Ron Barnette

Professor and Head, Department of Philosophy; Coordinator of Project Millennium for the Vice President for Academic Affairs, Valdosta State University

Days are few when I am not helping to construct worlds which are detached from conventional space and time constraints….where the citizens interact in an asynchronous manner, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, around busy schedules and personal time/space arrangements that would otherwise prevent ongoing interrelationships and collaborative partnerships from forming and flourishing. Am I an educator or a metaphysical architect, you might be wondering. I am both. Such is my life in cyberspace…in the virtual classroom without walls…in the electronic Agora of the World Wide Web.

During the summer, 1999 term, I completed my sixth annual summer offering of PHICYBER (Philosophy in Cyberspace), a special topics philosophy course comprised of some 100 participants, from over 7 countries and 6 continents, brought together in a virtual learning community forged by electricity instead of bricks and mortar. Through our class website (www.valdosta.edu/~rbarnett/phi/phicyber), students have hundreds of books, articles and classroom materials available in our Virtual Library, where their research is conducted, from anyplace, at anytime, in this student-centered environment. Through our class email discussion list, PHICYBER, all classroom attendance is noted, and daily dialogue and debate transform ideas and questions posed by me for ongoing review and analysis. Known only to one another by what they write, all communication and classroom participation of our members are free from contexts of identified gender, ethnicity, age, nationality, and the like---where one's written words are the only sources of personal identity known by others. This electronic forum is a marvelous equalizer for a fertile democratization of opinions and ideas shared, for everyone has an equal 'voice' in all dialogue, and each respondent's thoughts can be crafted in each member's own time frame before submitted to the group. "I write; therefore I am," and "what I write is who I am," are indeed Cartesian concepts enriched by our cyberspresence together.

Bringing together groups of learners, otherwise not afforded the chance for an open learning community, because of busy schedules, work conflicts, disabilities, and even military duties in various parts of the planet, is a goal I have set as a cyber-educator. When Martha comes home from work, as a single Mom trying to pursue a college education while holding down a job that doesn't allow her to attend the physical setting of a classroom during the hours she is finally free to attend class hours in the traditional format---say, after 10pm when she has read to the kids and they are finally asleep---what are Martha's opportunities? Or how about Jason, who has just been ordered elsewhere in his military duties? Or Cathy, who gets off work 50 miles away 15 minutes before her class on campus begins? What, indeed, of these significant numbers of students who want to pursue their education? The cyberworld learning community opens its gates to them all in a welcomed opportunity for educational power…..

New voices ring as a class full of people, otherwise unable to develop their educational dreams, are 'on campus,' front and center. They now have all the resources available to traditional students whose schedules match the university business hours. But who said that learning for university credit needs to be on my spatial-temporal terms---where 'you show up on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11 am in West Hall 104 and you, too, can learn some exciting philosophy'? Why should the traditional model be the only one for educational access? Indeed, as a public institution devoted to our Georgia residents and others who pay the bills, why should non-traditional aspirants for learning have to seek education, in effect, after hours? Courses in cyberspace fill this incredibly important void, as new opportunities for learning emerge, and my goal is to help provide students with this chance for the educational prize in our virtual learning community. Yet my role as an educator must be reexamined, as it, too, has undergone a major conceptual shift.

Before my faceless participants, I facelessly realize that I am one among the group...that I am a member of the society whose voyage through cyberspace together takes its twists and turns in a seemingly self-directed and self-organized manner, as the dialogue and conversations unfold. Yes, I have set the course of the journey, having pointed the cybercraft in the general direction, but the exact route taken depends on the group dynamics and not my mighty lectern. Indeed, seeing myself as a teacher-as-participant, as part of the learning community and not above and beyond it, enables us all to feel as equals as the topics and the journey unfold. The feeling is refreshing, and my involvement with the students is enriching. Far from being impersonal, the asynchronous moments spent with my students have a deep and personal effect on demonstrable learning, accomplished independent of a coordinated spatial and temporal physical congruence. And the journey continues well past the ending date of the class term, as friendships and collaboratives persist in cyberspace, and student website projects continually undergo refinement and additional upkeep through pride of ownership. Learning is clearly a process, and virtual learning communities develop and expand the reality of this process, as the course becomes only one aspect of the potential life-long journey.

Cyber-courses are, of course, intended to compliment traditional classrooms, and not to replace them. The university's educational mosaic has many facets and pieces, and the electronic medium is clearly a much-valued addition, especially for those who otherwise would be left out of the opportunity for expanding their education. And in a global society, where a diversity of thought knows and seeks no national boundary, the virtual learning community connects together the world's citizenry for sharing and learning multiple perspectives on the life of the mind, in ways that cannot exist in the physical classroom. But real-time, face-to-face dialogue is lost, and that is a minus in many respects; yet for many learners, that is not an option. Something gained; something lost. The key is to balance the equation, as the totality of learning communities in the 21^st century expand through passionate teachers and active learners who use evolving technologies in innovative, not gimmicky, ways.

As you are reading this, I am no doubt back aboard our classroom cybercraft with the cybernauts filled with the mystery of intellectual adventure, discovering new worlds together as we jointly find ourselves along the way. Care to come along for the ride?