The online academic: Case study narratives of change and resistance.

By telling stories, we make identity claims (Ronai, 1997). This paper presents' a case study exploring the stories (or narratives) of one university lecturer who teaches using a combination offace-to-face and online modes. The case study has been drawn from the pilot phase of research I am undertaking into how experienced lecturers' perceive their teaching selves in live and online teaching contexts' and how their teaching identities are being trans:formed through the experience of online teaching. In conversations with me, the lecturer participants' are encouraged to articulate and reflect on their teaching selves as represented in website material, computer-mediated communication andface-to-face teaching/learning contexts'. The case study reveals some of the emergent themes in my research and it enables a demonstration of the 'top-down'and 'bottom-up'discourse analysis procedures which I am developing to explore academics' stories and identities. I present the identity claims and themes which have emerged in the material collected for one experienced Information Technology lecturer. I then undertake a closer narrative analysis of one extract to illustrate the interpretative procedures. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the research issues.