Online tutoring researcher Rebecca de Wind Mattingly explores the ways in which online identity was performed differently from face-to-face identity and the effects the distance-learning experience had on her expectations and sense of control over how others perceived her.

Her paper identifies key challenges faced in a learning environment where multiple personalities must perform simultaneously to preserve one's anonymity and sense of self-control.Using self-reflexive autoethnography methods, de Wind Mattingly also examines how her online anonymity allowed her to shock fellow seminar participants with the production of an online persona she was unable to claim in physical space.

Her paper also provides valuable links to the work she has done with synchronous, online tutoring at the University of Illinois at Chicago writing center, where the texts of online writer-tutor interactions become an enduring record of learning moments that can be broken out of their original context to shed light on the writing practices of urban student writers.

She is the co-author of the instructor's manual for In Context by Ann Feldman, Nancy Downs and Ellen McManus and is assistant director of UIC's first-year writing program.

About the Author(s)

Rebecca de Wind Mattingly researches the implications of synchronous, online writing tutorials at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Margaret Gonzales, assistant director of first-year writing and director of the writing center's online synchronous tutoring project at the University of Illinois at Chicago, explores the extent to which combining anonymous distance education with face-to-face discussions disrupted the traditional educational environment. Seminar participants were often frustrated by the difficulties of maintaining separate identities and distinct forums for discussing texts and the seminar experience. Gonzales finds that that frustration created an important site for critical examination of the performance of self in online and offline settings. Gonzales's presentation explores how the seminar called into question participants' assumptions about education, the Internet, fellow participants and their roles as Internet researchers. To evaluate the impact of the use of the Internet in this seminar, Gonzales incorporates an autoethnographic analysis of her own uses of the Internet, particularly for training online tutors and maintaining the online tutoring project.

She argues that the manner in which the Internet was embedded into the seminar made for a complicated experience that expanded the boundaries of the seminar and exceeded expectations for what constitutes learning.  Gonzales, who aids English-department teachers in incorporating computer and Internet- based activities into their classes, finds that computers and the Internet are utilized in the English classroom merely as a cumbersome experience divorced from the rest of the class activities. She argues that the seminar experience serves as a blueprint for integrating computer and Internet technology in a manner that alters and enhances instruction and learning in a meaningful way.

About the Author(s)

Margaret Gonzales conducts research at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Han Nool Lee examines the interconnection of self and other in online environments. Although most distance-education models do not take this into consideration, the actual "selfness" of any participant is derived dialogically in interaction with others in the context. Lee's self-reflexive account provides a keen analysis of how the negotiation of identity impacts the culture of the learning environment.

When studying "the Other" on the Internet, researchers often come across the epistemological question of how people know the authentic, genuine identity of the Other. With the lack of actual physicality online and even the disconnection between the offline self and the online self of the Other, taken-for-granted notions of authenticity, embodiment and reality need a critical reexamination of their grounded meanings. The case study of this seminar illustrates these issues and provides readers with an example of how definitions of "human" can be modified from the privileged, embodied way of knowing.

Many Internet researchers, like Nakamura, Stone and Taylor, have argued that users do not simply roam around as minds in cyberspaces but rather find themselves and others grounded in the practice and construction of embodiment. Also, social constructionists like Holland, Skinner and Gergen have argued that knowing the identity of the Other as a fully human entity with both mind and body helps people operate within the complex cultural rules of communication and that human communication itself makes the concept of human identity possible.  Through a critical examination of this phenomenon, embedded within the Cartesian dualism of body and mind, this essay carefully examines the underlying notions of the participants' various interpretations of an extra online identity in the seminar and their overlapping assumption that the extra online identity either was a human or was played by a human. This paper attempts to answer the questions: "How is it that we have human communication in cyberspaces where seemingly there is no human physiological physicality? What does it mean to be a human, whether online or offline?"

About the Author(s)

Han Nool Lee conducts research at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Claudia Ivón Rivera, discusses the impact of socio-linguistic codes on the performance of identity in cross-cultural education settings.  In this paper, Rivera analyzes the extent to which anonymity is limited for non-native speakers in online environments, specifically in a distance-education course. Using an autobiographic narrative account, Rivera explains how different cultural practices between Latino-American and American online chats affected her performance in the seminar.

Rivera also links her experiences in this seminar with previous experiences as a heavy user on Latino-American chats. She traces the circumstances around the creation, framing and development of her on-line persona. She explains how the performance of this self mediated and affected her relationship with the distance-education environment in which she was immersed.

About the Author(s)

Claudia Ivon Rivera conducts research at the University of Illinois at Chicago.