Starting to Use CMC

Using CMC in learning and teaching may not come naturally to even those students and tutors who are 'browser literate' and for whom email has long been a comfortable resource. A sense of novelty predominates, more exciting than familiarity, but a lot less comfortable.

Both research and practice experience indicates that CMC skills develop best through tasks or activities which are familiar, meaningful and relevant to our learning needs. It is through such tasks and activities that your students (and possibly yourself) lacking experience within a particular learning environment can be drawn into confident and regular usage, gaining sufficient understanding of how that environment operates to explore new and productive ways of using it.

We do improve with practice and the aim here is to suggest some activities which should familiarise you, your colleagues and perhaps your students, in the use of computer mediated communication.

In familiarising yourself with the technology, you should concentrate in the first instance on carrying out activities that are familiar, and building up experience of how to do this using the resources to hand. Some pointers on starting to use the technology are given below.

Some form of local CMC system guide sheet for the use of VLE resources in your own institution may be available to allow you to establish log-on permissions, to check ways of using options and features and to identify useful resources before beginning. Check this with your service provider and/or educational development unit.

Establish a group - colleagues in the same institution may be sensible, unless there are common resources (VLE, version, server access etc) across institutions which allow freedom of inter-access.

Set a time frame for each activity, and agree this between yourselves.

Activity One:

1. Each member of the group composes and posts an informal message to the conference, giving their name and department, then your reasons for engaging this learning activity at this time.

2. Each of you responds to at least one of the contributions made by colleagues. Perhaps you might agree, or comment on, someone's reasons for taking the module where these concur or contrast with your own.

Activity Two:

Each member of the group thinks back over the issues raised in the introductory sub-section - the four key issues of asynchronicity, text format, permanence and structure, and the listing of advantages and disadvantages of CMC given there.

1. From what each of you know of the range of tutorial activities you engage for the support of learning in your own learning environment. What concerns, potential worries, might there be for realising these in a VLE? What, on the other hand, might work well - and why?

   Select one or two issues and put them to the group for discussion.

   • For example, participation is a known concern - some conferences attract little activity by the student group. If it is important for their learning that they do contribute, how can they be encouraged?

   • Another problem can be the student who dominates the conference - possibly with good work, but which might daunt less confident students, or irritate others. How to support the group development without thwarting that of the student?

   • Abuse of the system can be a worry, though it is found less frequently than might be feared - how to deal with the rogue contributor who may be using offensive language, spreading rumours, challenging staff?

2. Looking at the issues raised by your colleagues (which may or may not concur with your own, or with those suggested above), what solutions can you suggest? Spend a bit of time in discussion, responding to messages or putting new topics up.

Once you are all comfortable with writing and sending, each member of the group undertakes the next activity:

Activity Three:

The context checklist template below can be used to organise your information (though there is no need to stick to it absolutely). Use this information to post a message about a course that you teach, support, or plan, for which CMC might enhance your learner support provision. This template is also available to download as a Word document.

Comment, question and respond to others' context messages if you wish to, then leave it for review in the light of practice experience?

This might be a good point at which to review information available from the 'Useful Links and References' section.