organizing and history

In Chapter 1, Eisenberg, Goodall, and Trethewey (2007) observe, "The history of human civilization is fundamentally a history of organizing" (p. 4). And the internet (like the telephone over 100 years ago) has changed how individuals go about organizing. For example, although multinational organizations (MNOs) date back to at least 2000 B.C.E. (Moore & Lewis, 1998), the advent of computers and the internet greatly hastened the increased development of organizations that span the globe. Extensive use of the internet and related technologies for internal and external communication has become a key characteristic of MNOs. In the past, MNOs may have been able to function without computer mediated communication (CMC), but today, new media technologies provide the central mechanisms for integrating resources, connecting organization members, and enmeshing organizations in their environments.

And not just MNOs rely on the internet and other new communication technologies to function. It's difficult to think of an organization that doesn't integrate internet communication into organizational processes. Yet such organizations do exist in places without internet access. Still, even that is changing with the merging of mobile phones and internet connectivity. As Digital Divide.org notes, "A decade of talking didn’t solve the Digital Divide. But today's stampede to connect billions of cell phone users to the Internet changes everything." The organization's Nine Digital Divide Truths and Seven Digital Divide Fallacies get to the heart of how the internet plays a central role in human organizing.

This class provides an example of the internet's impact on how we organize as we move from a class that meets in a physical location at specific times to one where participants meet asynchronously online. Further, in leaving the Blackboard's confines for the larger internet, the organizing mechanisms are more loosely-coupled. There's no one place to log in for the class. Instead, COMM 144 "resides" in three primary places: the main class website on my own server, Google (the COMM 144 Google Group, gmail accounts, class-related blogs), and blackboard. The class is a distributed network, reflecting the internet's infrastructure, much as when I first taught online.

How will this "new" way of organizing influence the class, how students learn, how learning objectives are met, and participants' overall class experiences? As we study organizational communication this winter session, we'll study ourselves as well.


References

Eisenberg, E. M., Goodall, H. L., Jr., & Trethewey, A. (2007). Organizational communication: Balancing creativity and constraint, 5th ed. New York: Bedford St. Martin's.

Moore, K., & Lewis, D. (1998). The first multinationals: Assyria circa 2000 B.C. Management International Review, 38, 95-107.

class pre-launch

Yesterday I messaged all COMM 144 students via mySJSU and several responded. So the class launch process has started! A few have signed up for the class listserv (Google Groups) and one student has already created her blog. I feel like we're off to a good start on this exploration out Blackboard's confines and into the wilds of the internet.

Thus far seven students have expressed an interest in adding the class. Having the nearly all the class website accessible makes it much easier for these students to preview the class. eCampus set up a few guest accounts, but this way students don't have to hassle with logging into blackboard using those accounts and then changing to a new one once they register for the class.

Although the message I got from eCampus was that the roster wouldn't be uploaded to blackboard until December 31, I checked today and students are already in the gradebook. Early is good. I think I've set up the blackboard part of the class so students 
may access it immediately.

Looking forward to the winter session! And to some time off next week.

--Prof. Cyborg

enrollment update

Pre-registration ended December 7. Then students have a set amount of time to pay their fees. 6 didn't pay, so now I have 22 students. That's still a good number for the winter session and I'm sure I'll get several students adding the first day of classes.

I've signed up for a workshop through SJSU's Center for Faculty Development January 2-4 on how to use several new communication technologies in the classroom. The title, "Technology Innovations in Education: Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts, Elluminate, Social Networking Tools, Web 2.0 , and more!!," suggests a fairly comprehensive approach to the topic.

Although I've been teaching online since 1999, I'm not as sophisticated in my use of technology as instructors who teach in Second Life or have been using blogs for years. So I'm hoping I pick up some new ideas and strategies for using technology in productive ways in online and in person classes.

I'm expecially looking forward to learning more about how to integrate blogging into the classes I teach while I'm blogging about a class I'm teaching--and requiring my students to blog as well.

--Prof. Cyborg

accessing blackboard

Here's the latest update from eCampus on how students will access the Blackboard class website:

"Students will be enrolled approximately two days before the term begins. We will be sending out an email via advanced messaging in MySJSU on how to log in to the course and get started. We'll also have CE6 tutorials available on our site for them to review and explore the new interface."

It's not really an email that goes out on the university messaging system. Students can't reply--they can only receive messages. Students may opt for notifications to be sent to their regular email address, although the message simply says, "check mySJSU for a message." This one-way communication system is so symbolic of SJSU's bureaucratic organizational model. Still, I'll find out when eCampus is contacting students.

I am concerned about tech support in the days before the term starts--SJSU is closed December 24-January 1. In the move to Blackboard, coordination has to happen among the staff for CMS (the CSU uses PeopleSoft, which is incredibly complex, non-intuitive, and cumbersome), Blackboard CE6, and eCampus. So far, that coordination appears minimal. For example, eCampus had no knowledge of many of CE6's new features, such as not allowing multiple windows in the same browser.

According to eCampus, winter session is the "pilot test" for this new system, which of course doesn't inspire me with great confidence. Only reinforces my decision to move most of my class out of Blackboard and onto the open internet. Access issues should be minimal and they're ones I'll be able to solve (said with great assurance!).

Typically, several students add during open enrollment the first couple days of class. With WebCT, I could simply add them to the class website. I'm not allowed to do that with Blackboard. Instead (from eCampus):

"To add students, you go ahead and give them an add code and they can register via MySJSU. The students will be uploaded several times a day, each day, depending on when they register. If you need students to get started right away, we are working out a process to have guest accounts available that you can add into your course. They can use the account until they are fully registered. Once your student has registered and are added to your course, you can direct the student to login as themselves and you can deny access for the guest account."

The guest reg process adds way to much complexity to the process. And if a student takes an exam under that account, the exam and the score go away.

What if I want to allow someone access to the site to check out the class? There's no way for me to add them to the site. I have to go through eCampus. It's all about control. The longer I teach online, the less control I'm allowed over my classes--if I use the university's learning management system. Hence, I've blasted off to use my own server and Google. Teaching my class using Google is another issue. Eisenberg et al. (2007) argue in Chapter 1 that "turbulence is the order of the day" (p. 18). Blackboard functions on a classical teaching model. Google allows me to respond to the environmental turbulence in which SJSU is embedded.

--Prof. Cyborg

enrollment

Registration for winter session ended yesterday. 28 students, so 3 over the usual cap of 25. For the online classes, more students (up to a point) is better; creates more buzz in the class. A few students I recognize from previous classes, but mostly new students (although may not be new to taking online classes).

Still no word from eCampus on how Blackboard log in instructions will be sent, when students will be added to the class, or how to add students to the class website if they haven't pre-registered.

Chapter 1 in the class text discusses how the power base in organizations has shifted from tangible assets to information: "By the second half of the twentieth century, information resources replace tangible resources as a measure of power" (p. 20). I've been especially aware of this when using PeopleSoft. Often, staff know more than adminstrators and faculty about how to access information (such as student enrollments) because the PS system is nonintuitive and has its own vocabulary. Another example is the switch from WebCT 4.1 to Blackboard CE 6. In this case, Blackboard developers, with their specialized knowledge of the system, have more power than those who use the system.

-Prof. Cyborg

the notion of cyborg

Cyborg typically conjures of images of computerized humans or human-like computers, as with the borg on Star Trek: Next Generation or the cylons of Battlestar Galactica. The term was first used nearly 50 years ago in a application of systems theory to space exploration.

In my recent work with several colleagues on global teams in multinational organizations, I've become interested in how cyborg theory might help us understand how these teams work. With its roots in actor-network theory and Haraway's (1990) seminal work on technology and socialist feminist theory, cyborg theory links new communication technologies to the sociocultural, political, communicative, and physical experiences of those who use them (Franklin, 2002). Although often applied as a literal metaphor for the online representation of mechanized human bodies (e.g., DeVoss, 2000), Petersen’s (2007) research in the everyday use of the internet suggests a more abstract interpretation of the human cyborg--one in which the physicality of internet use has become deeply engrained in our daily routines. The result of the internet’s ubiquity is "the computer-internet-human actor becomes involved in coagency with these mundane artefacts and thereby bends space and restructures our physical setting" (Petersen, 2007, p. 88).

This view of how individuals use the internet has important implications for all aspects of communication, and certainly for organizational communication as computers and the internet become central to organizational functioning. Removing the novelty or newness typically associated with new communication technologies illuminates the taken-for-grantedness of internet communication in organizations and our everyday lives.

Consider the ways in which using internet communication, and other new communication technologies, has become routinized in your daily life. Do you ever turn off your cell phone? How often do you check for voice mail, text, and email messages? When you want to find directions to a location, do you consult a paper map or MapQuest? How have you made room for these technologies in your living and working space? Do you have a dedicated desk for your computer? A backpack to carry your laptop? How has the physical space of your local or campus library changed with the addition of computers and use of online databases?

Cyborg theory helps us examine how the "artificial" becomes part of the "natural" and the implications of integrating communication technologies into who we are and what we do.

-Prof. Cyborg

References

DeVoss, D. (2000). Rereading cyborg(?) women: The visual rhetoric of images of cyborg (and cyber) bodies on the world wide web. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 3, 835-845.

Franklin, M. I. (2002). Reading Walter Benjamin and Donna Haraway in the age of digital reproduction. Information, Communication & Society, 5, 591-624.

Haraway, D. (1990). A manifesto for cyborgs: Science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s. In L. Nicholson (Ed.), Feminism/postmodernism (pp. 190-233). New York: Routledge.

Petersen, S. M. (2007). Mundane cyborg practice: Material aspects of broadband internet use. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 13, 79-91.

using Blackboard

Yesterday I set up the Blackboard site for COMM 144 Winter 2008. I kept the features to a minimum with just the quizzes and grade tools available. Added one announcement to direct students to the class website. Found it frustrating that I couldn't link the grades and announcements options to the main page; can only list them on the navigation bar. Having multiple pathways to reach an endpoint is a key feature of internet communication. Blackboard seems to work to subvert that principle.

Working with Blackboard CE6 reinforced my decision to move the class out of the learning management system to a freely accessible website supported by Google's groups and blogging functions. Using a commercial site such as Google does have drawbacks (e.g., driving students to a commercial site using proprietary software), Blackboard's limitations outweigh any concerns I have about Google.

In a recent paper presented at the National Communication Association convention in Chicago, I concluded:

Blackboard does provide mechanisms for students to interact directly with each other and the instructor. But the Blackboard platforms have yet to move beyond extremely basic communication features; the structure of the Blackboard Inc. online classroom seems stuck in the 1990s. What has changed is the instructor's increased ability to track students' use of the class website: number of messages posted, number of messages read, and how many times various pages or sections are accessed. But this type of information provides no insight into how students engage each other or the class. For Blackboard, teaching remains textualized (static) rather than performative (dynamic).

This term, my goal is to create a more performative learning experience for my students and for me as we blog about the class and organizational communication--outside the constraints of a traditional learning management system.

-Prof. Cyborg

A new approach to COMM 144

After attending several sessions at the Association of Internet Researchers conference on online pedagogy and talking with several instructors who teach online, I decided to make some major changes in how I teach COMM 144 online. The other impetus for these changes is my recent research on Blackboard. So this term we'll minimize our use of Blackboard and maximize our use of other pedagogical tools readily available online--such as blogging.

More info to come as I develop this new version of COMM 144.

-Prof. Cyborg