Getting Things Done
Collaboration, grounding.
Often what has to 'get done' through CMC is useful discussion and exchange of ideas on course-related matters, reflecting and informing learning development. However, such discussion may be in the service of a more focused goal. In many circumstances you may see CMC as a tool for co-ordinating forms of work that have to be engaged by your learners as a group or team. Indeed, you may see the support of collaboration itself from a 'core skills development' perspective as justification for CMC - whether or not joint work outcomes are themselves central to the course aims.
Collaboration
The effective support of real collaboration can be difficult to achieve and sustain. The slow pace of exchange can be crippling within a task where it is important to individuals to deliver to deadline. If you are seeking substantial commitment of time and energy from your learner group, you will want to support a sensitive negotiation of responsibilities between them. Yet the nature of the medium itself may put unhelpful brakes on discussion which could, in routine conversation, proceed smoothly.
Allowing time, providing models of possible task-share, putting appropriate resources within reach, will help matters. However, just as is your likely concern with 'traditional' learner groups, you will not want to spoon feed but, rather, encourage autonomy.
In fact there are some obvious attractions for CMC as a resource to support collaboration. The same medium that supports the discussion can also support presentation of products as they emerge. Working drafts of reports for comment or co-authoring, design outlines, literature reviews, hypothesis development; you will find more within your own discipline context.
GroundingAt its best, CMC is a powerful means for a group to work together. At its least effective it can run very inefficiently, fostering resentment towards those who fail to meet deadlines and guilt (or righteous indignation) amongst them.
Recognising that CMC as a medium can exaggerate problems of coordination for collaboration is half the battle. The other half involves a careful handling of deadlines and task protocols.
Whether the object of the CMC is discussion as such, or collaborating on the building of some joint product, CMC interaction, to be effective, needs to be organised and co-ordinated in some fashion.
This co-ordinating work is best done through participants' shared understanding of what their objective is (i.e. what the outcome or product is supposed to look like) and how to go about achieving it. All participants need to develop some model of what they are trying to do. If this model is shared with others they are working with, either tacitly or explicitly, they can recognise how (or if) the actions of those others contribute to the overall goal, and how to make their own actions fit in with greatest effect.
The section on 'Getting used to CMC' might make useful reading at this point.
Voices of Experience
A selection of 'Voices of Experience' - comments from learners and teachers - relating to this area are recorded in text format here (opens in a new window).
You can also access the sections for Getting Things Done within each subject area case study, which include similar commentary, from the links below:
3: Applied Psychology and Computing
4: Psychology and Information Technologies
Alternatively you can access each subject area case study in its entirety from the list on the left-hand navigation bar.
