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"The Development, Design, and Pedagogical Implications of Blackboard" offered for open access

Taking the White out of Blackboard

By IGI Global on Mar 17, 2015
Taking the White out of BlackboardContributed by Dr. Mary-Lynn Chambers, Assistant Professor at Elizabeth City State University

Does color really matter – especially online? Technology is the racial equalizer, or so many believe, but the whiteness within Blackboard challenges racial equality based in learning styles and should be examined and addressed in order for all online college students to experience success. Who would have thought that four white guys who developed a Learning Management System (LMS) that was launched at a predominately white university would have needed to consider their racial “whiteness” when designing a technologically based product? Yet, color makes a difference, even online, and if we identify the difference, we can make pedagogical shifts that help address the difference.

So, what makes Blackboard so white?
  • A text based approach to disseminating information
  • Assignments that are designed for independent rather than group learning
  • Delay in an instructor’s response
These are a few of the indicators that whiteness is prevalent in an online Blackboard course. Picower (2009) identifies the ideological basis for whiteness, which involves the “way of being in the world that is used to maintain white supremacy” (p. 198). Within Blackboard, the traditional text based design enables students who work well in a text based environment to experience agency, but the students who do not work well in a text based environment will experience challenges. So, who experiences success in a text based environment? The answer – field independent learners. Then, who are the field independent learners? The answer – those students who have a “White” approach to learning (Mestre, 2008). Finally, who, typically, are the field dependent learners? The answer – minority “non-white” students (Gonyea, 2010).

The field independent learner has some defining qualities that are listed below (Witkin, Moore, Goodenough, and Cox, 1977; Shearer, 2003):
  • Prefers solitary learning settings
  • Has self-defined goals and self-developed strategies
  • Values text based learning
Can you see some similarities between the list above and the bulleted list for whiteness within Blackboard? Well, consider the following list of determiners for field dependent learners (Witkin, Moore, Goodenough, and Cox, 1977; Thompson and Knox, 1987):
  • Values community based “Group” learning
  • Prefers externally defined goals and reinforcement from the instructor
  • Requires frequent and immediate feedback from the instructor
Can you see the challenge a field dependent learner would have in a learning environment where the instructor is not readily available and where there is no group interaction? Yet, instructor immediacy and group interaction are two elements that are traditionally not part of the online classroom experience.

Of course, there is also the “white” approach to learning that most higher education instructors embrace; thus, there is a natural “whiteness” within their pedagogy, and this whiteness has nothing to do with their race, but rather with their “White” field independent approach to learning and teaching (West, Waddoups & Graham, 2007). If we have spent any time in an online course, as a student or as an instructor, then we know that an independent, text based approach is the common experience.

What happens when you first enter an online class that has been designed by a professor who takes a traditional “White” approach to Black board? You enter the online class site and in front of you is the announcement page. You are struck with the written text, most often in black and white, giving instructions. There are no faces to greet you, no words to establish the tone of the class, no sense of community, just written words. Some students might respond to this approach, yet there are other students who struggle with this approach. My chapter entitled “The Development, Design, and Pedagogical Implications of Blackboard” investigates the challenges faced by field dependent “minority” students who need their online instructors to step away from the text based approach to the online course, and consider incorporating elements within their pedagogy that will allow the students to experience more instructor presence and community interaction.

So, what is available within Blackboard that will help reduce the whiteness?
  • Blogs - where “real” talk can happen
  • Contact - allows images to be uploaded
  • Discussion Board - promotes community
  • Groups – gives that community interaction
  • NBC Learn – offers film and video archives
It is time for online instructors to recognize their whiteness, the whiteness within Blackboard, and the strategies for reducing whiteness so that our field dependent students can experience more agency.


Dr. Mary-Lynn Chambers is an Associate Professor in the Department of Language, Literature and Communication at (Elizabeth City State University, USA. Dr. Chambers' article "The Development, Design, and Pedagogical Implications of Blackboard" is currently being offered for open access through April 16. Featured in the title Critical Examinations of Distance Education Transformation across Disciplines edited by Dr. Abigail G. Scheg (Elizabeth City State University, USA), this research is part of theAdvances in Mobile and Distance Learning (AMDL)) book series, a collection of research encompassing a variety of topics related to all facets of mobile and distance learning. This series aims to be an essential resource for the timeliest research to help advance the development of new educational technologies and pedagogy for use in online classrooms. Read Dr. Chambers' chapter The Development, Design, and Pedagogical Implications of Blackboard here.


References
Gonyea, N.E. (2010). The impact of acculturation on Hispanic students’ learning styles. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education. 9(1), 73-81. Mestre, L.S. (2008). Designing internet instruction for Latinos. Internet Reference Services Quarterly. 2(4), 185-199. Picower, B. (2009). The unexamined whiteness of teaching: How white teachers maintain and enact dominant racial ideologies. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 12 (2), 197-215. Shearer, R. (2003). Instructional design in distance education: An overview. In M.G. Moore & W.G. Anderson (Eds.), Handbook of Distance Education (275-286). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Thompson, G. and Knox, A.B. (1987). Designing for diversity: Are field-dependent learners less suited to distance education programs of instruction? Contemporary Educational psychology, 12(1), 17-29. West, R., Waddoups, G., & Graham, C.R. (2007). Understanding the experiences of instructors as they adopt a course management system. Education Tech Research Dev., 55, 1-26. Witkin, H.A., Moore, C.A., Goodenough, D.R. & Cox, P.W. (1977). Field-dependent and field-independent cognitive styles and their educational implications. Review of Educational Research, 47, 1-64.

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