After a few readings and many analytic memos, it became clear that there were larger themes in operation, and that a better approach to categorizing this large volume of data was to allow some kind of "meta-categories" to emerge. Once this idea of a higher level of structure began to take root, the meta-categories became obvious fairly quickly. The analytic memos provided a strong case for a division of the many analytic bins into three main meta-categories: Personal, Social, and Professional. At first, "social" was termed "community" but it was soon changed, because under the professional category there was the concept of a "community of practitioners" who were discussing and articulating ideas about their profession. Also, the concept of "social" was very prevalent and a more encompassing term than "community."

The students were communicating under these three "roles":

• Personal: As an individual – a student, a learner, and/or a human.
• Social: As a member of a group (non-professional)– a citizen, a member of

this online community of learners, a family member, and so on.

• Professional: As a professional educator, a practitioner in a community of

practitioners – both online and in their respective school environments.

This provided a valuable approach to further analyses and assisted in the arduous task of pulling it all together. Clearly, this was an outstanding breakthrough for this researcher. It provided a "meta-categorical structure" that unified many themes in a more manageable way. It helped to more effectively look at important components of constructivist learning principles.

An example of this is the component, reflection. This behavior is an important constructivist concept (Jonassen et al., 1995) that appeared across all of the course's "items." Reflection was occurring everywhere, but in a myriad of different ways. This system helped to clarify the purpose of the reflection:

• personal reflection on personal issues,
• social reflection on issues of family or as a learner in this experience or as a

citizen, and

• professional reflection on issues concerning professional development and the community of practitioners.

This is just one example of the value of these categories. Further analyses became much more streamlined and the complexity was diminished. The bigger picture of what was occurring in this online environment became much more illuminated.

Overall, the meta-categories helped to funnel the data into these "meta-bins" by distinguishing among the purposes of the communication. The end result was a system of organizing the data analytically which in itself is a reflection of the nature of the online interaction, the overall educational experience, and constructivist principles in operation.

So, after the meta-categories began to emerge, they began to yield this kind of analytical separation that follows. This first outline reflects "how the data was falling into these categories." After this will be an outline of the "final categorization system." Note that the original "analytic bins" are still here: some appear more than once, some have been sub-divided, and only one was lost in the transformation – knowledge construction. It became apparent that knowledge construction is an immeasurable by-product of all of these behaviors and would perhaps best be measured by traditional testing, surveys, or interviews. Mere observation of the online interaction could not substantiate the actual mental activity of constructing knowledge.

The following is the way that the data was organized into large groups when using these meta-categories (note that many things, such as reflection, can be under all three):

1. Personal:

• feelings: venting, emotional expression (positive & negative)
• self-reflection: relating to self (I, me, etc.), self-description, self-analysis, self-evaluation (can include personal declaration like "I will survive!")
• metacognition: examining one's own personal learning experience; describing how one learns (preferences, style, and description of processes)
• philosophizing: articulation of ideas, issues (personal issues, values, etc…)
• story-telling: personal stories (hard to distinguish between social & this)

2. Community / Social

• relating to others: peer empathy, group empathy, support, encouragement
• dialogue-connection: referring to another's response (agreeing or disagreeing; using someone's name – e.g., "As Jane said…" or "I like Mike's idea…")
• group reflection: descriptive and evaluative reflections
• feedback; critique
• socializing: recreation, fun, and comments outside of academics
• politeness and manners (thanks, use of name, etc.)
• expression of "group" feelings (us, we, etc.)
• social negotiation of issues (e.g., course content, professional topics, etc.)
• metacognition: of the online process their experiencing, of the GROUP – in general, in a "community-based" context
• philosophizing: articulation of group ideas, group issues, social values, etc
• story-telling: stories relating to online community, social situations, and other stories related to membership in a group (family, church, etc.)

3. Professional

• collaboration
• mentoring, tutoring, and problem-solving and offering solutions
• inquiry and exploration
• asking for help (technical, academic)
• demonstration and sharing of knowledge (technical, academic)
• share & discuss: content / info / resources / methods related to education field
• philosophizing: articulation of ideas, issues (academic, professional, etc.)
• story-telling: stories from the profession
• evaluative observations: comments on resources, academic methods, etc. – with specific professional analysis on aspects of some academic topic or professional development topic

The following was the "final" outline of the analytic bin system that informed the construction of matrices, which was in turn used to categorize the data by response. (An example of a matrix is in Appendix G. There is also an example of a "used" matrix, and a page of "raw data.") Here is the outline of the analytic bins, which served as the categorization mechanism (replacing the "original bins" described in Chapter Three):

1. Personal: This was the student "speaking" as an individual (person, student, and learner).

(a) Self-Reflection

(b) Self-Philosophizing  (eventually merged into reflection and  metacognition categories)

(c) Metacognition  ("Metacognitive Description" evolved out of this category as another separate category: like a description of self-regulation)

2. Social: This was the student "speaking" as a group member (communicated to others as human, citizen, family member, member of online course).

(a) Social Online Community Building

• Pure socializing (fun, recreation, humor, etc.)
• Politeness & manners
• Sharing personal stories
• Peer & group empathy (Peer Encouragement evolved out of this)

(b) Social Negotiation & Philosophizing

• Articulation of ideas relative to Online experience
• Philosophizing on social values, issues ~ non-professional
• Discussion of issues such as "time," etc.

3. Professional: This was the student "speaking" as an educator  (related to classmates as a practitioner and a professional – on academic and professional development topics).

(a) Professional Development

• Mentoring & tutoring
• Sharing resources & methods 
• (a separate "Help" category emerged from both of these to find the places where students asked for help)

(b) Professional-Community-Building (practitioners)

• Professional social-negotiation
• Reflection of professional topics & issues (self & group)
• Sharing stories & professional empathy  (divided later into two separate sub-categories)

(c) Collaboration (task-oriented)