An Instructional Paradigm for the Teaching of Computer-mediated Communication Craig D. Howard

A very interesting perspective. Once again IT must draw upon another field of study, this time linguistics. Personally I think my l33t CMC communication skillz are the @%#^*ing best, jk. I had never thought of the fact that while I had numerous lessons in grade schools on the appropriate way to write a letter not one teacher ever taught me how to write a proper email. I think CMC language skills are very important and while the future generations may not have trouble with it I think it would be of great interest and value to study and teach a standard approach to some CMC languages. The obvious beneficiaries of such teaching would be non tech savvy teachers and older generations who have a anxiety or aversion to a language that they don"t understand. The younger generation could also benefit from learning when certain language styles are appropriate for various forms of CMC. The example of a casual email about an assignment from a student to a teacher being a prime example. While the concept seems sound it does seem a little broad. Obviously more research and development of particular curriculums needs to be done, I think that was pointed out in the text. Also important to note is that Howard  points out that this idea is not practical all courses "This paradigm will only be useful for courses which hold communicative skill development as a learning objective.". I suspect that it could also be useful not just in CMC but also companion areas of study, especially as forms and uses of CMC continue to grow and integrate into more aspects of our lives.

The computer-mediated communication (CMC) classroom: a challenge of medium, presence, interaction, identity, and relationship John C. Sherblom

A pretty encompassing look at CMC in the classroom. I don't recall seeing anything on microblogging but just about everything else is in there. I felt a little bias in the writing towards the integration of CMC into the classroom but it was carefully back up with documented support. I think what helped was the constant reminder that CMC is not a magic bullet and each medium, channel, or method has their own drawback, and challenges as well as benefits and advantages. The author also made note that the level of student and teacher familiarity and competency with the technology was a huge factor in the success of its implementation. Another big point was something that has become prevalent in many of the articles in this class, and that using technology that fits with the goals of the instructor. You can't just use a new technology just because its there it needs to serve a particular purpose in order to augment the learning experience. Over all I like the constant pro, con approach of this essay to each aspect of CMC and found myself agreeing with the author for the most part. It seemed a little longwinded at times or redundant, especially regarding social presence. I think their were 3 or 4 sections with social presence in the title. As a ending article of the course I think it was a good recap of what we read in many of the other articles from the class.

Microblogs in Higher Education – A chance to facilitate informal and process-oriented learning?

Microblogs in higher education is something that I actually have some experience in. I found the results of the study actually mirrored my own experience with Twitter. IT566 was actually the reason not only for me to create this blog but create a twitter account, something I was not a fan of doing. I understood completely when the article referred to information overload to those not familiar with the format of microblogging. I think this article has a lot to do with the previous article. As I discussed in the previous post I feel lurking has beneficial educational results. Being new to Twitter I spent a lot of time reading others post and not posting myself but learning a great deal from what they had tweeted. Later I joined in and as I became more familiar with the medium the number of my posts increased. The data from this study mirrors that experience. The concept of microblogging in an educational format is fascinating as I hated the idea of tweeting but in practice found that it was indispensable for me to complete the coursework. This is compounded by the fact that my particular class was completely online. Without the ability to quickly communicate thoughts and problems with other students or see solutions to problems i had not run into yet the class would have been almost impossible. The blogs allowed us to post our work but the microblog allowed us to discuss that work in a concise direct way or even just vent frustration or share epiphanies. I think the key however to using microblogging is exposure. The biggest hurdle I see to using it in class is a lack a familiarity students have with it since it is so different, but maybe that was just me.

Using a social networking site for experiential learning: Appropriating, lurking, modeling and community building

Furthering the study of the use of SNSs in a classroom setting. This study points to some critical issues with using CMC for accomplishing various classroom goals. The study chose Ning as the SNS for some important reasons. The purpose of the course was to acclimate the students to using CMC and build a familiarity with them so that they could then decide if and how to implement CMC as a educational tool in their own classrooms. Their were a number of different goals and they were met with varying degrees of success but that in itself illustrates the point that CMC is a tool not a solution, and selecting the right tool for the goal you want to accomplish is most important. The choice of Ning was made because its free and relatively easy to use, something a public school teacher would have access to. The lack of enthusiasm over the chat feature brings up the point that a synchronous chat feature is perhaps not the best tool for teaching new languages. I was pleasantly surprised at the notion that lurking had educational value. Learning by watching is a valid method and lurking in a chat forum or blog seems to me to be no different. The first time I got on Reddit (a forum) I had no idea how to go about posting and what was the common language of the site. I spent about 4 weeks just reading posts before I felt comfortable enough with the community to post myself.

Using Blogs to Identify Misconceptions in a Large Undergraduate Nutrition Course By Trena Paulus and Marsha Spence

The first thing I noticed was the immediate establishment of purpose, not what the authors were looking for but why they chose, in this case "nutrition" and "blogs". At no point was their an inflection of desired or expected results. While I know I should have been concentrating on the methodology of the study and how and why decisions were made I couldn't help notice something, small group sizes. In much of the reading I've done, not just in this class, I found that successful attempts at facilitating critical thinking, communities of inquiry, or whatever term you want to use, involve small groups. I found that note worthy. I realize that it is pointed out in the study but I wonder what would have happened to the quality of responses if they were not for a grade. If the blogs were available for student use but not required, but I suppose thats another study entirely. Another thing that I thought was important from a research perspective was the process. In this particular case the study was an inaugural run so to speak. There were a number of things that went right and a number of things that were not expected or desired. The data and study were analyzed and the study was repeated with changes to improve the research method. Prime examples of this are giving GTAs more training, and moving blog due dates to prevent them from coinciding with tests. The study was performed, analyzed, improved, and then repeated. This is different from other articles I read were mistakes and problems that arose were simply noted and then taken into account in the finding with no attempt to correct.

Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education D. Randy Garrison Terry Anderson Walter Archer

Assuming that the studies that this is basing its theories off of are reliable this literature review/ critical inquiry was pretty convincing. I think I managed to wrap my head around the general concepts they put forth pretty well. Theirs not a lot you can refute or argue with unless your familiar with the reference material and I am not. The concepts though were well laid out and elaborately explained in detail, they were logical and as a result pretty persuasive. I the only thing that struck me was the reliance on emoticons for a replacement of visual cues. I notice that the article is from 2000 so its almost 12 years old. I would think that many of the limitations, and drawbacks of CMC in facilitating a community of inquiry may have been addressed by subsequent technological innovations in the field since this publication. For example just looking at centra you can clap, laugh, voice chat, and text chat in a much more synchronous manner than was available in 2000. Voice would probably be the most important disadvantage in terms of comparing FtF and CMC that has been overcome. While you still can't see the smile or other facial visual cues in most educational CMC, tone, inflection, and other voice related communication tools are now available. Video chat I should note, is widely available but doesn't seem to be commonplace in educational CMC yet. The best way to dissect and analyze CMC with a standard set of coding to find elements and indicators of successful communities of inquiry is very interesting to me. I find problem based learning and development of critical thinking skills to be of the utmost importance in education. The more research and development of our understanding of what makes a successful community work, the better we can create them as teacher.

What Students Find Appropriate By Berhane Teclehaimanot and Torey Hickman

You have got to be kidding me. I know very little of the specifics of research publications but I am shocked that anyone thought this was worth the paper I assume it was printed on. The first thing that hit me was that they give exact statistics for Forte and Hewitt 66%-33% in favor, but Mazer is "roughly even"? I doubt Mazer's scientific findings were published as "roughly even". So why leave it out? The only reason I can think of is that these authors are bias and thus left out the exact numbers because they didn't like the results. As I read further I got the feeling that these authors were huge fans of teacher student interaction on Facebook. The next bit that made my brain stop was their method. "Students were not required to have Face- book accounts to participate, but they were in- structed to participate only if they were familiar with Facebook.". Ill admit that Im new to Likert type, Rasch analysis, T tests, and Alpha levels, but are you kidding me? Your going to do a study on interaction on Facebook but not require the participants to have ever even used Facebook. Im going to do a study on wether or not space shuttles should have thermodynamic instrument panels but Im just going to ask people who live in Cape Canaveral  Florida because their "familiar" space shuttles, and oh if they happen to be an astronaut all the better. I almost stopped reading this article after that but its an assignment so I trudged along. Then I saw that they started running into all kinds of problems with their question set up and started removing participants because their answers didn't "fit". I understand that statistical anomalies occur and outliers can be removed for good reasons, but they cut 8 people. Out of 60 down to 52 If I remember correctly, thats almost 15% of your data that didn't fit? How much data are you allowed to cut to manipulate your data so that it says what you want before your study is useless. Needless to say I was not a fan.