"Lurking" in Online Education

The practice of lurking is a term that has negative connotations in the online education environment. It refers to a student who reads posts but does not contribute to discussions. As Gilly Salmon mentioned in her book, e-Tivities, these people can be characterized as “magpies” who watch and read and steal ideas without acknowledging their sources. However, this term and attitude may be generational and does not have the negative connotations for digital natives as it does for digital immigrants. This idea was brought to my attention by me daughter, Laurel, who is eighteen and in her first year at the US Naval Academy. She is definitely a digital native, both generationally and by her exposure to the electronic world. By the time she was in 9th grade she was required by her school to use a laptop for almost all of her note taking and assignments and her papers were submitted electronically. She is also very adept at social networking and frequents such sites as Facebook, You Tube, and MySpace. It was over Thanksgiving Break during a discussion with her brother and me about Facebook that “lurking” came up. I mentioned that I needed to comment on my FIT blogs or I would be accused of lurking. They asked what I meant by that and I told them what we in online education define it as, and how the accusation is not complimentary. Both Laurel, and my son Elliott, who at age fourteen is also a digital native, thought I was crazy for worrying about being accused of lurking. Their response to the definition of lurking was that they do it all the time. Apparently that is what one does on social network sites, check out what your friends are doing, where they’ve been and with whom, their “status”, their pictures, how many friends they have and who they are, who is in their top ten, and whatever else they didn’t tell you or didn’t invite you to! This social lurking is the way the “kids” stay in touch with what is going on in their social world. The social and educational ramifications of the digital revolution are in their infancy. The transparency and self absorption of this generation, manifested in social networking sites with their soul baring lack of privacy and the personal focus on the self will have far reaching effects on our educational practices and ideas of acceptable norms and behaviors.