1. Pre-Online Lurking Pre-online times, lurking had a very negative connotation. It suggested someone with ulterior motives scoping out a target or multiple targets. Now, the online version of "lurking" often is mentioned with a laugh. There's something charming about observing others in online space as a quiet non-participant.

2. Lurking Experience I've only lurked in online space once. I logged onto a parallel universe sort of site to check out its learning possibilities but probably didn't get past stage 1... Stage 1 was floating around looking at people who were standing around with names but no comments...and who weren't doing much in particular. I think we were all a bunch of newbies in online space...and not being a gamer, I didn't fulfill the few learning skills I needed to get to the next level where more interesting virtual people congregate. So I lurked and flew through people and landed here and there and figured that the game was taking up too much space on my working computer...so I logged out, deleted the .exe download and went back to work. So much for the hyperbole of that space for learning purposes, I thought.

3. Lurking in eLearning Most recently, I've lurked in an online classroom that I helped to build...and still provide support for albeit as a lurking presence. This course is taught as a hybrid, but in an unusual twist, the F2F instructors do not also teach the online version. Rather, they are there as virtual digital video presences. The online instructors themselves have no online teaching experience, and only one of the two had ever taught an online class. The LMS was new to them, etc. I didn't think my contact with them would go beyond the initial curriculum design and creation of curricular materials. That was a job in itself, with much vetting of a leadership text...creation of slideshows...and creation of PR slides for the campus television station and three different sets of posters for the local neighborhood. I had the pleasure of building a virtual learning ecology and then seeing it get populated and "lived in" for a time. Another wrong assumption was that I could lurk at my leisure to read the astute and experienced comments of leaders from the local community. Indeed, the comments were insightful...but there was no passive lurking for me.

However, come the first week, the digital video had to be summarized for accessibility. Then an announcement had to be made about where individuals could find the materials. The F2F learners wanted to see themselves on the small screen...and so all wanted access to the online course as well. They had to be integrated without confusing the online course dynamics. A student couldn't get the RealMedia files to open. The changing phrasing on an "Equal Access" policy had to be uploaded. As the semester moved on, message board forums had to be moved around.

Yet, there are limits to how many interactions a silent lurker may have online. While I had encouraged a telepresence build for the course, I could see that one instructor totally ignored this concept...and really didn't appear much. Shhh. Some sparkly comments by learners could foster a response. Shhh. I had a great set of book notes that would help in the study, but I'd given this set to instructors, and in the rules of info hierarchy, I couldn't even it up for their learners. Shhh.

There's a kind of finesse to lurking silently...and effectively in a class without leaving virtual footprints in the online classroom.