This paper draws from a semester long ethnographic study of an undergraduate writing course delivered completely on-line (i.e. via the WWW). The purpose of the investigation was to gain insights into the practices of 'real' students who often remain faceless in these virtual classes. To better understand 'why' these students participate in the activities they do, I use a sociocultural view of learning. My research perspective is influenced by Cultural Historical Activity Theory (e.g. Cole, 1996; Engeström, 1987; Leont'ev A.N., 1978; Luria, 1976; Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1991) which views the individual and their context being ontologically intertwined (e.g. Elhammoumi, 2002; Gould, 1978; Marx, 1978; Slobodchikov, 2004). This perspective offers a view of students as individuals each with their own 'history in person' as Holland and Lave (2001) have aptly termed it (see also Bozhovich, 1969; Chaiklin, 2001; Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998). This cultural historical production of the individual is not a one way process as Marx (1978) emphasizes in his third ThesisThe materialist doctrine that men [sic] are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets it is men who change circumstances…" (p. 144) Marx highlights the importance of culture and history in individual development, yet he also emphasizes that humans have the ability to change that culture through their practical activities. Understanding the students who form our classes and communities is essential in order to understand the learning that goes on. There has been much discussion of virtual communities, learning communities, and communities of practice but we have yet to understand the individuals who make up these communities. This paper is an attempt to look into the complex nature of student identity and how it influences or mediates the activities students engage in. The methods that I utilized in my research are anthropological (Lave & Kvale, 1995) and/or ethnographic (Carspecken, 1996; Creswell, 1998; Fetterman, 1998) in nature as I closely followed four students over the course of the semester, meeting with each on a weekly basis. My data sources consisted of traditional monologic data (e.g. participant observation, text analysis, etc) and, more importantly for this study, dialogic (i.e. interview) data. The results reported for this paper are derived largely from the approximately 13 hours of interviews I had with each student as well as one focus group session with all four students.Student identity plays an important role in mediating their activities in this on-line class. Many of their current practices in this class were mediated by two general cultural historical forces: their identity as a student in this particular class and their view of this particular class. Students' perceived identity played an important role as it hindered them from engaging fully in activities with other students in the class. Because these students did not feel they were qualified or had the power to make critical comments, they chose other strategies, even though their instructor asked them to be critical. In addition, normative structures relating to how the students viewed this particular class influenced how much effort they put into the activities. Norms relating to student time, perceived importance of class activities, and grades emerged throughout the interview data. In conclusion, this paper makes the argument that in order to understand what our students are doing in their classes we must move beyond observation in order to better understand who these students are. Bozhovich, L. I. (1969). The personality of schoolchildren and the problems of education. In M. Cole & I. Maltzman (Eds.), A handbok of contemporary soviet psychology (pp. 209- 248). New York: Basic Books. Carspecken, P. F. (1996). Critical ethnography in educational research: A theoretical and practical guide. New York: Routledge. Chaiklin, S. (2001). The category of 'personality' in cultural-historical psychology. In S. Chaiklin (Ed.), The theory and practice of cultural-historical psychology (pp. 238-259). Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press. Creswell, J. W. (1998). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Elhammoumi, M. (2002). To create psychology's own capital. Journal for the theory of social behavior, 32(1), 89-104. Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit. Fetterman, D. M. (1998). Ethnography: Step by Step Second Edition. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Gould, G. C. (1978). Marx's Social Ontology: Individuality and Community in Marx's Theory of Social Reality. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Holland, D., Lachicotte, W., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Holland, D., & Lave, J. (2001). History in person: An introduction. In D. Holland & J. Lave (Eds.), History in person: Enduring struggles, contentious practice, intimate identities (pp. 3- 35). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Lave, J., & Kvale, S. (1995). What is anthropological research? An interview with jean Lave by Steinar Kvale. Qualitative Studies in Education, 8(3), 219-228. Leont'ev A.N., A. N. (1978). Activity, Consciousness, and Personality (M. J. Hall, Trans.). Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Luria, A. R. (1976). Cogntive development: Its cultural and social foundation (M. Lopez-Morillas & L. Solotaroff, Trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Marx, K. (1978). Theses on Feuerbach. In R. C. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd edition (pp. 143-145). New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Slobodchikov, V. I. (2004). Activity as an anthropological category: On distinguishing between the ontological and epistemological status of activity. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 42(2), 82-98. Vygotsky, L. V. (1978). Mind in Society. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.