Computer-Mediated Conferencing: Grounded Guidelines

The texts below are drawn from interviews with a number of teachers and students using conferencing technologies for learning within a variety of courses across a range of subject disciplines...

I think that courses that are successful using this type of medium - if you've got people who have shared objectives and a shared sort of background...I think that you have a lot better chance of actually having a successful collaboration in those circumstances.

If you gave them enough so that they're not thinking about the technology, whereas if they've not got enough then they're going to be more concerned with the technology and maybe get hung up on that.

The way it was set up...it was an artificial situation, in that we had students here for a number of days within one room...Normally when you do a design project between sites, it's not a concentrated week or week and a half that they're working on the project. One good advantage of that structure...is that the learning curve is a lot steeper.

Our team would often begin the day by discussing what actions each of us had to complete. We then went our separate ways and completed those actions posting our findings or work to the conference board. We would then look at each others work and, again, discuss our next course of action.

It was kind of negotiated at each stage who was going to do what...When it came to making a decision, we had to talk about it. We'd go and use the video link for that, usually.

It's a different culture over there...the university end is far more engineering based...and our course is based a lot more on human centred design. I noticed the difference with regards to teaching the course at both institutions. The specification at the art school tends not to be as technical or specific.

Delegation of tasks became easier in this project than in previous projects, because of our different fields of experience; in previous university projects dividing the work was based more on making sure everyone had the same amount to do than anything else!

From a personal point of view, the week-long course is possibly one of the most useful weeks I have spent at university. It has taught me about Internet technology, and even non-internet computer software such as AutoCAD version 13 and 3D Studio Max. Working with C from the School of Art introduced me to a slightly different way of thinking about a design project, reflecting the differences in two courses with the same name.

There were some distinct benefits to working collaboratively on the web. One of the most significant being the whiteboards. Even with someone in the same studio you cannot really both work on the same sheet of paper. But whiteboards allow you to do exactly that. All the people involved can see the page the same way up and everyone can contribute to the ideas on it. .... In a good whiteboard session the ideas can freely flow and evolve as everyone inputs ideas and information and the end result is a complete synthesis of information - the epitome of teamwork.

Sometimes it's difficult to get hold of lecturers. They are always at lecturers, or places, or whatever, so if you try and phone it could take you days to get hold of them. Where as if you write them an email, or put a note on the Web, or whatever, then you know they are going to get back to you as soon as they can.

My impressions, general impressions - I'm a negative person - I have very serious reservations about FirstClass. We work in a group, so we have the complexities and problems of group work, but also we have the complexities of technology. And so it's kind of "layered on" really in a sense that as a group we don't really know each other very well, we haven't really formed as a group, and then we're on just using the technology to communicate. So, if you like if you take the complexities of group working, and you add in the multi-cultural dimension which you always have anyway, then you transfer that to text-based, non-synchronous, FirstClass-based conferencing you're probably pushing yourself towards the balance of failure. [...] All my experience now is, I would push it very firmly towards failure, I mean, our current course. If your target is collaboration, then depending on how you define collaboration.

We are students. We are here to learn things. We are here to help each other ... should be open to each other and help each other. Doesn't mean that you have to give solutions to people.

The tutor / moderator role is sometimes a little bit paternalistic. There's a sort of controlling side of it, you know, and a kind of "toying with" you know, that is supposed to be good humoured. There is a sort of style, a moderator's style that people develop that can be, in fact, quite irritating. You know, there is supposed to be this informal kind of , there are various kinds of rules of thumb about doing it, and some of it is, when I think it begins to become false it is quite problematic. Once it becomes too, I think the more natural you are able to be the better I think probably. I think there is a sort of "game" side of it where you kind of try to get people to do things without telling them things. This kind of stuff can be quite irritating.

I certainly think that there was a gender thing had come into it, and an issue to do with people who - it can be dominated by people quite quickly, I found. And once a conversation starts between two people, it can start to the point when other people feel that they are intruding in that conversation, let's put it that way, and then that becomes - you feel a barrier. I think participation - I work in FE, as a teacher in FE, and I am quite interested to see in Further Education they are talking about distance learning and distance courses, no I have not actually heard anyone talking about using anything like conferencing systems to run a course, and I don't know if you've come across anything below HE where it's been used, but I would find it totally useless in the learning environment in which I'm in. I think that, you know, we're doing everything possible to try to get someone involved, because they're not good studiers, they're not people who are very motivated.

I would say that most see the moderating role -A 's role has been of a kind of more - mostly hands off - because quite early on he set up student moderators for some of the conferences, but he has been like a hidden presence, because he reads everything and he does respond occasionally to specific questions about technical things, or comments which might be more directed at the Course Leader. I think he's had a bit of a sort of an external, looking-in role which is not necessarily - you know he wants to see how students sort of will sort themselves out. I don't think he wants to set up a role where people would defer to him, or things like that. But on the other hand at times its been very hands-off, and there could have been times where certain more constructive comments towards the pedagogical things might have been useful. If you take moderating over the social, the technical, the pedagogical, the management side - he's been very good on the management side, technical, dealing with that. The social side - not really. I mean just sort of "Where are you?" or in my case "You're not participating enough". Pedagogical - I suppose setting up the course, the tasks. The collaborative side of it all - of the medium - I don't find it particularly, I haven't found it particularly collaborative. I have found it - strands; individual strands, but mostly not people working together on some joint project.

I think the board has got something special because it is an archive you can retrace. I know the way that some people use it as a learning resource is to help them understand better about that kind of domain, you know the interactive domain that is a conference board, you can learn from looking at how we all behave on that, but to me the main thing is more to do with self expression, feedback from others that's true, but also self feedback, and also just getting in some damn good ideas, there are some very clever people on that board, you know. And as a learning resource for actually thinking, trying to say something.

- I use it probably shamelessly - I use it to practice what I am saying, to put it up, and very often take the whole text and put it into the assignment, so it is not just feedback from colleagues because sometimes they haven't got time to give it, sometimes there is a question that somebody will ask, earlier on in the course before the debating time, sometimes there would be a question that people would ask about things that really made you think and that was useful. And I think of it as a kind of a duty, a duty to the group. Sometimes I don't go on for two or three weeks, I have been just so busy, then I look and find that someone has been making a point I could have shared with, and I feel so bad about that, it's a guilt thing. A duty to the group, you do feel that.

This rather longer text relates to a 'problem student' situation...

I think it makes a place for difficult students to be more difficult initially than they would have space to in a face to face context when the rest of the students - I mean we have got this difficult student who has really been a nuisance - and I keep thinking if this was a kind of face to face situation the other students would have said long before now “look can we just get on with the task in hand and you know can you just be quiet” or I would have taken this person to my office for a little heart to heart about what was their problem and did they really want to continue but I think in the very formal situation of everything that you see being recorded in text things are not being said or communicated in the way that you would communicate.

The students have simply started to ignore him and we have been dealing with him with very careful formal language that he couldn't then come back to us on which is not the way that we would have spoken to him if it had been another situation.

It is a situation that I am sure we will learn how to handle... I am sure it will come with experience but at the moment we kind of gamble that we will try this thing next with this student and I think it does change the interactions.

I have had a couple of messages from students that have kind of said we are really sorry about (effectively) what is happening with this other student but they have sent it by email rather than put it up in the main message system. I think that they are feeling their way around - how do you deal with a difficult situation that in a familiar class-room situation - they would know what were the appropriate ways of trying to handle this difficult situation and they don't so everybody is kind of moving it off they all know they mustn't flame so they are all moving it off the public domain and it is being dealt with in emails or we sit in the office and try to work out how to deal with him!!

They all tend to be very supportive - you know I would say it falls onto the over supportive side so that I am sure in a face to face seminar you would get more friendly criticism, more friendly challenge of somebody else's opinion but I think in this kind of situation people are so conscious of things being taken up wrongly that they are very, very careful of challenging and I think they prefer not to challenge and they prefer to say nothing rather than challenge in a way that might upset. Comments they make on each other's work are absolutely supportive - absolutely - and I wouldn't expect that in a face to face seminar, I wouldn't expect meanness but I would have expected a lot of "oh but " in a very friendly fashion and "that isn't part of the discussion" and I think maybe we are the only people who as the tutors say “ah but” occasionally.