Computer-Mediated Conferencing: Grounded Guidelines

[Student in a focus group discussion]

I think the problem was that we didn't get an induction into the package, in terms of doing the more sophisticated things, well not like sending attachments, being able to read an attachment that's been sent to you in a different format, all these things.

I think if it was going to be used again there would have to be a bit more input from others, to tell us how to use it more appropriately.

If somebody was to sit down with me for a whole afternoon and go through the whole procedure and tell me...

...a handout's no use unless you're actually sitting in front of the machine.

It came along as a bit of an add-on, didn't it? You know, we were kind of already under way with the course and then all of a sudden, it was like "Oh you're going to be doing this First Class thing" so right from the beginning of the course, it wasn't really kind of, you know, "This is the way that we're going to communicate all round the bases" and I think maybe if it had been that way from the start and we'd had proper training and that.

...if you're thinking about for next year's cohort of trainees, if they enter into thinking that this is the way it's going to be done, I think it could work really really well.

Then after, it's up to us how we use it, so I don't think that matters, but I think in the first instance, there was a role in terms of training and the setting up of machines in the different practice bases. That's what the role should have been and wasn't.

He assumed it was all working and it wasn't and he assumed that if you just called something dot RTF or saved it in the RTF file, then a Mac user could read a pc file and that doesn't work.

Yeah and I think, I mean our sort of initial training in the use of computers full stop as well as like the First Class stuff, involved us kind of all gathering around J's desk and trying to look over his shoulder to see what he was doing. I mean there are much more effective ways of teaching people how to use computers, so I think that they need to give a bit more credence to the importance of those skills in order for people to take them seriously basically.

I mean there is that kind of stuff but when you actually come to sit down and use it at the time, you don't take everything in.

One of the things I found really frustrating is I've got good access to the computer, but I've had to try and sort of learn it by myself which is a good way of doing it, but there are still things that I can't do that I really wish I was able to do and there's no-one in the practice base that can show me, 'cos nobody knows and like, you know an attachment or getting on to private chat or something like that. I haven't a clue how to go about that and I don't really know who to ask.

We were doing collaborative projects and we were geographically distanced people, so this allowed us to contact each other, allegedly.

...it's not always easy to make contact over the phone because of the job. You're in and out of the office a lot. You could still speak to one another even though you weren't there.

We had a particular assignment to do, and we had to try to speak to each other about the assignment over the email, and that's when we sort of, that was the impetus for everybody starting. And then after that assignment finished we just kind of used it to speak to each other.

[student, interview]

We set up a separate conference, but again it just operated as a thread and in fact is pretty similar to the one that it was separated from, not that much different to it. That was an attempt to set up a different sort of conference, but it didn't really take off.

[Student, interview]

We've used it as email this year. Last year we had assignments we had to do collaboratively, so we used it as a bit more of a focus but we also had a practical issues folder didn't we?

Yea; I think so. I mean the course was very kind of free form in its nature anyway, so a lot of the material I used in my exam essay at the end when I revised were just things I had come up with myself, things that I had come across, bits out of the paper, connections that I had made, so, yes it was like this was just another resource for thinking about things.

[student]

Some of the people in my face to face tutorial are in internet groups together, and they have produced better assignments they have had more time to work on it together.

[student]

You got to do the work yourself basically...they sit there and complain about all the group work. You know you have a meeting and we don't get anywhere.

[student]

For both assignments we have had so far there have been people who have sat back and let others do it.... There are people who don't go on line until there is an assignment due.

[student]

You get on and do it. I mean, yes, you have to work with people. But, I mean I have worked in plenty of places, and it's different when you are getting paid for working with someone - here you are not. You are paying for the privilege of working with someone that, frankly, you don't want to work with. And when you are trying - when it's your knowledge you are trying to increase and prove - you don't want to work with someone you don't like.

[student]

As we go through the course I'm trying to get people to come into tighter forms of integration - working together and taking slightly more responsibility for what they do. So in the fourth task the students are defining the task for themselves. The task is student defined, within fairly tight parameters, resulting again in a joint report around the area of moderating.

[lecturer]

Also the tasks have a structure through the tasks because again of what I am trying to do. I'm trying to talk about CMC while I am doing it. Roughly speaking, the first task will be a brainstorming activity of some kind. The purpose behind that being that it enables everybody to speak, and tries to reduce the criticism, and thence tries to reduce the fear of publication, which is one of the aspects I find that people have difficulty with - some people - some cultures. We have an international group of students locally, so to speak.

[lecturer]

We start at brainstorming. We move towards more collaborative forms of writing. That is to say, I don't like the word "collaborative" - people mean all sorts of things they want to put on that. The joint writing of reports on something or other where the topic - for example... No the first one isn't joint writing, the first one is individual writing where they actually have to come up with a task design for a CMC course of their own, which is then discussed in a group. There's group discussion around an individual task. And the third task is bringing that together more, they then do a joint report on collaboration.

[lecturer]

Also the tasks have a structure through the tasks because again of what I am trying to do. I'm trying to talk about CMC while I am doing it. Roughly speaking, the first task will be a brainstorming activity of some kind. The purpose behind that being that it enables everybody to speak, and tries to reduce the criticism, and thence tries to reduce the fear of publication, which is one of the aspects I find that people have difficulty with - some people - some cultures. We have an international group of students locally, so to speak.

[lecturer]

I think that the course is designed with several sort of separate different aims, so it is structured so that the tasks are hitting different types of objectives as you move through the course. So some of those objectives I think are trying to become familiar with on-line learning as a medium, and then learning how to design tasks and how to manage conferences in practice, and then about the literature - so there are things actually looking into the literature - and the different tasks have different focuses, so the early task - the first task for instance - we looked at our own institutions that we were working in, in terms of how CMC might be used within that, so sort of contextualizing where we are, and how useful the medium might be, as a sort of starting point. Then we went on to start looking at actually trying to design a task for an on-line course that we might actually be using in our institution. And then we did a series of tasks on looking more at the literature on different kinds of approaches - different sorts of courses, and different kinds of approaches to learning on these courses. Now, towards the end of the course, we started looking at evaluation and analysis of transcripts and ways of looking at what's actually happening within a conference. And in the middle we also looked at moderating skills and managing. So there's a kind of sequence going through the course where you are changing what you are actually looking at, as well as actually learning using the medium. The idea is that you are also putting it into a context of practice, and looking at how it might be used in different types of contexts.

[student, interview]