By now it should be no secret to any of us that communicating over the internet is way different than face to face interaction. We can all relate to the differences of this online class versus a traditional classroom. The book points out some notable differences and one section that stood out to me states, "CMC group members focus more on the task and instrumental aspects of the process than on the personal and social aspects of the group. Thus, they tend to be more content oriented..." (297). I thought this was a great observation and although obvious, the important part is that they tend to be more content oriented. It is so easy to get off task in a face to face situation – whether it’s over social or emotional aspects of the group, or whether everyone is distracted, or if everyone is putting in their two cents. While there may be a lot of distractions on the internet (how many of us have Facebook open while we work on this class??) it is also easier (in my opinion) to focus on a set of information if you have all the text in front of you and numerous tools on a computer in order to help you. If I don’t understand a concept, I can just google it.
Another big difference, as the book states, is lack of eye contact, body language, and facial expressions, especially for feedback. The book calls this “richness” and while it doesn’t exist in a lot of text based CMC mediums, it can be found in videoconferencing and audio communications. But that is not to say that CMC is completely free of emotion – many of us put emotion and personality into our posts every week.
The last concept that I liked from the book was the idea that CMC often times takes longer. I suppose there is the physical aspect of waiting for replies and such, but also I think we move slower and are more precise when we are using computers. Every group project I’ve done moves very slow and is very detail oriented when we communicate only by computer. Whenever we are all face to face, things move much quicker.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your discussion response and I thought that you did a good job answering the question. You brought up an interesting point about your experience with CMC and how every group project you have done moves very slowly whereas your experiences with f2f have been much quicker. This had me thinking a lot about a group project I am currently involved with for another course. We were assigned our duties last Sunday yet I feel like people are still not connecting the way we would have if this were a f2f group. We are still in that phase of sending out emails with our best contact information and times to meet, and I feel like we would have had that done in less than 5 minutes in f2f contact. It is a little frustrating as well because some members do not want to use Skype, and prefer yahoo messenger, while others do not have either or have not taken the time to state what they prefer or are able to use for CMC. I thought Skype would be best, but then another group member said they don't have it, and my immediate response(that I refrained from responding with) wanted to be "Well can't you please just download it, it's free?" but I will instead stick to the art of persuasion to explain the benefits and success Skype had on the last project I did. The interesting part is that many of us have different ways of doing things in CMC just as we may have different ways of doing things in f2f contact. Some people like specific forms of CMC just as they prefer specific forms of f2f contact like meeting in coffee shops versus libraries, etc.
Happy Waiter, you had a lot to say! I would like to start it off by saying that your first example of comparing this online class with traditionally classes is a great example that is relavant. The example that you drew from the book struck me as important difference as well, since focus on content is important to group success. The next difference you point out about eye contanct, body language, and facial expressions for feedback is also important. I liked how you talked about how we can put some emotion in texted based writing. Good job and thanks for the post!
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