This paper describes an investigation into online learning carried out in association with classroom situations. Primarily qualitative data is analysed in terms of learner entry into communities of practice and the contribution of changing identities to language learning and the development of autonomy, in order to explore how the disparate experiences of learners interacted with each the learning spaces they were in, and how new practices and identities emerged.
As online spaces become more and more easily available and readily accessed by language learners, the possibilities for autonomous learning have never been greater. This paper draws on Wenger's notion of communities of practice, Norton's imagined self, and Sfard and Prusak's characterisation of identity formation as being fluid, and defined through stories, to explore how online spaces interact with traditional classroom spaces to facilitate learning and the development of learner identities. In order to do this I refer to data from a project which examined the use of a variety of online spaces by students learning English as a foreign language in university classrooms. Teachers and students in a variety of educational situations were surveyed and interviewed about their experiences using computers and online resources in and out of English language classrooms. These resources included the online course management program, Moodle, the integrated CALL packages, English Central and Dyned, drilling software (ALC Academy and UCAT), and a variety of free online resources such as Real English, Lingorank, Lyrics Training, and others. I describe the background to this data gathering, and present a qualitative analysis of learner writing carried out concurrently with the use of the online resources, and a qualitative analysis of the stories that students told about themselves, and that teachers and students told about each other. I then discuss how we might interpret the experiences of learners in terms of how their experiences interacted, how learning practices emerged (with greater or lesser degrees of effectiveness), and how identities were constructed and re-constructed as they entered into new communities of practice.
