Computer Mediated Communication

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Computer Mediated Communication

• Berrin Dogusoy

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Overview

• What is Computer Mediated Communication (CMC)?
• What is CAI?
• What is an online community?
• What are the impacts online communities on
  learning?
• Example of an intercultural online community

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Computer Mediated Communication

• Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) is any form
  of communication between two or more individual
  people who interact and/or influence each other
  via separate computers through the Internet or a
  network connection - using social software. CMC
  does not include the methods by which two
  computers communicate, but rather how people
  communicate via computers.

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• Why CMC?

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CMC

• CMC promotes self-discipline and requires
  students to take more responsibility for their
  own learning. Using CMC, instructors can vary a
  course's instructional design to include
  everything from structured projects to open
  projects in which students are free to work on
  "messy"--but authentic--problem solving.

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CMC

• Moreover, CMC promotes an equalization of users.
  Because CMC is, at present, primarily text-only,
  the consequent reduction in social cues leads to
  a protective ignorance surrounding a person's
  social roles, rank, and status. Further, it is
  impossible to know if another person took several
  hours to draft a one screen response, or several
  minutes.

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CMC

• Traditional classroom interaction places the
  teacher at the center of all activities as
  transmitter of knowledge and orchestrator of
  student interaction.
• Even if students engage in collaborative small
  group tasks, the teacher is usually around and
  monitors students