The unbearable lightness...

... of being; H800 style.

As suspected, much of this turned out to be a re-hash of the famous 1993 New Yorker cartoon:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you're_a_dog]

On the internet, indeed, nobody knows you're a dog, or a scared newbie, or an international expert, or sitting through an online tutorial in your pyjamas...

More seriously, as Sian Bayne, Senior Lecturer in Education, Community and Society at Edinburgh University, put it in 2005:

'within cyberspace identities are more freely transformable, boundaries less firmly drawn, and possibilities for metamorphosis of the self more open'

She argues that students feel anxious about learning online because they feel vulnerable, their identities threatened by this new shifting reality. Although she also acknowledges the scope for adopting a different persona online, she seems more concerned about the way this can lead to deviance (and fear of becoming a victim of deviance) than with its potentially liberating effect. 

Certainly there's a tendency for people to say things to each other online that they wouldn't dream of uttering face to face - as moderator of some 'lively' student forums, I'm all too aware of that. 
In my experience, though, it's learning itself, rather than the medium, which students find unsettling.  What Bayne describes are just old anxieties in new clothes. Instead of worrying about turning up in the wrong room, today's students worry about clicking the wrong button on the module website; instead of worrying about whether their tutor can read their handwriting, they worry about  saving their assignment files in the right format. Students have always fretted about 'showing themselves up' but many find security in hiding behind a screen. Many, of course, are actively seeking identity change through learning.

Bayne also seems to over-state the distinction between students and tutors. I didn't recognise her portrait of confident tutors authoritatively negotiating the boundaries of this new world to project their 'teacherly personas'. I've more often encountered considerable resistance and anxiety amongst colleagues being obliged to 'perform' online without the benefit of cues from eye contact, body language, and what the linguists call back-channelling. 

Learning is indeed about identity: we are who we are because of what we've learned, formally or informally. I remain to be convinced that introducing technological tools to the process presents a threat.