Interface Time
Time
stops and starts
with
the click of a mouse.
Your message
becomes present
on the screen
from a dwelling place of past
waiting…
like a letter
posted
piled
in a stack
of unread.
Time is, therefore, not a real process, not an actual succession that I am content to record. It arises from my relation to things. Within things themselves, the future and the past are in a kind of eternal state of pre-existence and survival, the water which will flow by tomorrow is at this moment at its source, the water which has just passed is not a little further down stream in the valley. What is past or future for me is present in the world. (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 412)Time only has meaning in relationship between. It is tied to my experience with a thing. I experience things in the present. They are present for me. Re-membering the past presents memories in a new present context--they are reshaped in the present. The future is a projection of the relationship to things outward into time as if it exists in the present. My present is a point of view or anchor in which I make sense of the process of life changing about me. It is embedded in my body.
Time is located in a WCC and determined by my relationship with the interface that appears upon my computer screen. It is the thing with which I have a relation. Time is embedded within screen time constrained by the structure of the WCC interface. Time starts when a student enters the WCC, “it starts at the message that you stopped, the last message that you read” (Emma). The WCC interface controls time like an on and off switch controls a light. Students have control of time’s movement. They can “take time” to reflect before they respond.
They [students] have time [in WCC] to be thoughtful, reflect, think about it, do some outside research if that's what they want. (Helen)For some students, this opportunity to stop and reflect before they respond is not available to them in a traditional classroom. They are plunged into the immediacy of response within the classroom. They compete with those who feel at home in the quick repartee that develops in classroom discussions. They are terrorized when the professor calls on them to respond to a particular point in class.It [WCC] gives you time to think over what you want to say. For me, that was just the best thing about this thing. As long as it wasn't too long, I could actually think about how I was going to respond or reply, because I'm not one who thinks too well on his feet. (James)
The WCC interface is an asynchronous space. Asynchronous comes from “the Greek a, privative (not), syn, with, and chronos, time. It means without coincidence in time; not synchronous” (Webster’s, 1979, p. 117). To “not-be-with-time” suggests time without person in relation to a thing. In a WCC, my voice is not heard or my response is not read until other students’ positions--has a relationship--to the response within their time stream. Students can enter the space at any time of the day or night and respond to one another. Rarely, if at all, would students be in the WCC at the same time.
It's not that somebody literally butted in on the computer, but we could all be putting in comments at the exact same time. They kind of got by the luck of the draw into the computer--filtered in some how. (Martha)The computer posts messages to the WCC in the order that they are received. Other than threading the discussions by topic, the order of the “conversation” is arbitrary. How does time influence conversation and the connection to other?
The relationship to time and the present is determined by my relationship to the WCC spaces and student responses as they “present” themselves on my screen.
There seemed to be levels of immediacy. Like the most immediate is when you're on the screen contributing to the conversation. Less immediate or still in the conference is when you have contributed but aren't in it at this moment. Not being in it is having not posted anything at all. (Helen)For Helen, immediacy and being present is personal. Helen is most present when she is on-line contributing to the discussion. How can other be immediate or present in an asynchronous space?
The WCC interface also uses the convention of marking all new messages posted to the conference with a “new” graphic. It is like going to the mail box and finding a pile of mail. All of it is new since the last time you went to the box. Which one do you choose to read? Do you read the one on top, the most immediate? Or, do you sort through the mail and decide to open the most interesting first? Or, do you systematically go through your mail? Students in a WCC have similar choices. Do they start reading from the last message that is posted to the WCC (the most current or new)? Or, do they start to read where they left off when they entered the conference last? Or, do they read those messages whose subject title looks the most interesting? How does one decide what is most immediate?
With this asynchronous space, student responses are organized in a linear fashion based on the conference discussion space, the level of reply, and the time the message is received by the WCC computer. Students enter the WCC home page, click on their class group, click on the conference topic and are then presented with a list of messages arranged by date. How does the WCC interface influence time for students?
They were even numbered. For instance, there was a number that went to the conference, like it might have been conference six. The first response in conference six would be six point one and then there would be a date and a time. The next one would be six point two. So it was numerically sequenced and time sequenced. (James)The sequencing in a linear fashion imposes a sense of time and order upon the responses. This linearity and the time it produces dictates the conversational flow.
The conference sites were all linear, linear over time. Whereas you might have five or six people around a conference table physically, the conversations might be going various ways. The conferencing it's just like time. If you miss something, you're out of the conversation. You're little comment back here four days ago, might no longer apply. Or if you want to comment about something the person that commented about your comment, three days ago, that might just be completely out of context from the last comment. There seem to be sort of some tacit rules in place that you should link, at least for me anyway, I always thought that if you're gonna get on there, that you should at least say something about what the person said right before you. (James)Past is determined by the date and location in a sequence of messages. The interface determines the temporal clues for students. Interfaces are designed based on the experiences of the designers within the culture. Our conventional format for understanding written material is book, page, paragraph, and sentence. We read from right to left, top to bottom. As I read a text, I have the sense of time passing. It is this linear movement of reading that establishes my relation to time within the text. I will even estimate the time it will take to read a book by scanning the number of pages I have left to read. The linear presentation of book is represented in the WCC space. It is the structure that offers a bridge to an experience of time.
It’s [WCC] structured like a book. You have a page here. You even go to page two and each message was just a part of the page. It would seem to me that each message was its own page. You expected everything to fall like this, this, and this. They’re all like paragraphs going together. (James)The interface creates the artificial structure of time in a WCC.
Our experience of place, position and so on depends on what we call natural interface. The body is, for example, a natural interface, and therefore we have a natural approach to space and time. Our interpretation of the media is experienced through natural interfaces. Our senses and organs are channeled and mediated by an ideology of naturality, neglecting the artificiality of the media. But the media of our time presents us with an artificial interface. According to Weibel, when McLuhan defined media as an extension of man, he just missed calling it an artificial extension. In this artificial media space, the basic issue is how to construct space and time artificially. (Grizinic, 2000, p. 219)The interface offers the environment for processing the present. If the interface structure changed from linear book, would it alter students’ sense of time? Would it change how they relate to one another and the conversation within a WCC?
Screen Time
On my screen
time
is present
immediately
available
visual.
Off the screen
past
hidden
waiting
in the back
invisible.
Time
is location
on my screen.
It is my ‘field of presence’ in the widest sense--this moment that I spend working, with, behind it, the horizon of the day that has elapsed, and, in front of it, the evening and the night--that I make contact with time, and learn to know its course. The remote past has also its temporal order, and its position in time in relation to my present, but it has these in so far as it has been present itself, that it has been ‘in its time’ traversed by my life, and carried forward to this moment when I call up the remote past, I reopen time, and carry myself back to a moment in which I still had before it a future horizon now closed, and a horizon of the immediate past which is today remote. Everything, therefore, causes me to revert to the field of presence as the primary experience in which time and its dimensions make their appearance unalloyed with intervening distance and with absolute self-evidence. (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, p. 415)The “field of presence” is my present. Presence means to be present. The Latin root praesse, to be present, refers to both the temporal sense of present as well as to make present, to place before (Webster’s, 1979). It is a figure-ground relationship where to-be-present is the focal point of my attention. The screen offers me a window into digital worlds that are present and tied to what I can see. It frames my perspective and my view. Through this framing my sense of time is shaped.
As I was typing in something and I would look to see what somebody else was saying at present or as I read it, it was like, "oh, that's really gone beyond me! Okay, I'm going to put this in anyway. Maybe somebody will remember, “Oh, it connects to that way back there." There is a sense of time in it. (Martha)The location of an item on the screen can determine a sense of time. Words and images that appear on my screen are the most present. When I have to scroll to see words located below the immediate screen, I am moving toward a future sense of words that are already there, but not yet read. The words I have read scroll out of view and become past. The present remains what I can see on my screen. The past is off the screen. It is back.
It's different on-line and how we perceive time. It's not how much time it takes you to read the messages because it's just scrolling back is the same amount. It's just like a wave of the time. (Martha)
I would go back a couple more times to see if someone in the second or third posting had gone back and said something about it. Once there had been say three postings, I would know that once it was off the screen, I knew it was in oblivia. (Helen)For one student, the action of scrolling through the messages gave her a sense of permanency on the screen.
On the screen, it [the message] sits there until you scroll and you can scroll back and it's still there. The screen gives more permanence to it. (Martha)When I shut off my computer, I can no longer view the message. But when I turn on my computer and the screen, all I have to do is log into the WCC and I will find the message is still there. It is permanent as long as it resides on the WCC computer. It is only as permanent as the computer and the decisions to keep the information located on the computer. The messages are representations of digital coding. The representations themselves are as transitory as the electrical flow that animates my computer and screen. It is this static view of the messages that gives them a feeling of permanency. Permanent comes from “the Latin per-, through and manere, to remain” (Webster’s, 1979, p. 1336). What makes something permanent? Has our sense of what is permanent changed with our digital age?
Location on the screen has another time sense for students in a WCC. The interface in a WCC is linear and messages in the discussions are organized according to the time they are received by the WCC computer. Those messages received last by the computer are considered as the most current by the students. They become the location of the current conversation. Other messages posted earlier than the first two or three are considered past. To respond to these earlier messages are perceived by students as interrupting the flow of the conversation. It is important to note that ten messages or more could be received by the WCC computer at the same time and the order they are posted is arbitrary. The top two or three messages may be totally unrelated and rarely represent an interrelated discussion.
No, not all of the messages were past. The one or two or three just before what I'm putting in, they're still kind of almost present. (Martha)Why do students interpret the last two or three messages in a WCC space as the present portion of the discussion? If they were presented differently on the screen, would students sense of current conversation change?There's sort of an unspoken etiquette that you should respond to that last one and not to earlier messages. Nothing was ever laid down in rules, but it was almost like that's the way it should be. I can't speak for everyone else, perhaps this is my own perception, that it would be like disrespectful to ignore the most recent comment. (James)
You know, if you had 10 new [messages] and you posted, you were the last one and then somebody posted a question new and everybody responded to that one per se then you're not remembering what happened earlier unless the conversation is still going along. We never had one good conversation that went along. It was very segmented. It was like a bunch of people talking in a room all at the same time. You know, you're walking around between conversations. That's how I felt. (Sally)
Messages when clicked on or selected are taken from the past or outside of the linear order and fill the screen. When a message fills the screen, when it becomes the focal point on the screen, it is present.
Presence is on the screen. Yeah, it's on the screen. It's what you're seeing right now. (Helen)What is there in the appearance on the screen that gives something presence? Perhaps, it is the sense of immediacy we have when we view something? When I view something, I am located in the position of here, in my body. Here is tied to the present.
There seemed to be levels of immediacy. Like the most immediate is when you're on the screen contributing to the conversation. Less immediate or still in the conference is when you have contributed but aren't in it at this moment. Not being in it is having not posted anything at all. (Helen)The present for Helen is when she is on the screen contributing to the conversation. For Merleau-Ponty, the existence of time is dependent on the personal experience of the present.
Time exists for me only because I am situated in it, that is, because I become aware of myself as already committed to it, because the whole of being is not given to me incarnate, and finally because one sector of being is so close to me that it does not even make up a picture before me--I cannot see it, just as I cannot see my face. Time exists for me because I have a present. (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 423)Real Time
The words
appear
on my screen
as a stream
now
present
immediate.
It is as if you
are
here
speaking.
The distance evaporates
in the immediacy.
Time exists for me only because I am situated in it, that is, because I become aware of myself as already committed to it, because the whole of being is not given to me incarnate, and finally because one sector of being is so close to me that it does not even make up a picture before me--I cannot see it, just as I cannot see my face. Time exists for me because I have a present. (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 423)Since time is dependent on my situation within it, can it be anything but “real” time. What would not be “real” time? Can time be artificial since it is always embedded within the situation I find myself?
Language virtualizes a “real time” that holds the living captive in the here and now. In doing so it opens up the past, the future, and time in general as a realm unto itself, a dimension with a consistency of its own. Through the creation of language, we now inhabit a virtual space--temporal flux taken as a whole--that the immediate present only partially and fleetingly actualizes….Time itself bifurcates in the direction of the internal temporalities of language: the time of narrative, the endogenous rhythm of music or dance…. Questions, problems, and hypotheses bore holes in the here and now to end up in the virtual world on the other side of the mirror, somewhere between time and eternity. (Levy, 1998, pp. 91-93)“Virtual” is juxtaposed against “real.” Real is tied to my lived experience in the present--the now. What is the difference between what is real and what is virtual?
The word "virtual" is derived from the Medieval Latin virtualis, itself derived from virtus, meaning strength or power. In scholastic philosophy, the virtual is that which has potential rather than actual existence. The virtual tends toward actualization, without undergoing any form of effective or formal concretization. The tree is virtually present in the seed. Strictly speaking, the virtual should not be compared with the real but the actual, for virtuality and actuality are merely different ways of being. (Levy, 1998, p. 23)In the Oxford English Dictionary (1989), virtual is described as an essence or effect that is not "formally or actually; admitting of being called by the name so far as the effect or result is concerned" (p. 674). Virtual is something that has reality through observed effects. The word suggests distance, remoteness, disconnectedness. To reflect on time automatically puts the reflection of time in the virtual. Is it possible to become disconnected from time when I am always situated within it? It is almost as if there are two layers of time: the time I am immersed in and experience, and my reflections on time as it is lived in the situation.
Each moment is not separate from one another or isolated from everything else. Like the seconds, minutes, hours of clock time, each moment brings together multiple layers of time and experience. (Laidlaw & Sumara, 2000, p. 9)“Real” time on-line refers to a direct connection “between” students. They are connected over space and collected together in a time that is simultaneous. Distance is collapsed through telepresence.
The projection of the image of the body is generally associated with the notion of telepresence. But telepresence is always something more than just a projection of an image. The telephone, for example, already functions as a telepresence device. It does not merely convey an image or a representation of the voice, it carries that voice. The telephone separates voice (the audible body) from the tangible body and transmits it to a remote location. My tangible body is here, my audible body, doubled, is both here and there. (Levy, 1998, p. 39)What is missing in the extension of myself or other as telepresence? Am I or other objectified in the projection from there?Today, after more than a century of electronic technology we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. (McLuhan, 1964, p. 3)
Telepresence is a representation of a distance thing.
It indicates a sense in which the Internet can enable distance things to be brought near to us, such a “bringing near” invariably suffers from a certain “attenuation” in the interaction it makes possible. Things may be brought near visually, though a computer screen, through a mouse, through a set of speakers, but the things are not brought “near” in the way that the computer screen, the mouse or the set of speakers are themselves near. For an Internet user sitting at her keyboard, the keyboard, along with the computer screen and all the other equipment in her immediate vicinity, is present to her--is there--in a way that what is presented on the computer screen is not. (Malpas, 2000, p. 114)A representation of a thing can never be the thing itself. My interaction is based on my experiences with the concrete of my here body world. Can representation be confused with the thing itself? Levy (1998) suggests I am both here and there when I am telepresent. Does this mean that it is possible for me to be simultaneously real and representation? If so, how does it shape the perception of who-I-am for other who only sees me as representation? Wilson (2000) examines these relationships in terms of proximal experience/agency and mediated experience/agency as it relates to veridical or truth and nonveridical of experience.
| verdical | nonverdical | |
| proximal | ordinary perception | hallucination, illusion |
| mediated | telerobotic perception | telefictive experience |
Wilson understands proximal and mediated experience to lie on a continuum. Telefictive experience, “as far as its psychological effects and (to some degree) its moral significance are concerned, lies on a continuum with ordinary, veridical, proximal experience” (2000, p. 79). A telerobotic or mediated perception “is the experience of a real event or object that is not proximal; mediated agency is action on a real object over a distance. Telefictive experience is the experience of objects that do not exist and events that have not occurred and for action on and in the midst of such things” (p. 79). The bulk of experience for students in an on-line environment is telerobotic. This does not rule out telefictive devices to represent oneself on-line.
Students communicate with text typed into the synchronous, real-time, space. The words are sent when they press the enter key on their keyboard. Within seconds, the words appear amongst the words posted by other students. With the immediacy of the words, time has a “live” quality. It is more like an informal phone conversation than a letter. This conversational quality has led synchronous on-line environments to be called “Chats.”
Time in the chat [synchronous on-line discussion]--and I will say it was talking in a chat. It was like carrying out a conversation on the telephone. (Emma)In this synchronous on-line environment, the students have the ability to immediately respond. This immediacy gives them the perception they are more accurately portraying themselves to other.
It’s the immediacy of the response. By choosing words that are true to you. I don’t use the five-dollar SAT words in my everyday talk. (Helen)Immediacy is a signal that this conversation is more “real” than one that is in a WCC asynchronous space; but am I represented more authentically in the present? For students, time projects a distance on what is perceived as real or true. A person is less “present” and therefore also seems to have less presence. The words are past, they have left behind a shadow self.When you chat, it is your immediate thought--more in tune to your true self. (Sally).
“Present” time is tied by the students to the immediacy of a feedback. The other is able to respond to me within the “here” of the present.
The conversation [in a WCC] would be more fluid if it was done in real time. That would be ideal because of the immediate feedback. (James)
Chatting gets things answered quicker. (Martha)In an asynchronous WCC space, the students wait for answers and clarifications that may never come. Student experiences in classrooms of immediate feedback in discussions are missing in the extension of time that occurs in a WCC. The time is artificially constructed by the WCC interface. The discussions are not “real” in WCC. They do not bridge a sense of presence in time in the same manner that telephone and “chat” environments can. For Sally, “Time generates distance.” Do students need a combination of synchronous and asynchronous environments to feel a balance of time on-line? Does the dependence on asynchronous time in this WCC space skew for students a sense of presence of the Other? How much do I know of the Other in a mediated environment?You can question tone and get an immediate response. (Sally)
Relevant
Sorting
sifting
searching
for meaning
amongst
the deluge
of information…
How do I know?
What do I want to know?
What should I choose?
Where should I go?
Should it be…
appropriate??
guided by pre-determined social rules?
Should it be…
timely??
guided by the date associated with the words?
Should it be…
interest??
guided by my own questions?
What is relevant?
Relevant is from the “Latin word relevans, to lift up again, to relieve. It means to have bearing upon to the matter at hand; to the point; pertinent; applicable” (Websters, 1979, p. 1526). Relieve is from the “Latin word relevare; re-, again and levare, to raise, from levis, light. It means to ease; to lighten; to give aid or assistance; to make less tedious or monotonous” (Websters, 1979, p. 1526). Relevance is tied to a particular context and what is considered appropriate or applicable within that context. It is embedded within a temporal situation. What strategies do students use in a WCC to find aid and assistance or relief from the tedium of information overload?
Relevancy for several students is tied to their sense of timeliness.
It's almost like, what's the point of reading a newspaper that's three weeks old. I'm interested in today's. It was more current--more relevant. (Helen)Each student uses an analogy to describe a sense of timeliness or relevance. For Helen and Sally, relevancy is time bound--the most current messages are relevant. Sally suggests that once time has passed, the person who posted the message is probably not even interested in or connected to the topic. James describes relevancy as the survival of the fittest idea. If your idea gets buried under a heap of messages, it becomes extinct. If no one responds to your message when it is originally posted, it will be forgotten. How can faculty build timeliness into WCC spaces for students? What strategies can be used in these on-line environments where students experience the relevance rather than the extinction of their ideas?It was almost like a talking bulletin board. You could go there like any college bulletin board and read a message and think how interesting. It could have been there for years because nobody cleans that bulletin board off. You go to respond to that person and you get those little tear off number sheets at the bottom and that person doesn't live there anymore or there's not that number. It's tidbits of information that could really be interesting. You could pick and choose, but yet the ones you choose might not always be accessible. It [the message posted in the WCC] is not relevant to that person anymore. (Sally)
Ideas fight for survival and they are replicated. They mutate too. It's an interesting analogy [with Darryl Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene]. It's not necessarily that there's a clear-cut connection between genes and ideas, but it's certainly an intellectually stimulating analogy. And so, I would use that analogy to describe my feeling of [how in WCC] the ideas get buried and that whoever's got the real hot idea, it gets sort of replicated and discussed about in the Web page and your idea becomes sort of extinct. (James)
Well, I think it depends if it's relevant or not. I mean, it seems that way when you start to read it and sometimes it’s like, "that isn't what they were talking about!" And you go back one more [message] which was relevant to the topic. (Sally)For Sally, relevancy is tied to what is appropriate and to the point of the conversation in the WCC. Student responses that are not relevant do not further the conversation. She moves to a message that she feels she can respond within the context of the particular conference. How can educators broaden the students’ sense of appropriateness to include the expressions of all students? Perhaps, we need to model different response approaches to WCC discussion spaces?
Relevancy can also be tied to those things that students find interesting. Students are drawn into a series of messages that comprise a relevant and interesting discussion in a WCC.
It was more likely to have relevance to me because of the issues that I'm dealing with right now because we're all teachers and may be they’re going through the same. It may be we're at the same point in our school years where the kids ... are starting to not listen to me any more and I'm getting a good sense of who's getting it and who's not. So, there's senses of relevance. (Helen)What can make a WCC space compelling and interesting to students? Is it different from the challenges we face to make a classroom an interesting learning environment? What role should the students play in creating relevancy in WCC spaces?There wasn't time to look at it [WCC] every single day. But even if it were two days or a week, even when I couldn't get on for weeks at a time, it still was relevant to me when I did go back and read it. (Betty)
Mixing Times
Today…
I read your message
posted seven days ago,
but it still is embedded in my
today.
It is a long time
since I entered the on-line space.
I looked at my new messages
delivered since I entered.
Yours was posted a week ago,
but it still is embedded in my
today.
On-line
time is collapsed
into a now--
What I see on the screen
or
past--
What I do not see or open.
What is the name of time?
What is the bridge between
now
and
time markings of hours, days, and weeks?
What time is connected?
Is it important to know?
Levy (1998) suggests that through a process of virtualization, human kind has created a “multitude of types of space and duration.”
Every life form invents its world and with this world, a specific space and time. The cultural universe, characteristic of humanity, further extends this spatial and temporal variability…. Each new mechanism, each technosocial “machine” adds a space-time, a special cartography, a singular music, to a kind of elastic and complicated system in which expanses are covered over, deformed, and interconnected, in which temporalities interact, respond, or are contrasted to one another. (Levy, 1998, p. 31)This multiple sense of time emerges in the techno-social WCC environment as the students discuss their experiences. Students’ experiences of time are described with a mixture of traditional “time language” (e.g., date, day, week, month) and more general descriptions of duration. Is the mixed language an expression of the multiple layers of temporality we experience as Levy suggests? Could it also be part of taking this new on-line learning space and trying to find the temporal language that describes it best?
When I encounter something new, my first inclination is to describe it using something familiar. It is the bridge I use to give meaning to this new space. My past experience forms the initial boundaries of my understanding in a WCC. As I explore and begin to understand through experience how this environment is different, the boundaries begin to expand. The language I use to describe my experiences is a mixture.
It is the essence of time to be not only actual time, or time that flows, but also which is aware of itself, for the explosion or dehiscence of the present towards a future is the archetype of the relationship of self to self, and it traces out an interiority or ipseity, significance and reason. (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 426)Traditional Time
Students often use traditional time language in the descriptions of their experiences. The date is a common marker in a WCC because it is located not only on the link to each message, but also in the message itself. The date can give the students a general reference point within a discussion.
I think I was just more concerned with putting in my entries. I probably looked at the date and I can still reply to it so yeah, it still had it's [the message] presence. If somebody said, "in a previous meeting" or something, I would have to remember two weeks ago someone said something like and just kind of go back to it. (Martha)It becomes natural to extend the date from a general reference point to a specific reference to another’s message posted in the past.
I think I might say, "Back on such and such date you said..." (Martha)Students do not use the date to refer to the last two or three messages posted in the discussion--which for the students suggests these messages are located in the present. In this case, the present seems to situate the reply does not need any other reference point.
You might feel compelled to say something about the last comment on the conference space before launching, "oh, by the way, so and so who said this, three days ago, I find rather interesting and I've been wanting to say something about it." But that might throw everybody off a little bit. (James)However while the date is always present, it does not necessarily register with the students.
Sure, I mean, you can't help but see it [the posted date], but it doesn't register. (James)Time does not seem to anchor the message. The student appears to not need a temporal cue to situate the message within the discussion.
Traditional language is also used by students to describe the “length” of time.
If you miss something [in the WCC discussion], you're out of the conversation. Your little comment back here four days ago might no longer apply. Or if you want to comment about something the person that commented about your comment three days ago, the comment might just be completely out of context from the last comment [posted]. (James)Students could only determine specific lengths of time in a WCC by using traditional concepts of time measurement (e.g., days and months). The appearance of the date attached to each message made this reference possible. What if a date did not appear with each message posted in the WCC? Would the students’ sense of time change? What language would they use to refer to segments of an on-line discussion?She made maybe two comments during the entire three month [WCC] conference, and then I saw her name pop-up again and said, "Okay, is that the same person?" But it was too much of a pain in the rear end to flip back and forth just to make sure that she was the same person. (Helen)
Duration
Length of time can also be described in general terms of duration. Duration comes from the “Latin word duarer, to harden, to last. It means a continuance in time; length of existence; the period during which a thing continues” (Websters, 1979, p. 565). Duration is not a precise measurement of time, but it marks a length of time in a lived sense that is tied to experience.
When we avail ourselves of a fixed measure and say, ‘it is half an hour to the house’, this measure must not be taken as an estimate. ‘Half an hour’ is not thirty minutes, but a duration [Dauer] which has no ‘length’ at all in the sense of a quantitative stretch. Such a duration is always interpreted in terms of well-accustomed everyday ways in which we ‘make provision’. (Heidegger, 1962/1952, p. 140)For Heidegger, duration is connected to everyday activity. I do not stand outside my activity to objectively measure the length of time. The measurement would then become the activity and I would be removed from the object (activity) of my measurement. I have a general sense of continuance as duration or span of time as I move through the day. The situational context provides temporal clues (e.g., the location of the sun in the sky, the hunger pains in my stomach, the movement of others around, etc).
It is my ‘field of presence’ in the widest sense--this moment that I spend working, with, behind it, the horizon of the day that has elapsed, and, in front of it, the evening and night--that I make contact with time, and learn to know its course. The remote past has also its temporal order, and its position in time in relation to my present, but it has these in so far as it has been present itself, that is has been ‘in its time’ traversed by my life, and carried forward to this moment. When I call up a remote past, I reopen time, and carry myself back to a moment in which it still had before it a future horizon now closed, and a horizon of the immediate past which is today remote. Everything, therefore, causes me to revert to the field of presence as the primary experience in which time and its dimension make their appearance unalloyed, with no intervening distance and with absolute self-evidence. (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 415)Betty describes her experience of the passing or continuance of time within WCC in general terms.
Occasionally there would be somebody [in WCC] and we might talk back and forth a few times, but it never was an awful long time. (Betty)Emma measures duration by the number of messages posted in the WCC discussion.
I tried to get on [to the WCC] every other night and I mean within those two days. Oh, my goodness, 25-30 postings and I'm thinking, "I have to sit here and read all these. If I wait until tomorrow there's gonna be 10 more. Let me read them.” (Emma)The number of messages is not a precise quantitative measure of time, but a general sense based on her experience. Some messages may be long and involved while others are only a few sentences long. In one WCC discussion, the duration is suggested by not only the number of messages, but also the number of words contained in each message.
The joy of reading one or two [messages in a discussion] was gone when I knew I had like 40 to read and in the epistemology discussion they were all like 200 words! Wow! (James)
Duration is an estimate based on the experience students
glean while processing the information they find in the WCC. Duration
can change based on the structure of the conference or the strategies students
use to read and process the information.
Duration can also reflect the time it takes for an asynchronous discussion to run its course.
The discussions were elongated time-wise. (Emma)A discussion in a classroom that may take an hour, may take a week or more in a WCC. The delays between responses in the discussion are difficult to predict. I may pose a question in a WCC discussion and it may be two days or a week before someone responds to my question. What if no-one responds and I am still waiting for an answer? Is the perception of duration specific to the person who is experiencing the activity? If the duration is perceived as “taking a long time,” students become discouraged and less involved. How can students’ perceptions of duration be shaped to keep them expectant rather than discouraged?
Beginnings
The action of a life which unfolds, and these is no way of bringing it about other than by living that life, there is no seat of time; time bears itself on and launches itself afresh. (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 423)When duration is experienced, it begins at some point. In a WCC, I begin by getting in to the discussion space. The process of beginning is not always easy for students.
When I first tried to get on-line, I couldn't. I tried and I tried and I tried. I thought there was something wrong with me that I couldn't get on so I felt very frustrated! By the time I finally did get on, everybody else had been on and had been conferencing for a long time before I was ever able to. I felt like I was already behind and I was really frustrated. Then I would try to send what I had written and it wouldn't go. It was really hard for me in the beginning. (Betty)This student’s sense of duration in a WCC will be different from the students who enter the space with ease. How does frustration contribute to a sense of duration?
Once in the conference space, the student begins again. This beginning involves orientation and interaction.
"Now what do I do? What was it I was suppose to click on first to get here to where I was suppose to go?" And then you read your directions as you were going along. That's what you had to do in the beginning because it was totally new. (Betty)Because of difficulties getting into the WCC, students can feel they have arrived late because the discussion has already begun. Even though the discussions are maintained as text for the students to read and respond to at anytime, they have the perception of being left behind--missing part of the discussion.
It was because I felt like I was the last to get in on this major party. You know, the last to arrive. And you always wonder what conversations have been going on and what have I missed. (Helen)While the student can always read over the missed discussion, it has occurred before she is a part of it. Being late to a WCC discussion leaves the student feeling outside of it--not a part of the history of the discussion. She is part of the discussion at the point she begins.
Endings
Duration is determined by a span of time that reaches from a beginning to an end. Where do students end in a WCC? They can end a particular session of being-in the WCC by leaving the WCC conference space. This does not put an end to a particular conference discussion that can continue for days, weeks, or through an entire program. Who decides when a conference discussion is over? The faculty can put a time frame on a conference space with a starting and ending date. After the end date, no more messages should be posted to the space. It can be guided by a grade. No more posting will be applied toward the grade after a certain point in time. Is the discussion complete? It may not be for the students; but for the faculty, it is over. Students can also decide when the conference space has ended for them. They can decide they no longer want to post any messages into the discussion and as a result, no longer enter the space to read messages posted to the space.
The WCC system used by IET did not offer the option to lock a conference, i.e., end the conference from further discussion by not allowing students to post messages to it. Students could post to the conferences as long as they existed on the IET computer space for the WCC. All of the conferences remained open until IET no longer used this form of WCC software and migrated to a system used by the university. If there is no ending, students must create an ending to each discussion for themselves. Often one conference is replaced by another in terms of relevance to the current curriculum. Is it important for students to feel an end point in the discussion? Without an end point, do students conclude or summarize the discussions? Is an end point important in the education process? How does it contribute to our learning?
Permanent
My thoughts
quiet movement
ebb and flow
within.
Without boundaries,
they drift in and amongst--
playfully connecting and
re-connecting
in constant change.
Words chiseled, concrete
crystalized in ice
capture a thought moment
for all to see…
my image frozen
as if complete
without change
confined
permanent
bound outside of time.
What does it mean to be permanent? Permanent comes from “the Latin word permanere; per, through, by means of and manere, to remain. [Permanent] is intended to last indefinitely without change; continuing to be in the same state or place; stable; durable; abiding” (Websters, 1979, p. 1336). Permanent suggests not only a sense of time--lasts or continues without change--but it also suggests a physical object(s) or something concrete that I can observe.
The proof for the ‘Dasein of Things outside of me’ is supported by the fact that both change and performance belong, with equal primordiality, to the essence of time. My own Being-present-at-hand--that is, the Being-present-at-hand of a multiplicity of representations, which has been given in the inner sense--is a process change which is present-at-hand. To have a determinate temporal character, however, presupposes something present-at-hand which is permanent. But this cannot be ‘in us’, ‘for only through what is thus permanent can my Dasein in time be determined’. Thus if changes which are present-at-hand have been posited empirically ‘in me’, it is necessary that along with these something permanent which is present-at-hand should be posited empirically ‘outside of me’. What is thus permanent is the condition which makes it possible for the changes ‘in me’ to be present-at-hand. The changing ‘in me’ and something permanent ‘outside of me’, and it posits both with equal primordiality. (Heidegger, 1962/1952, pp. 247-48)In a computer environment, words appear to be engraved or have a sense of permanency when viewed on the screen. Words on the screen are permanent and “outside of me.” The words do not appear to change. It is I who change. Students in a WCC feel the words on the screen are permanent. They appear more concrete and have lost the vapor-like fluidity of speech and conversation. They can be seen in a WCC by all in IET.
Yes, it [posting a message to the WCC] is certainly more permanent. (Helen)Words can be transported from the screen to a printer at the click of a mouse-- reinforcing the permanency of the digital display. Something is permanent if it “continues or remains in a state or a place.” When students print from the images of words on the screen, are the words more permanent? They have changed state and location. Students printed messages when the quantity of the information in the WCC became overwhelming to read on the screen. Are the words more permanent when they are tangibly located on a piece of paper? Do the students have a different sense of time with a printed text? Do students’ sense of permanency shape their learning process?If you're going to write, there's a graphic record of your thought. You can't take it back. (James)
Once the messages are posted to the conference space, they can also be copied and moved to other electronic environments.
A lot of people were afraid to write because it was print and it was visible to the people within IET who were able to get in there and read it. But yet, you never know what's going to be pulled out and pushed some place some day. (Emma)The words remain permanent, in tact in digital form, and can be transported from one place to another. Written words are moments that are frozen in time. Their meaning is tied to a situation or context. While the words may be permanent in the sense they have not changed, the meaning and the context for the words have changed. Does the sense of time and permanence change when the meaning changes? Are words capable of permanency?
Gadamer approaches words or a text from a hermeneutic position where the “discovery of the true meaning of a text or a work of art is never finished; it is in fact an infinite process” (1994/1960, p. 268). For Gadamer, “hermeneutic work is based on the polarity of familiarity and strangeness…. It is in the play between the traditionary text’s strangeness and familiarity to use, between a historically intended, distanciated object and belonging to a tradition. The true locus of hermeneutics is this in-between” (p. 295). Words resist permanency when we seek to understand the words we read. “The meaning of the text goes beyond its author. That is why understanding is not merely a reproductive but always a productive activity” (p. 296).
The Buddhists suggest that there is no-thing that is permanent. All is change--a process. They suggest that permanence is an interpretive frame we place upon our experiences.
[In Buddhism] a distinction must be made between the reality of the experienced world and the truth of a theory about the world. What common sense frequently does is to add to experience an interpretive framework. The data of experience are clothed with the fabric of theory, and the data of experience themselves are overlooked. The substance view of reality is a prime example of this sort of thing. Experience in and of itself never carries with it data of the identity and permanence of things. Identity and permanence, which are essential to a substance view of reality, are imposed on the data of experience as an interpretive framework. It is this framework that the Buddhist wishes to reject, for it is not given in the experience itself. The doctrine of anicca, or impermanence, is essentially a denial of the substance view of reality. But to deny the reality of substances in the world is not to deny the reality of the world. It is only a denial of the reality of the world as substance, and it leaves every other alternative open. Substituting process for substance, the Buddhist affirms the world that consists of process as real and denies only the world of substance. (Koller, 1970, p. 150)Have you had the experience where you have worked for hours on a document only to discover that you have lost all of it in the computer abyss? It is gone, but where did it go? It is as if it never existed. The impermanence of writing on the screen can not be mistaken. At least when I scratched a message on paper, I had something tangible. Yet, it is so easy to be lulled back into the belief of the concrete and the permanent of writing on the screen. As Heidegger (1962/1952) suggests, the present-at-hand “outside of myself” becomes concrete as part the essence of time. But, is it permanent? Does it matter if something is “actually” permanent if people believe it to be so?