Over the past several weeks, I’ve been collaborating with Jean-Pierre Joubert, Vanessa Tran, and Eric Yu on a critical inquiry into the development of a Community of Inquiry (CoI) on a Social Networking Site (SNS) such as Discord. It’s been a really interesting pursuit and I’ve learned a lot about the nature of a CoI, its strengths and weaknesses, and the benefits and drawbacks of facilitating this framework through a SNS.
The CoI framework, developed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) consists of a group of learners coming together with a common goal of building new knowledge and/or skills. There are three main foundational constructs associated with a
CoI, which are Cognitive Presence, Social Presence, and Teaching Presence. These constructs work in unison and overlap with a goal of deep and meaningful learning for participants. Considering the inherent social nature of a CoI, this framework works well when facilitated on a SNS as the built-in affordances of a platform such as Discord allow for a combination of casual and academic discourse, but there are also concerns.
Throughout our inquiry, our group identified a series of issues associated with introducing a SNS into academics including accessibility, data privacy, identity development, and whether or not to make it mandatory for a course. Not all students will have access to the chosen SNS, or may not be comfortable (or indeed permitted) to use it. As a result, mandatory use for such a system outside the official institution’s learning management system is not recommended. Additionally, third-party platforms including Discord rarely answer to anyone but themselves in terms of their responsibility with user data (Discord, 2020). With that being the case, informed consent should be sought from learners when making use of this type of tool. Finally, since learners develop their professional identities when interacting with a CoI, the educator should be cautious of the implications of the possible collision between personal and academic identity fragments online (Dennen & Burner, 2017; Kimmons & Veletsianos, 2014; Lowenthal & Dennen, 2017).
While I’m still working on my final conclusions on this subject, it’s been a fascinating discovery and I look forward to applying it to my practice.
References
Dennen, V. P., & Burner, K. J. (2017). Identity, context collapse, and Facebook use in higher education: Putting presence and privacy at odds. Distance Education, 38(2), 173–192. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2017.1322453
Discord. (2020). Discord privacy policy. https://discord.com/new/privacy
Garrison, R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2), 87–105. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/S1096-7516(00)00016-6
Kimmons, R., & Veletsianos, G. (2014). The fragmented educator 2.0: Social networking sites, acceptable identity fragments, and the identity constellation. Computers & Education, 72, 292–301. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2013.12.001
Lowenthal, P. R., & Dennen, V. P. (2017). Social presence, identity, and online learning: research development and needs. Distance Education, 38(2), 137–140. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2017.1335172
While I have been using Discord to communicate with students during the pandemic with good success (all students joined and participate reasonably regularly), I wonder if Discord’s Privacy and Data Sharing Policies will be prohibitive to its continued use, post pandemic. I also wonder, if online Discord participation will decrease once in-person classes resume – likely this September.
I wonder if there is an open-source version of an online chat forum like Discord that could be installed on a server owned and managed by my teaching institution where we create the data collection and privacy policies so that they align with those of the institution. I have found, though, that many open-source solutions look ‘cheap’ and unfeatured. They often lack the functionality and richness people are used to and thus may not be used as much. Also, would my institution allow for hosting a server and maintaining the hardware and software? I know this has been a struggle that many instructors have faced when wanting to use software not approved due to institution policies.
Your comment is 100% on point, Patrick. As we’ve discussed as a class recently, there are many benefits to maintaining these tools as an institution. Third-party software invariably brings with it some kind of compromise… data privacy related or otherwise. My experience with my own institution is that they’re willing to take on these projects if a strong case can be made for the support. But, I agree with you that often the open source options rarely have the depth and slickly developed UI that make Discord and similar platforms a real pleasure to use.
My expectation is that Discord use will remain strong in education for the foreseeable future, so long as institutional policies will allow it. It was adopted because the students were already on the platform and using it. There was a strong community thriving there long before the pandemic, and for good reason. Many HE institutions are looking to continue with online and blended learning delivery models where appropriate, now that we’ve been forced to adopt them and have seen the benefits. Regardless of whether its Discord, or even some system integrated more directly into an LMS, the need for an engaging platform that allows for both casual and academic discourse that the students actually WANT to use, is not going anywhere.
Christopher,
Discord is an engaging technological tool in the online world. Interestingly, I am not a video-game lover but I do love Discord. The main reason for my engagement in Discord is because it is organized separately from my personal life and leisure activities. I also like the instant messaging feature because, for this masters’ program, I am always thinking about schoolwork. Knowing others are doing the same helps with the learning. For video-game lovers, Discord is a place of familiarity where like-minded people gather to participate in leisure activities. The mixing of school and leisure helps with engaging this type of learner. Whether you are a video gamer or not, Discord is a tool that engages a diverse group of learners and therefore I cannot imagine school without it.
Thank you for your response, Wendy. I am a video game lover… but it’s a been a really long time since I had the free time for it. Having said that, I had not used Discord before being introduced to it in this program. I did quickly learn to enjoy it though, both for its ease of use and for how it provides me an opportunity to stay connected with you good people. Surely without this particular platform we would have found some other tool to fill the need, but some kind of technology, I think, is a necessity considering the nature of this program. The cohort system in an online learning model almost certainly wouldn’t be nearly as engaging without some method to build a community the way we have.
I guess I made the assumption all video gamers are on Discord because all my student video gamers are on it. They think it is so weird I’m on Discord for school.