CMC VS. FTF Article Summaries

With the constant advancements of technological capabilities, professor’s methods of teaching and communicating with their students are altering as well. The world of education has seen numerous beneficial changes in the last 15 years alone, such as a student’s use of emailing in communicating with teachers and peers and the use of chat rooms where class discussion can occur outside of the classroom. As the familiar communication plain changes, many analysts have begun to examine what, if any, affect this introduction of Computer mediated communication (CMC) has on the learning process and general school atmosphere.

The first article I chose, “'Let's you and me have a little discussion': Computer mediated communication in support of campus-based university courses”, is from the March 2000 issue of Studies in Higher Education. Online Networking has recently become an integral part of learning and using practicing foreign languages. Clearing house noted that “Synchronous CMC allows language learners to use the target language and interact with classmates, learners elsewhere, and native speakers worldwide”. The clearing house team developed a case study based using a third year undergraduate course, in which the tutor set up group-based CMC discussion of a course but did not participate himself in any way in that discussion. Among the questions the experiment sought to address were the following: “How effectively, and by what means, will communication and exchange of ideas be achieved in this situation? How stable will such interaction be? If groups diverge in their patterns of interaction, what factors underlie this divergence? How, and how similarly, will students and tutor judge the value of this experience?”. The Study ended up taking a turn the researchers had not expected when the chat rooms began experiencing large amounts of harsh peer criticism and to an extent bullying. It seemed that often socializing could get in the way of developing a strong educational discussion. The study concluded that there was a strong feeling that a leader was needed to actively monitor and pull the reins in from time to time, and to keep the discussion more focused.

The second article I chose, “Effects of educational context on socialization in computer-mediated communication”, is from the Winter 2000 issue of The Journal of Computer Information Systems. To investigate the suitability of CMC for supporting socialization in educational settings, the research team created a survey instrument that “measured perceptions of CMC relating to socialization” and applied the instrument in two different educational contexts: general communication and project team communications. The instrument was administered to a study with three courses in the final week of a 15-week semester. In one of the courses, students used CMC for general communication with the instructor and other students and for receiving course materials. Of the other two courses, one covered 3GL programming and the other covered database concepts and application development. CMC was perceived to be significantly better for initiating social relationships and for social influence in the context of general communication than in project teamwork. Subjects rated their perceptions of effectiveness for each item using a five-position Likert scale ranging from (1) Very Ineffective to (5) Very Effective. CMC is perceived to be much better for initiating social relationships and influencing others within the context of general communication, comprising personal and course related communication, than for supporting project teams. First, team project work may require faster turnaround of messages than general communication. Second, it may be more important in team projects to illustrate ideas, e.g., through drawing and graphic modeling, rather than simply telling about them as a mechanism for developing shared understanding. Third, team project work involves deadlines and deliverables that may place a premium on being able to quickly initiate social relationships and influence others.

My final article looks at the use of CMC in language classes and its effect on the development of language skills. “On "chatting" in the foreign language classroom” was printed in the August 2001 issue of The Clearing House. This article provides an interesting look at how Network technology has been incorporated into the classroom, with concentration given to incorporating synchronous computer-mediated communication technology (CMC), or chatting, into foreign language study. The researchers noticed a few notable differences between FTF communications and CMC. First, written debates in synchronous CMC, tend to elicit more complex language than oral debates, and learners tend to produce longer and more coordinated statements. This is because when typing out a thought students have more time to plan what they are going to day and are not worried about the pronunciation. Another observation reported in synchronous CMC studies is the equalizing effects on the distribution of learners' participation. Compared with FTF classroom interactions, there are distinctions in the composition of the communication tendencies between the teacher and learners as well as among the learners themselves. In a CMC setting, the teacher and learners become equal participants in the flow of conversation, no one monopolizes the conversation. The Clearing House suggests that “the absence of visual and social cues in the electronic medium determines this role shift. Physical and spatial classroom arrangements disappear, and the classroom transforms into a screen in which everybody has an equal voice”. The Clearing House discussion ultimately concludes that “learners tend to perceive the on-line environment as less threatening”.