Learning To Write: An Exploration of the Benefits of Digital Community Education

Traditional learning settings such as classrooms and job trainings allow students to learn constructive social interaction, fulfilling baseline work formats and standards, receiving a necessary (though often painful (I’m looking at you, memorization-based history courses)) rounded exposure to varied subject disciplines, and receiving standards-based feedback on performance. There are, however, a few all-important aspects that are almost entirely missing from (my) institutionalized learning engagement: unlimited interactions with internally legitimized teacher figures, access to large amounts of bizarrely specific niche-mates, and engagement with a more organic learning process.

In an almost subconscious search for supplemental learning engagements, my peers and I turned to forms of new media. One specific internet site provided me with the quintessential connected learning experience: AO3.com.

AO3.com is a fan-based community literature site that attracts every type of writer. From bored, vampire-obsessed 12-year-olds to published authors who like appropriating crime/drama characters in their free time, the website accepts anybody. Nobody wrote for profit. Nobody wrote for publication. AO3 is a vast digital gathering ground for self-motivated social artistry. And everybody has their niche. Where else am I going to find a larger group of people who’s as interested in moderately gay fanfiction about a teenage werewolf and his gangly human sidekick? Who else am I going to show my story about demon!sherlock to without intense fear of social rejection? Answer: nowhere.

The learning on AO3 is based on a unique, role-liquid student/teacher interface focused on improvement, encouragement, and the occasional humbling “your story gave me cancer” feedback. Everybody came to AO3 with common interests. Grammatical elements and writing proficiency often didn’t matter; instead, the community focused on emotional narrative, proper characterization, effective reflection on and/or misappropriation of the canon, and an accurate understanding of the target audience. Advanced-level writing concepts learned organically through community interactions on a grandly anonymous scale.

New media engagement fosters immersion with interests not accessible by traditional, analog means of connected learning. Although I had received formal writing training for years in school, I never truly developed a fictional voice until I found AO3 and related sites. Traditional education and new media connected learning buffered and built off of one another to round-off my education, to show me interesting ways to involve both critically and intuitively. Modern day learning is not complete without the benefits of new media community engagement.