Toward Openness and Sharing from Closed Individuality in Online Reading Community

This study explores the potential of extensive reading activities designed for an online reading community made up of cyber university students. Data were collected from mainly undergraduate students studying English (240) via a cyber university in Korea; these students enrolled in the course Strategies for English Reading and Comprehension Practices during the second semester of 2013. The main extensive reading activity involved reading a self-chosen book and writing the book review report; in the middle of this process, the target students were required to participate in an online discussion board to share their extensive reading experiences, such as difficulty in selecting the right book for them or applying the appropriate strategies of the extensive reading process. This entire process proved to be successful based on a systematic transcript analysis of 508 entries, including comments written on the online discussion board. The findings and pedagogical implications were discussed. The findings revealed that the cyber university students changed their roles from passive individuals who tended to communicate with only the instructor to active learners who could extend their interaction to the online peer students with more enthusiasm and sense of sharing. The online discussion led them to become motivated to engage in extensive reading along with a range of appropriate reading strategies and the ability to choose books based on their authentic reading settings and experiences. The instructor did not respond to the range of discussion writings in the online reading community, but students showed the potential of group intellectuals and openness by providing constructive criticism, which can be connected to furthering critical pedagogy’s quality for students.