular direction, a transversal movement that sweeps one and the other away, a stream without beginning or end that undermines its banks and picks up speed in the middle.  (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987, p. 25)

        During my experiences in a web environment, I was struck by how sensory the representation of experience could be.  Background and objects can be covered with textures that draw the viewer to touch the surface.  I can almost feel the surface of the rice paper that offers a web page background.  I can hear the radio or a CD through the speakers of my computer.  With the right software, my sister and I can converse over the internet as if we were on the telephone.  I can use the tapes carefully recorded from conversation with students and put them in a file for others to hear on the web.  Video clips can also be digitized and offer glimpses of a situation or context as interactions.  Smell and taste still are not possible on-line, but researchers are scrambling to find ways to make them part of our on-line experiences.

        A natural leap for me was to consider ways to represent the lived-experience going beyond the confines of textual conventions.  Hypermedia allows me to create a spatial description of experiences that offers a variety of the senses linked and folding back upon themselves like a hermeneutic circle. Each piece offers a facet or perspective of the experience.  How does one weave graphics, text, sound, animation, and touch together to reveal the essence of a lived experience?  How does one layer these representations where they inter-relate and maintain their integrity in and of themselves?   How does this multifaceted spatial environment reveal the lived experience differently than a text environment?  Does it give me new insights into the experience?  Does this manner of writing transform phenomenological writing? How would what it reveals be different form a textual interpretation?

        The complexity of linking and layering a rhizomic interpretation of an experience is challenging both for the researcher and the reader who will construct meaning from the work.  How does one create an environment where it is possible to build a sense of coherence from the pieces?  How does it change the relationship between the researcher and the conversations with the participants in the research?
 While the interaction was limited in the prototype, I linked HyperNews (web-base bulletin board) to each element in the prototype.  It gave the committee and those logged into the dissertation a chance to discuss each on-line element.  It opens the possibility of collaborative phenomenological writing where the text takes on a collective life.  It could be used to have ongoing discussions with students in the refinement of the experiences.  Interpretive submissions could be part of the overall dissertation or phenomenological piece.

        Growing a web-based rhizome that interprets lived experience offers phenomenologists a method for representing the rich interpretive work and alternative way of “seeing” the phenomenon.  It frees our view of the everyday in the same manner that a metaphor or an etymology can be freeing.  At present, this form of representation is in its infancy.  While I don’t believe that this method of “writing” will replace the textual interpretation that is the convention for those who use this method for research, I believe that it will grow as the hypermedia capabilities of the Web dominate our communication with one another.

        The pedagogical reflections in this chapter are only a beginning.  The biggest challenge to educators in an on-line environment is to find ways to involve students in the environment and help them build a sense of community that encourages interaction.  Since we make meaning of the world as a social interaction (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Weick, 1979), we must find ways to build bridges to one another on-line.  Student narratives woven in and through the course can build a sense of place where students can gather as a community.  In this gathering, students will feel like they are in the place and capable of then interacting in a meaningful way with the other students in this place.  However, we must also re-consider the interface metaphors that we use to enable communities to form.  New collaborative metaphors need to be considered which enrich the pedagogical possibilities of the space.  We must continue to reflect upon our on-line pedagogy and the pedagogy of the interface and ask the question, “Did we do this right?”