Subject: CMC; Second Language Acquisition.
Kelm's article deals with findings from personal experiences with a class of fifteen undergraduate students in a Portuguese class at the University of Texas at Austin. The class used a synchronous conferencing program called INTERCHANGE one day per week. According to Kelm:
preliminary observations from this experience suggest that computer assisted class discussions may promote increased participation from all members of a work group, allow students to speak without interruption, reduce anxiety which is frequently present in oral conversations, render honest and candid expression of emotion, provide personalized identification of target language errors and create substantial interlanguage communication among L2 learners.
An additional advantage, which Kelm does not mention explicitly but which seems evident in the text is that the teacher is much more "invisible" in the interactions. Students take the most turns, and are reponsible for topic initiation (after the initial topic proposal by the teacher). The online conversation appears much more as a real conversation than does a traditional L2 classroom's "conversation" activity involving nothing more than question, response, feedback.
Kilian, C. (1994). The passive-aggressive paradox of on-line discourse. The Education Digest, 60, 33-36.
Subject: CMC; Discourse Analysis; Equality Issues.
Kilian briefly treats what he refers to as the "passive-aggressive paradox" in online discussions as it applies to the classroom. While many claim that electronic media help to eliminate the domination of discussion by a small minority, this may not in fact be the case. Kilian holds that in electronic bulletin board systems, for example, a few contributors dominate while everyone else "lurks". This is what he calls the passive-aggressive syndrome. The same phenomenon, he contends, occurs in the classroom: "Most teachers and students who go on line are passive readers of other people's postings; they rarely, if ever, respond to what they read. That leaves the aggressives in charge--teachers and students who post often and, of course, have only one another to respond to". This is due to the fact that people who are not computer specialists do not know the "rituals" of cyberspace--which is to say that there is no easily identifiable linguistic register on line. As a short-term solution, Kilian suggests that: "Cyberspace democracy, like the classroom itself, will need to rely for a time on teacher domination of the medium...to ensure that a disinterested moderator is there to look after the interests of the less aggressive". For the long term, he writes that "we need to get beyond mere netiquette to find the real registers of on-line communication".
Klemm, W.R., & Snell, J.R. (1996). Enriching computer-mediated group learning by coupling constructivism with collaborative learning. Journal of Instructional Science and Technology, 1, (online).
Subject: Classroom Dynamics; CMC.
Klemm and Snell feel that computer-mediated class discussions are not very "rigorous" and that instructional quality suffers "unless the teacher takes special care to create a more challenging learning environment". One of the big problems they address in the use of computer-mediated communication for class discussions is that much of this discussion is "threaded" and student comments, by virtue of the format of the exercise, offer only trivial comments, nothing more than a "yes, I agree with so and so..." In addition, other students do nothing more than "lurk".
Klemm and Snell state that students must actually do something if instruction is to be effective. This means that lessons should be structured such that students are required to "work together as a team to produce academic deliverables", thus "coupling constructivism with collaborative learning in computer conference environments". Klemm and Snell present a model to demonstrate their ideas, and examine "logic structures in a bulletin board environment", "hypertext-based conferencing", and "collaborative learning theory".
Knight, S. (1994). Making authentic cultural and linguistic connections. Hispania, 77, 288-294.
Subject: CMC; Culture Issues; Second Language Acquisition.
Knight's article treats an e-mail exchange between a 300-level undergraduate Spanish class with university students in Spain. In addition to the practical matters of set-up and types of activities, Knight also points out that the overall goal of the e-mail exchange was "to encourage personal friendships as well as to obtain cultural information". The latter aspect found a quite an intriguing manifestation in the fact that "all the Spaniards did not give the same answers to the same question. They provided varied interpretations to what the text treated as an historical event or a common perception (such as Gibraltar, regionalism, or U.S. bases in Spain)". The former aspect leads into what is perhaps most important in the article. Knight comments that the correspondence by e-mail "provides a natural way of promoting communicative competence, that is, of giving students meaningful, realistic reasons to use language and of exposing them to authentic models of written discourse". Although not arrived at through "scientific" means, this assertion shows the need for future inquiry into this domain.
Koch, M. (1994). No girls allowed! Technos, 3, 14-19.
Subject: CMC; Computer Tutoring; Gender Issues.
Koch points out several key issues dealing with gender differences as they relate to the use of technology in the classroom. According to Koch, many girls in school show little interest for computers. "They are socialized to view technology and technically literate people as belonging to a particular culture--the hacker culture"--which is comprised primarily of men. She adds that women "may also see the world of technology as precise and unforgiving, often lacking in creativity and having little connection to people".
But these are definitely not the only reasons for which girls are "turned off" by technology. "Instead of enticing girls to use technology", writes Koch, "educators are turning them off, both subtly and forcibly". For example, in classroom activities "teachers gave boys extended directions on how to accomplish tasks themselves while often completing the tasks for girls". In addition, she writes:
Often, teachers ask only boys technical questions, and the boys mock girls' ignorance of technical terms. Also, programming courses are scheduled at the same time as music or art classes, thus discouraging participation. Add to these conditions the facts that the home computer often is placed in the boy's room, not in a common area, and that parents don't usually send girls to computer camp or technology programs, and it is little wonder that girls are turned off.
There is also the problem of the gender bias of the computer-game market, providing games which "depict violence, emphasize competition, and demand strong hand-eye coordination" and "contain stereotypes of masculine and feminine". Girls are generally more interested in cooperative accomplishment of practical tasks.
One of the things which Koch notes is that "some preliminary studies on girls and telecommunications indicate that having telecommunications as a collaborative activity in classrooms actually heightens girls' interest in computing". "While boys gravitate toward games, girls use e-mail and USENET". However, girls seem primarily interested in "one-to-one e-mail". On list-serves they tend to lurk.
To begin remedying the situation, Koch recommends the following: enhanced exposure to technology; making an effort to structure classroom activities to focus on girls' preferences (e.g. more cooperative tasks); education reform (of 138 articles identified by Sadker, et al. between 1983 and 1987 dealing with education reform, only 1 dealt with gender!); choosing appropriate software; creating special technology programs for girls; and creating all-girl classrooms.
Kramarae, C., & Taylor, H. J. (1993). Women and men on electronic NetWorks: a conversation or a monologue? In H.J. Taylor, C. Kramarae, & M. Ebben (Eds.), Women, information technology, and scholarship (pp. 52-61). Urbana, IL: Center for Advanced Study.
Subject: CMC; Gender Issues.
Kramarae and Taylor state that despite claims regarding the "democratic" and equal exchange of information provided by electronic mail, "we are already seeing problems, including sexual harassment, that work against that equal exchange for all promised by so many of the experts". In their article they, "focus on problems women are experiencing on electronic NetWorks, and suggest some guidelines to help minimize the problems for women and 'minorities' on the nets".
According to the authors, "women are experiencing on the nets much of the same kinds of trouble they experience in other conversations.... In fact, the problems that women experience in other conversations may be intensified on the nets".
They outline some of the problems as follows:
1) Men monopolize the talk, even in open NetWorks where the topic is women's issues;
2) Women are frequently victims of sexual harrassment at many sites;
3) Aggressive/argumentative attitude of men (including flaming) creates a climate which prevents many women and minorities form "participating fully in the conversation";
4) Electronic publication of pornography;
Consequently, Kramarae and Taylor offer suggestions for university policy (their article deals primarily with university sites) to help change the current situation including:
1) Women-only forums for speech--"Separatism is not necessarily what women want for their discussions, but until gender equality becomes a reality in a wide variety of settings, women need both access to the public nets and some safe forums for their conversations";
2) Training "for the moderators, who decide what is allowed on the nets and who have the right to censor material they do not think belongs there";
3) "Warnings for new participants and reminders for long-time participants.... that the NetWorks are not totally private or safe";
4) "A grievance procedure for complaints of sexual harrassment on the nets";
5) "Periodic reports, to a central body, on the number and types of complaints and action taken";
6) "Clarification of what will be considered offensive messages. (Who will decide whether something is repugnant or objectionable?)";
7) "Explicit explanations about determining who can create a network bulletin board on what topics"; and
8) "Explicit discussion of the differing access to NetWorks, both inside and outside academe".
Kroonenberg, N. (1994-1995). Developing communicative and thinking skills via electronic mail. TESOL Journal, 4, 24-27.
Subject: CMC; Second Language Acquisition.
Kroonenberg asserts that "electronic mail...encourages students to use computers in realistic situations so that they can develop communicative and thinking skills". She describes how to introduce e-mail technology into the L2 classroom, looking both at technical aspects and the logistics of giving e-mail assignments and of integrating those assignments with face-to-face classroom discussions. In addition, Kroonenberg briefly describes the assessment of student performance in e-mail assignments, along with the advantages of e-mail in terms of developing communcative and thinking skills.
Lee, M. (1993). Gender, group composition, and peer interaction in computer-based cooperative learning. Journal of Educational Computing Research 9.4 549-577.
Subject: Classroom Dynamics; Computer Tutoring; Gender Issues.
Lee examines how small groups of elementary school children interact while completing tasks on the computer. The basis of her study is the theory of status:
Taking into account gender composition of the group as well as gender of the group members, the theory postulates that in mixed-gender groups, but not in same
gender groups, males are more likely to be involved in the overall interaction process than are females, because males are perceived to have the "higher state" of the status characteristic (gender)--socially and situationally--than are females, and thus the expectation is that males will be more competent and influential in small groups working on a collaborative problem-solving task.
In her study, Lee divided students into four kinds of groups: same-gender, majority- female, equal-ratio, and majority-male. "In general, the findings of the...study corroborate and extend current knowledge of peer interaction among students working in small groups within a computer-based learning environment". Overall, the:
levels of verbal activity of the males and females were modified by the presence or non-presence of their peers of the opposite gender. The tendency for males to become more verbally active and for the females to become less verbally active in mixed-gender groups, particularly in equal-ratio groups. . . are in general consistent with the findings of previous research conducted in non-computer settings...and in computer settings...and can be generally accounted for by the theory of status characteristics and expectations states . . .
