Subject: Classroom Dynamics; CMC; Education.
Galagher and Kraut address the use of CMC in group writing (college English composition) projects. They divided students into three groups communicating through different media--computer only, computer + phone and face-to-face. Although they found that the groups' overall perfomance was not affected by communication modality, the computer-only group had greater difficulty completing the work, and had a lower level of satisfaction with their work. This is in part due to the complexity of the project and the level of interactive communication demanded by it (which is greatly facilitated by the face-to-face mode). The problems involved in a group writing project for example include "negotiating the meaning of facts . . .establishing a concensus as to an appropriate solution, dividing tasks among group members, coordinating the execution of work, and confronting questions of authority within the group. . .". Face-to-face communication seems to be best suited to complex tasks, because it is the most interactive, allowing rapid information exchange, the adjusting of messages "in response to signals of understanding or misunderstanding" as well as the possibility for questions and interruptions, intonation and gestures "to reveal intensity" and "physical artifacts to clarify or amplify meaning". There is also the question of social relations, using small talk, jokes, etc., to get to know each other, relieve tensions, diffuse conflicts, etc.
Galvin, J. M. (1985). Teleconferencing brings the world to the classroom. The Social Studies, 76, 236-37.
Subject: Audioconferencing; Education.
Galvin describes how teleconferencing has allowed public high school students to communicate with special "guest speakers". Students at Hughes High School in Cincinnati have spoken with Sally Ride, Ted Kennedy, a Native American tribal chief from North Carolina, a nautical archaeologist from Rice University, journalists, congressmen, economists, historians, embassy officials from different countries and others. Teleconferencing has also been used to allow bed-bound students recovering from serious illnesses/accidents to participate in class activites.
Ganszauge, M., Hult, J., Sajavaara, K., & Kontinnen, R. (1994). The computer in the english language classroom. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 38, 159-174.
Subject: Classroom Dynamics; Computer Tutoring; Second Language Acquisition.
Ganszauge et al. study the possibilities of tutorial CALL.
The present study examines the possibility of diversifying language learning with the use of the computer in the EFL classroom. It describes an attempt to integrate the computer with present classroom practices and the EFL curriculum by giving teachers the freedom to experiment with different lesson structures. The results indicate that a CALL environment is as viable a solution as a conventional FL learning environment. Working in pairs and some aspects of cooperative learning seem to be the most feasible mode of operation for pupils. Appropriate teacher training is probably the most important prerequisite for creating a successful CALL environment.
The study addresses three main issues:
(1) The general suitability of a computer-based environment for learning English as a second language in the Comprehensive School. . . .
(2) Pupils' attitudes towards the subject matter in a computer-based environment and the computer itself. . . .
(3) Changes in the teacher's role as an instructor, administrator, and disciplinarian. . . .
Generally computers were found to work best in group activities. Student participation seemed to be divided between "computer contributors" and "language contributors". Students in the study demonstrated a positive attitude toward both English and the use of computers. While the teacher's role as a disciplinarian did not change, the teacher's role as an instructor did change in that s/he became "more a consultant and less a lecturer". However, "the greatest change was in the teacher's role as an administrator, specifically, in the planning and production of learning materials".
Garrison, D.R. (1990). An analysis and evaluation of audio teleconferencing to facilitate education at a distance. The American Journal of Distance Education, 4, 13-24.
Subject: Audioconferencing; Education.
Garrison believes that the essential element of education is two-way communication. Gaining information and data is not enough. Traditional distance education, involving one-way transmission of information through television, radio and print is insufficient to providing real education. True knowledge involves questioning and criticism. For this to occur, teacher-learner and learner-learner communication is necessary. Teleconferencing can be seen "as a paradigm shift in the quest to provide sustained interaction and ultimately greater control for both teacher and student over the educational transaction at a distance". Garrison adds that "education is a social, not a private, activity which ultimately demands critical analysis and testing of understanding to avoid ideology and indoctrination".
Gregor, S.D., & Cuskelly, E. F. (1994). Computer-mediated communication in distance education. Journal of Computer-Assisted Learning, 10, 168-181.
Subject: Classroom Dynamics; CMC.
Gregor and Cuskelly examine the use of CMC in a distance education course (post
graduate information systems module at Central Queensland University). Two points of interest come up. First that the students found overall, that doing assignments by e-mail (basically, case study "discussion") "was more useful than a conventional assignment [and] that the instructor seemed more accessible". Second, that "social interaction amongst students and between students and the instructor was relatively low". These two points appear to be contradictory. Without a "dialog" going on among the students, and between them and the teacher, there really isn't any difference between e-mail responses to questions and a traditional writing assignment. Gregor and Cuskelly admit themselves that "there was...little comment on the assignment contributions made by others.... In fact, with this case study, there were only two comments made on the contributions from other students". Apart from the bulletin board (where the assignment responses were sent) students were also encouraged to use the e-mail system to send messages directly to other students and the instructor. However 67% of the students did not communicate at all with their peers, and 44% did not communicate with the lecturer. However students were not provided with a list of other students' addresses, so these numbers are not necessarily valid--students might communicate more amongst themselves if they have each other's addresses, as other articles seem to indicate. Nevertheless, the premise of the article seems somewhat shaky, claiming that e-mail made the course more effective, since this premise is based on a survey in which 80% of the students claimed this to be the case, but only about half of the students even really used e-mail as e
mail, the other half using it simply as a sophisticated typewriter.
Handa, C. (1992). An interview with Cynthia L. Selfe: "nomadic feminist cyborg guerilla". Writing on the Edge, 4, 67-81.
Subject: CMC; Culture Issues; Education; Equality Issues.
Set up in an interview format, this article summarizes the basics of Selfe's views on computers as tools for establishing "radical democracy". As a teacher, Selfe wants her students to become critical readers and writers of their own and others' experiences. To this end she tries to help them to understand the political nature of language in a variety of environments, including the computer-supported writing environment.
Selfe explains that she once believed that "if we created...small local spaces in computer NetWorks, we could effect [social] change by letting people learn in ways that were different from the regular classroom. And because these spaces were invisible to administrators and because they were designed by us, we could effect change in those spaces". Students would then take values developed in those small spaces and manifest them elsewhere.
However her philosophy has now evolved, because she has come to realize that:
ideology works at many levels, simultaneously and in articulation with other social forces. Because such forces are so dispersed, there is a grid of control that influences almost everything we do, even in these minute spaces....[She now realizes] how optimistic it was to think that our actions and our students' actions in those spaces would be more influenced by our own values than they would be influenced by the other cultural forces exerted through ideology.
The military/industrial complex goes beyond the simple notion of the state. The cultural hegemony which it fosters "deterritorializes state borders and exerts control on a global basis". Therefore resistance must be thought globally and not simply locally. "Computers can be a way of extending that discursive territory for the radical democratic project", a way of giving more individuals access to a means of expression.
What makes this resistance difficult, however, is that the state (part of the military/industrial complex), through legislation and regulation, is exerting more and more control over the (potentially resistant) discursive space of computer NetWorks. Fortunately, we are "in a transition stage where that control has not solidified yet or become totally legislated or regulated, and there are still spaces to maneuver to enact tactics in ways that are unofficially sanctioned". For example, Selfe mentions "packet-switching" technology which allows "corporate owners of phone lines to think about how they will regulate and charge for the amount of information that goes over the lines". But, she adds, "we still have the possibility of following the lead of hackers, who go in through the backdoors of these systems. They use the official channels, but in unofficial ways".
Selfe cites an example from her own university of how students who cannot afford CPU time manage to access the campus mainframe for free, by calling out through telnet, going through four or five different countries and then coming back into the university system from the outside. "They're able to subvert the official security system on our own computer despite attempts to commoditize education".
Of course these tactics work only until the state realizes what is happening, and defends itself against them. Therefore the guerilla must constantly change tactics to keep up with the evolving defenses of the state. However, this is not so hopeless as it may seem--the student "hackers" in question, for example, do this naturally "just by the force of coping with their daily lives". By following the lead of such students, we, the teachers, "can extend the virtual landscape or the electronic landscape for the democratic project. We can extend the democratic landscape as fast as the State closes off or regulates or legislates it. We can commit ourselves to discussions of democracy, control, and freedom in these expanded territories".
Thus the nomadic feminist cyborg guerilla can be defined as:
a kind of English teacher-activist who uses computer technology, a politically active being who employs the available technology as a medium for effecting political and educational change to support the expanded project of radical democracy. This kind of being uses technology not as a war machine [which is how the military/industrial complex uses it] but as a discursive territory for extending democracy.
Harasim, L. (1987). Teaching and learning on-line: issues in computer-mediated graduate courses. Canadian Journal of Educational Communication, 16, 117-135.
Subject: CMC; Education.
Harasim investigates the use of computer conferencing for creating new learning environments. Her study focuses on the computer conference environment as a place for more "effective" (i.e. active) learning. She defines computer conferencing as a "group communications medium enabling groups of people to exchange ideas and opinions and to share information and resources". This includes, for Harasim, both conferencing and electronic mail. The paper focuses on an on-line graduate course she offered in which her goal was to develop a learner-centered, group learning approach. There were three phases to her course:
A) four one-week "electronic" seminars;
B) on-line working groups and class presentations;
C) final plenary sessions for feedback and reflection over the course topic and process.
She presents data on student participation, perceived effectiveness of learning, and perceived advantages and disadvantages of online learning--much of the data is of a qualitative nature, taken from student surveys.
Student participation was high. Each student spent an 3.6-4.2 hrs/week participating in the on-line seminar (a typical classroom seminar involves students only 2.5-3 hrs/week). Participation may actually have been higher, since many students down-loaded and printed messages from discussions, to look at them even while they were not actually at their computer screens.
Many students felt that they were able to take more initiative in this medium, and in addition, many students who do not communicate well verbally in a group setting found that they could participate much more actively online.
Perceived advantages of online learning were listed as follows:
1. increased interaction (quantity and intensity);
2. access to group knowledge and support;
3. democratic environment;
4. convenience of access (24-hour class);
5. user control over the learning interaction;
6. motivation;
7. text-based communication;
Perceived disadvantages of online learning were listed as follows:
1. information overload (too much too fast);
2. asynchronicity (delayed responses);
3. inconvenience of increased access (feeling of excessive work load);
4. following various online discussion "threads";
5. loss of visual cues in communication;
6. health concerns (eyestrain, backache, radiation exposure);
Harasim, L. (1993). Collaborating in cyberspace: using computer conferences as a group learning environment. Interactive Learning Environments, 3, 119-130.
Subject: Classroom Dynamics; CMC; Education.
This article is somewhat less in-depth than Harasim's 1987 article, as it deals less with educational issues and more with practical set-up concerns. She nevertheless continues to emphasize the idea that computer conferencing contributes to a more active/interactive learning environment. Of interest is the repeated reference to "divergent thinking" on the part of the students in the online environment. At the same time, Harasim stresses the importance of the instructor "structuring" the activities, discussion forums etc. "The on-line instructor (like her face
to-face counterpart) must give shape to the various learning tasks and activities, defining social roles and procedures, focusing on particular content and monitoring group interaction". But the reader must still wonder: can student thought in such an environment--where the instructor (authority figure/representative of the academic establishment) frames discourse, determines what is relevant, exerts control over interaction--really be divergent?
Hardy, V., Hodgson, V., & McConnell, D. (1994). Computer conferencing: a new medium for investigating issues in gender and learning. Higher Education, 28, 403-418.
Subject: CMC; Discourse Analysis; Gender Issues.
Hardy et al. open their article with a review of important studies dealing with "Gender and CMC", "Gender and education", and "Gender and language". The article principally deals with three small-scale studies which Hardy and her colleagues performed on three computer-mediated graduate courses in Management Learning. The first study looks at the number and length of turns taken by men and women in online conferences. The results of this study showed that women take more turns, but that the length of turns is approximately the same for men and women. Many previous studies (cited on page 408 of the article) had claimed that men generally took more turns.
The second study treats "the nature of men's talk and of women's talk and their impact as experienced by women". This study's results showed that women spent more time "being themselves or using their own language" and finding "the ease of feeling connected to and responding to other women". On the other hand, women commented on the men's contributions, referring to the length, "the language used and something about the style, 'heavy and cerebral' and their [own] reactions such as to be 'intimidated', or to 'shy away'".
The third study deals with comments on how "some people behaved on line and how easy or not it was to read and respond to their inputs". Women tended to engage in "rapport" talk, while men engaged in "report" talk. While women would speak of feelings or relationships between participants, men tended to distance themselves emotionally and intellectualize all responses. Sometimes, when "feelings" were at issue male participants would address other males about something a female had written, rather than respond to the female directly.
The authors conclude that while CMC does have certain egalitarian potential (in the realm of turn taking) there is still a "subtle potential for gender imbalance in online conversations".
Hartman, K., Neuwirth, C., Keisler, S., Sproull, L., Cochran, C., Palmquist, M., & Zubrow, D. (1991). Patterns of social interaction and learning to write: some effects of network technologies. Written Communication, 8, 79-113.
Subject: Classroom Dynamics; CMC.
Hartman et al. performed a study using writing classes divided into two groups. The first group used only traditional means of communication for collaboration and feedback (i.e. face-to
face, telephone, written comments on drafts) and the second group used these means of communication coupled with e-mail and other software to allow documents to be read by others and commented upon electronically. The study revealed (although the authors themselves acknowledge that the sample group was small--four classes only) that:
1. using network communication tools did not replace traditional communication forms, but rather supplemented them;
2. total teacher-student communication in networked groups was higher than in traditional groups;
3. face-to-face communication between students and teacher increased regardless of whether groups were networked or not;
4. student-student communication in both types of groups was approximately the same;
5. "less talented" students interacted more with teacher in networked groups than in traditional groups, where "weaker" students tend to sit in the back, off in the corner, etc. receiving less attention. In networked groups, there was a "more equitable distribution of attention" from the teacher.
Hawisher, G. E., & Selfe, C. L. (1992). Voices in college classrooms: the dynamics of electronic discussion. The Quarterly of the National Writing Project and the Center for the Study of Writing, 14, 24-28.
Subject: Classroom Dynamics; CMC; Discourse Analysis; Equality Issues; Gender Issues.
Hawisher and Selfe focus on the gender and power structures existent in the electronic spaces of the college writing classroom. Their study is based on two undergraduate English conferences. In each class the students participated in the first five weeks of the conference using their own names. During the second five weeks they used pseudonyms. The variables which are examined in the study consist of the following:
1) the number of messages participants sent;
2) the length of messages;
3) the number of references individuals made to other participants;
4) the number of topics participants initiated and the length of time that they lasted;
5) the number of times participants agreed and disagreed with others; and
6) the number of apologies participants made
It is important to note that the teachers did NOT participate in the conferences.
The study revealed few corresponding patterns between the two classes.
1) The men in Hawisher's class averaged the longest messages overall whereas the women in Selfe's class averaged the greatest number of messages.
2) The men and women in Hawisher's class contributed more messages and words during the real-name period whereas the men and women in Selfe's class contributed more messages and words during the optional pseudonym period.
3) The men in Hawisher's class initiated more topics whereas the women in Selfe's class initiated more topics. The men's topics in Hawisher's class lasted for a longer number of days whereas the women's topics in Selfe's class lasted for a longer number of days.
4) The women and their ideas in both classes were referred to more frequently than the men and their ideas.
5) In both classes women also agreed more and posed more questions than the men in both conditions; in Selfe's class they also apologized more frequently. (Hawisher's class only evidenced one apology and it was from a man).
What is most intriguing however is the nature of comments made by students in the conferences themselves. Both sets of students reveal that they have been very much influenced by the teacher's discourse in the classroom. Which is to say that "even when teachers set aside these electronic spaces for their students, believing that they will become places inhabited primarily by students, the teacher retains his or her presence in the electronic space". Hawisher and Selfe in their separate classes "dominated the discourse of the conferences...they were referenced in the electronic conferences more than any other single individuals in the class".
Students in the electronic space were not resisting "norms of institutional behavior" but were complying with them.
Hawisher and Selfe consequently outline the following issues for future research:
further examination of classroom discourse, including that of the electronic classroom; allowing students to examine and analyse their own discourse; further examination of how "community" is formed (especially using electronic communication, since it provides a transcript of interaction).
Henri, F. (1992). Processus d'apprentissage à distance et téléconférence assistée par ordinateur: essai d'analyse. Canadian Journal of Educational Communication, 21, 3-18.
Subject: CMC; Education.
Henri's article begins with the assumption that not only does the content of a message affect the learning process of students, but that the medium itself is an important "variable" in that process. In her analysis, Henri examines the "content", the "symbolic system" and the "mode of presentation" in CMC NetWorks. For each of these aspects of CMC, Henri draws the following conclusions:
1. CONTENT
--the content of conferencing (being generated by the student) requires him or her to organize and structure his or her thoughts, and to translate them into language --the fact that content contribution comes from the student in response to other students requires that the student understand the thought of others, and make relevant responses;
--active participation in content creation has not only cognitive implications, but social ones as well--the student is involved in a process of socialization to integrate him or herself into the group, to be accepted and to accept others.
2. SYMBOLIC SYSTEM--
CMC uses only one symbolic system--writing;
--this symbolic system has a certain permanence which permits in-depth observation, analysis, and evaluation by both the student and the teacher.
3. MODE OF PRESENTATION --
dialogic interaction which encourages critical thought;
--presentation of pure thought (stripped of the physical cues of expression such as body language or facial expression); ideas are objectified and stand or fall based upon their merit (which is nevertheless an idea that naively neglects rhetoric, which can be viewed in a sense as the written equivalent of body language and facial expressions, and which can, in spite of Henri's view, make weak ideas seem stronger than they are, or strong ideas seem weaker than they are. The very idea goes against Henri's opening premise, that content and form are different and that form itself has an impact).
Overall, the basic premise is interesting, but some of the reasoning in the analysis is faulty. Nevertheless, the original premise has merit as the basis for further inquiry.
Herring, S., Johnson, D., & Dibendetto, T. (1992). Participation in electronic discourse in a "feminist" field. In K. Hall, et al. (Eds)., Locating Power: Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Women and Language Conference (pp. 250-261). Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Women and Language Group.
Subject: CMC; Gender Issues.
Herring's article challenges the claim that e-mail is a medium which exercises a "democratizing influence on communication". The study of Herring and her colleagues focused on an academic discussion list called "Megabyte University" (MBU). Contrary to what the authors expected to find, they discovered that men, even in a relatively non-adversarial environment such as this one, contributed 70% of the messages. During the time of the study, women's contributions to the five-week discussion exceeded those of men for only two days. Immediately following this two-day period, there were "male accusations of being 'silenced' in the discussion" and some made threats to unsubscribe from the list. These factors "provide support for the view that women and men do not have equal rights to speak in public; by contributing more even temporarily, and on a feminist (and female-introduced) topic, women in the group violated the unspoken convention that control of public discourse belongs rightfully to men". The 70-30 ratio seems to be in evidence in all varieties of public discourse. The authors offer this fact as an explanation of their own findings. "In a society where such an expectation is conventionalized and even exploited for commercial ends, it is small wonder that the electronic medium does not-
cannot--in and of itself make for equal communication between the sexes".
