Joy Bowers-Campbell’s piece “Taking it Out of Class: Exploring Virtual Literature Circles”

Joy Bowers-Campbell’s text argues that virtual literature circles are productive and engaging, based on a study she conducted of three groups of graduate students/preservice teachers; Bowers-Campbell shows examples of their discussion transcript and ways in which the content fell into coding categories such as Group Harmony (GH), Text-to-Text (TT), Text-to-Self (TS), etc.  Although she acknowledges drawbacks to this type of format (lack of face-to-face time, members might not respond, commitments might not be equal, etc), she states: “discussion from all groups were neither stilted nor sterile, as can sometimes be the case with face-to-face literature circles (as cited in Wolsey, 2004).”  This was a huge claim that I don’t think can be substantiated, at least not with the scope of this study.  Also, the subjects were preservice English teachers, much like our cohort.  Needless to say, this text would have been more useful for our curriculum thinking had the subjects been in high school or middle school. 

In Bowers-Campbell’s defense, however, I experienced an attempt at a qualitative study on discussion for my Linguistics course last semester, which similarly wasn’t fulfilling enough for my “practical” aims and pedagogical inquiries.  One of the largest benefits of online literature circles, as Bowers-Campbell and others have reiterated, is the idea that online literature circle provide written record; I had to painstakingly transcribe discussion audio for my study whereas Bowers-Campbell’s format likely afforded her to copy and paste.  We know that written records can be beneficial for future lessons, but what would be the purpose of a written record, unless we were actually going to look back and read it at a later time?  In this sense, I think virtual literature circles are way more convenient for the educational researcher.  For teachers, I don’t think there is another way to compare the formats besides for a trial-and-error comparison.  Ultimately though, as Bowers-Campbell mentioned, the teacher’s prompt is what will influence the complexity of thinking on discussion boards. 

 (An example of a coding system -- Purves, A.C., & Rippere, V. (1968).  Elements of writing about a literary work: A study of responses to literature (Research Report No. 9).  Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.)

Online virtual circles are not necessarily less vulnerable than face-to-face literature circles to the aforementioned “stilted” and “sterile” vibe.  It seems that with both formats, teacher involvement and direction (or lack of) will be what drives the conversation.  What’s important for us to figure out is what specific strategies for both formats will lead to a more effective, productive and engaging experience for our students. 

In my 9^th grade class, the literature circles comprise of four different roles: discussion director, word wizard, passage picker and illustrator.  Students are to rotate assuming each role during their month-long duration of reading the same independent reading book.  I had a chance to observe their first group meet the past week, and even though the distribution of roles does control  the conversation to a degree, I think students that age need scaffold and structure.  Similar to what I said in my last blog, I wouldn’t implement virtual literature circles until I felt that students got the drill of the face-to-face literature circle down first.  Then, maybe I would implement some type of hybrid format, starting with a face-to-face meet and ending with one.