Session Information
Paper Session
Contribution
Ethnography as a research method has been developed from the rain-forest to information society within many different sciences. Typically ethnography is a researcher’s creative writing process, which includes narratives by informants. The researcher’s own personality, presence and participation in the informants’ everyday lives are also in focus. (Godall, 2000). Virtual ethnography is one of the latest forms of application of the method. The most significant change is the way of interaction and observation via the Internet. Internet gives a possibility to act locally and search globally. It could be understood in two different ways: as a culture in its own rights, and as a cultural artifact (Hine, 2000, 14).
In this study virtual ethnography was applied into an e-learning environment (Anttonen 2005). The informants were male nursing students in higher education. The phenomenon and subject were sexual health promotion. The teacher, who was also in a researcher’s role, was female. The theoretical frameworks used were Position Theory (Van Langenhoven & Harré, 1999, 14-31) and New Spirit in education (Doll, 2002, 23-70). The main principles according to the Position theory are: a life history, a person is a social creature, a person categorizes everyone as a male or a female, interaction is faceless and without body language, time and space. All the above-mentioned assimilate into an understanding of subjectivity and body. The New Spirit in curriculum means the reviewing e.g. complexity, conversation and community.
This paper presents virtual ethnography as an approach, a method and a writing process in e-learning contexts. Virtual ethnography demands the following special skills from a researcher: virtual field work, virtual interaction skills, defining the researcher’s own position to informants and their community and understanding the change of the researcher’s own role in the virtual environment. The main propositions are to search, describe and observe knowledge from the informants’ everyday life via the Internet. In this study the community of informants is defined by the phenomenon on sexual health promotion, which informants are processing and data is collected with and without permission. The data might come up in many different forms and is unlimited. Observation is done faceless or without the presence of bodies. Analysis is carried out constantly and it exposes the need for further data collection. The research report is a creation of the researcher and it depends on her creative writing skills. In addition the researcher recognizes and acknowledges her own subjectivity in the research process. Virtual ethnography reveals, first of all, the way of thinking and expresses oneself in Internet context.
The main research guestions was, what kind of learning process is created by the female teacher and male nursing students in the e-learning context and around the sexual heath phenomenon.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Anttonen, T. 2005. Men in the Internet – Virtual Ethnography of Male Nursing Students around Sexual Health Phenomenon. Academic dissertation. Tampere University. Doll, W. Jr. 2002. Ghost and the Curriculum. In: Doll, W. Jr. & Gough, N. (ed.). Curriculum vision. Peter Lang Inc. New York. Godall, H.L. Jr. 2000. Writing the New Ethnography. Rowman & Littlefield Publicher, Inc. USA Hine, C. 2000. Virtual Ethnography. Sage Publications. London. Van Lagenhove, L. & Harré, R. 1999. Introducing Position Theory. In: Harré, R. & Van Lagenhove, L. (ed.). Position Theory: Moral Context of Intentional Action, 14-52.
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