COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION

Computer-Mediated Communication: A Vehicle for Learning



Computer-Mediated Communication: A Vehicle for Learning

Introduction

Computer conferencing is based on the premise that the introduction of a computer as the host for asynchronous group communications allows the tailoring of both the protocols of communication and the structure of the underlying group process, in order to improve the ability of humans to communicate.

It is mathematically clear that groups of more than five to nine people who have basic keyboarding skills can exchange more information in writing than in verbal communication, given equal investments in time for the individuals involved (Hiltz and Turoff, 2002). With today's technology, the added introduction of graphical and multi-media-based digital information further increases the efficiency of group communications conducted through the computer. However, the ultimate goal of this form of group communications is not efficiency of communication, but rather the development of computer-mediated communications systems that would allow human groups to consistently exhibit “collective intelligence” (Hiltz and Turoff, 2002). This means that group activity produces a higher quality result than what would have been created by the best member of the group acting alone. Typically, many face-to-face groups produce results that are an average of the inputs by the individual members and a less intelligent result than the best member would have produced. Surprisingly, much of the experimentation in group decision support systems has not addressed this fundamental issue.

Computer-Mediated Communication: A Vehicle for Learning

Computer-supported cooperative work focuses on the use of communications in the typical work environment, including such areas as work flow, project management, and calendars. Its philosophy appeals to industry—build it and get it into the hands of users quickly with very weak evaluation. The result is a lot of rediscovery of the wheel. However, the magnitude of the effort has resulted in a small but significant number of major successes, along with the many failures (Turoff, et al, 2002). A lot of interesting work regarding tailoring protocols and structures to fit the nature of the group and the task does occur in this school of design; this follows the spirit of computer conferencing, if not the objectives. A lot more attention is paid to selling or marketing to the user instead of trying to understand the long-term impacts and outcomes.

Knowledge systems are one of the more interesting recent trends. This work grows out of the idea of capturing the lore of the organization (organizational memory) into wisdom-oriented databases that make the organization more effective. Most knowledge systems focus on using domain-oriented knowledge structures (ontologies) as the basis for artificial intelligence methods to capture and organize this information and turn it into knowledge or wisdom. Standards such as Extensible Markup Language (XML) are seen as the mechanism for building a universal language that somehow avoids the fundamental problem of ambiguity in language (Turoff, 2002). This computer science approach strives to have the computer do it all and attempts to remove humans from having effective input and control of such systems.

A more interesting line of research and development is in ...