Grounded Guidelines/Case Study: Psychology and Information Technologies
Characteristics of the Communication Technology
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The general resource for the course is provided through a series of Web pages which contain reading suggestions, and links to useful resources on the Web. After the students have conducted their seminars, any presentation slides or notes are placed on the Web in pdf file (portable document format) form. Thus students are encouraged to use the Web as a central resource and focus for the activity of the course.
A Web-based discussion forum has been used as a resource for the course over the last three years. The course lecturer had used a HyperNews system on two previous occasions, while the year in which the course participated in this study a locally-built system written by one of the lecturer’s colleagues was being used. The lecturer’s institution did not, at the time at which we looked, have any policy about the provision and support of text conferencing, so he was in this initiative totally dependent on support from other enthusiasts. Neither did the students on the course have any experience of using text-based conferencing in any other settings, although the use of electronic mail was near universal. Most students appeared to be extremely enthusiastic about the potential and value of electronic mail.
Email usage. It's great. I use it a lot. Check it at least, probably twice every day; a lot more when I was working in the Library all the time. And I found that very useful for getting into contact with staff and other people in my class. [Student] |
I use email all the time. It's been invaluable to get in contact with (lecturer). It's useful because you can send someone a message and that you know they'll get it, and that they can take their time to answer it, and to give you a decent answer, instead of leaving a note on the door, or phoning up trying to get hold of him. It's been good for arranging meetings, and when we did group projects in third year. But mostly this year everyone's been in regularly, so you can usually see them. If you write somebody a letter it's like you expect to get a letter back, because ... writing a letter requires a lot of effort and thought - you can't just write a letter two lines long. You've got to put effort into it, and thought and it kind of like you want someone to write a letter back, but if you write someone an email they don't necessarily have to write back to you - you won't be bothered - but at the same time they're more likely to because they can just type a few lines. [Student] |
