"The Third Shift: Women Learning Online" Review

Kramarae, Cheris. "The Third Shift: Women Learning Online." American Association of University Women Foundation (2001): 39-51. Web. 14 Sep 2010.

In this section of Kamarae’s 2001 study of women in online learning contexts, she examines the social interactions of women in this format and how they may differ from men. In this section, designated as Part 4 in the study, Kamarae examines the notion that online learning, with its distance and anonymity might be the great equalizer in education, allowing for women, minorities and other socially disadvantaged persons to participate in what is often viewed as a genderless, classless, raceless and thus bias-less forum. But Kamarae quickly dismisses this notion, finding through interviews, surveys and previous studies that the social dynamics of cyberspace more often than not closely mirror those of the “real world”. She finds that certain gendered behaviors such as aggressiveness in conversation, politeness in wording and the amount of text contributed by each gender did not differ from the existing cultural stereotypes. Even in a female dominated online learning environment, men were still found to contribute much more to the online conversation and women were still found to use more instances of politeness and inclusiveness in their online discussions. In interviews with female distance education students, Kamarae found that three-fourths agreed that online learning did not eliminate issues of gendered and racialized behaviors in the classroom. In-depth interviews with both male and female participants revealed that although race, physical appearance, and gender may not be clearly evident in a non-visual online learning environment, the importance of these factors and the consideration these factors are given are not void. For example, a 24 year old graduate student wrote that she can generally tell the difference between a female student and a male student based on their writing, and for this reason, she did not believe that issues of gender bias in the classroom are eliminated in a distance learning context. I found this article to be intriguing and an interesting jumping off point for further research on the cyber-identities established by distance education students, especially women and minorities. Kamarae adequately explores the various aspects of classroom interaction and makes valid comparisons between how those interactions are changed when moving from a face-to-face to a distance context. Reviewing the article, I found that it seemed somewhat dated, considering its focus on outdated technologies such as MOOs and other types of asynchronous communication no longer as widely used. This study would certainly be a relevant and useful study to perform today, especially considering that online education has become a predominantly female, low-income and minority option for higher education as the growth of for profit institutions sky-rockets. For scholars in the fields of education, educational technology and inter-cultural communication, I would recommend this study as a starting point for important issues to be considered when examining the socio-cultural implications of learning in an online context. I would like to perform an updated version of this study and include for-profit online, low income, associate degree and certificate program students.