Sunday, April 26, 2009

Introduction

Communication in education has always been extremely crucial. Students and professors rely on the various communication methods in order to accomplish their desired goals. Ever since the invention of the computer and the Internet, communication has never been the same. Computer-mediated-communication in education has become an important topic of discussion because more and more students of all ages are enrolling in online education (Mehta, 1997). Another reason why the relationship between CMC and education is highly analyzed is because modern technology influences our society dramatically, and vice versa (Barnes, 2003). We must be aware of this relationship so we can make healthier CMC-related decisions in our own lives. CMC in education has come a long way since the invention of the personal computer, and has revolutionized the way we see our education system today. The evolution of CMC in education has shown the world the enriching benefits as well as the devastating drawbacks the World Wide Web has to offer students. More importantly, the role of CMC in education raises new questions that we must ask ourselves about the future of society and technology.


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References:

Barnes, S. B. (2003). Computer-mediated communication: Human-to-human communication across the internet. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Mehta, S. (1997). More students across US logging on to online classrooms. Retrieved April 20, 2009, from www.boston.com/news/nation/articles.

Pre-Millennia CMC

Check out this vintage footage regarding the "birth of the Internet"!!

Here:)

The wide spread use of Computer Mediated Technology in education is a relatively recent development.  Even though there is a “history” of CMC development that occurred last century, that timeline is only about forty years long.

            Computers came into the realm of education in the mid eighties.  Previous to that they were huge expensive machines reserved for Government and military applications.  These interconnected computers were located at various universities and the network developed and grew throughout the Eighties.  In 1991 The National Science Foundation gave permission for this “net” to be used Commercially.  In 1995 it became its own entity of sorts (PBS).

During this pre-millennia development of computers, the Internet, and the various forms of CMC technology facilitated the reality of digital education as well.  To get an idea of the thoughts and trends regarding this newly emerging phenomenon I reviewed a sample of scholarly journals from the eighties and nineties.  The concerns and predictions contained in scholarly articles written during CMC’s early stages helps to put our current and future technological development in perspective.

            In 1982 The School Library Journal reported That Computer technology was limited and slow to take hold in 16,000 high school districts.  The statistics included in the article show the limited amount of technology available for CMC at the time.  Within these districts there were only 52,000 computers.  That is only about 3 computers per school. At the time educators were worried about choosing the wrong systems, programs, and hardware. The computers were priced at about one thousand dollars apiece and the software was half that (SLJ). This article seemed to convey a sense of apprehension and confusion regarding the potential of Computers and the benefits of CMC in the classroom.

            In The European Journal of Education Carla Fasano wrote a very interesting and almost prophetic article in 1985.  The observations that were made in the article regarding CMC in education were similar to the observations being made by every one at the time.  CMC was slow to develop in the eighties it seems.  When the article expanded to include the author’s assumptions about the future it was spot on.  The author acknowledges that the state of “education and information technology” was too “primitive” at the time to be an effective combination. Fasano observed that once the hurdles of expense and lack of technical know-how were overcome CMC would be a wide spread reality that would forever change education and society (Fasano).

            It seems that after the eighties and early nineties the Internet and computer mediated communication began to take hold on the educational system.  By 1994 it was a common acknowledgement that integration of education and emerging technologies was essential for the good of everyone (Schure).  It was also being predicted at that time that interconnected information networks would make traditional schools and colleges obsolete by the year 2000 (Schure).  This obviously did not happen.  But the landscape of education was altered.  The article in T H E Journal by Alexander Schure explores this idea and other predictions regarding “new” televisions that would be able to record shows digitally.  If only he patented the idea!  These suppositions lead into the real purpose of the article, which was to discuss the development of on-line universities and education (Schure).  Even though CMC took a decade to catch on by the mid nineties steps were being taken that would usher in a new age in education allowing people to participate in distance education and earn degrees on machines that didn’t exist thirty years prior.

            Researching the development of CMC in education pre-2000 shows that there seems to have been a fast evolution of technology, ideas, and systems once things got going.  If the growth of CMC in education continues at the rate it grew in the nineties there is no telling what innovations we will see.

 

 

 

 

 

References

PBS. (1999). Birth of the Internet. P. 1-2.

http://www.pbs.org/transistor/background1/events/arpanet.html

School Library Journal. (1982). Vol. 28. Issue 7. Page 80. http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/ehost/pdf?vid=8&hid=116&sid=bd544fc6-3cae-4efb-

Schure. A. (1994). Towards a New “Distance Learning” University. T H E Journal. Vol. 21 Issue 8. P. 32.

http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/ehost/detail?vid=9&hid=116&sid=bd544fc6-3cae-

Fasano. C. (1985). Beyond Computers-Education. European Journal of Education. Vol. 20. Nos 2-3.

http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/ehost/detail?vid=9&hid=116&sid=bd544fc6-3cae-

BREAKING NEWS!

BREAKING NEWS

 

YouTube launched YouTube EDU this past week.

 

Now complete courses and seminars from over 100 universities and colleges are free and accessible to anyone with an internet connection!

 

Check it out here:

www.youtube.com/edu

Post-Millennium CMC

Technology has always been growing, but since the year 2000, communication technology has changed our world completely. Students have relied on the computer to communicate for years and do so on a daily basis. In addition to the forms of CMC discussed earlier, another innovation has surfaced that has aided in the success of education dramatically. Blackboard Academic Suite, and other programs like it have allowed students to easily communicate directly with each other and their professors. Though it was created in the late 1990s, Blackboard Academic Suite did not become refined and widely used until the new millennium (TelecomWorldWire, 2005). Blackboard was one of the first programs to offer one location for students to access multiple forms of communication.

Blackboard Academic Suite has multiple sources for students and professors to communicate with each other. There is a tab entitled Communication, and it is here where students and professors can click and find multiple ways to communicate with each other in one convenient location. Students can collaborate with each other via synchronous distributed communication such as instant messaging, and asynchronous distributed communication such as the discussion board or email (Burnett & Marshall, 2003). A new way students and professors are able to communicate on Blackboard is with voice. Once students click the Communication tab they will find that they can communicate using a voice activated discussion board, podcast, and email (Blackboard Academic Suite, 2009). This enables students to engage in faster and more personal communication.

Another CMC trend in education that has surfaced since the millennium has been the use of online courses and online schools. Instead of attending school in a typical classroom environment, students now have the option of taking one or all of their classes online. It does not matter whether or not students choose to take one online class or enroll in an online educational program; these virtual learning environments have transformed the way we look at education today. Online education allows students to become the researchers and are more engaged in the learning process (Rogers, 2004). These courses give students similar resources as typical classrooms do: lectures, videos, assignments, reviews, readings, exams, as well as a sense of community and a group identity (Hanrahan, 2009). The difference is that online classes require better time management skills and more determination from the student (Rogers, 2004). Since the turn of the century, the use of online courses and online education has grown each year. Approximately one million kindergarten through high school students are enrolled in online schools nationwide, and the number of students has grown twenty times in seven years (Mehta, 2007).

It is apparent that the use of online education has become a prevalent form of schooling and will continue to grow as long as the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

References:

Blackboard Academic Suite. (2009). Blackboard Acedemic Suite. Retrieved April 18,
2009, from www.asu.edu/myasu.

Burnett, R., & Marshall, D. (2003). Web theory: An introduction. New York: Routledge.

Hanrahan, S. (2009). ‘Interface: Virtual environments in art, design, and education.’ Arts
And Humanities in Higher Education, 8, 99-128.

Mehta, S. (1997). More students across US logging on to online classrooms. Retrieved April 20, 2009, from www.boston.com/news/nation/articles.

Rogers, G. (2004). History, learning technology and student achievement: Making the
difference? Active Learning in Higher Education, 5, 232-247.

TeleComWorldWire. (2005). M2 Communications. Retrieved April 20, 2009, from
www.m2.com.

The Benefits of CMC in Education


In a nation where we strive to prepare our Children for their future, we must take into great consideration that two thirds of the United States is online. These figures were given by Thurlow, Lengel and Tomic in their 2004 book; Computer-Mediated Communication: Social interaction and the Internet (p.87). While the benefits of Computer Mediated Communication, hereto referred to as CMC, are tri-fold in that they aid in the educational process, they enhance the educational process, and they prepare students for the future, I have found that the benefits of CMC in the context of education can exceed our pre-conceived notions.

First and foremost, CMC has benefited people with handicaps, such as deafness, in ways that were once unimaginable. Pandian explains in his introduction the reason for this great benefit; deaf students will more typically rely on technology in the workplace for communication than hearing people as well as the fact that teachers are left to find methods of communication for all the students in their classroom (2007). Currently, around seventy-five percent of deaf and hard-of-hearing (hereafter referred to as "deaf") students are mainstreamed in public schools across the United States (Karchmer & Mitchell, 2003).” Results of research studies were explained by Pandian showing that the group of deaf (undergraduate) students had more well-balanced participation, greater learning outcomes, and the students felt CMC was an “enjoyable method of communication in the classroom (Pandian, 2007).”

Addis discusses the use of CMC in order to quench anyone, in any age brackets, thirst for knowledge. In other words, CMC has made education easily obtainable and limitless; it has lifted the confines of libraries, which are bound by walls, and institutions, which are bound by income and accreditation. Any individuals with access to the Internet now have the ability to educate themselves on a whim. “Multimedia applications, connectivity, and interactivity make technology a variable (not a means) whose effects enrich the experience and its value (Addis, p. 731).” Addis further cites Rheingold (1992) in stating “the application of new technologies to edutainment in fact reinforces the convergence between education and entertainment (p. 731).” The use of technology transforms the message in two ways: first, because the message is contemporarily perceived by the individual with more than one sense (Kinney, 1995), and second because the applications of technology can give a new form to the content and can easily enrich it without making it too heavy and difficult to learn, thus combining education and entertainment.

Edutainment has become a key feature for enhancing the educational process. Part of the “edutainment” factor of CMC is the communities that are formed; Thurlow, Lengel and Tomic explain that when people when people “describe their CMC as ‘communal’” one of the variables is having “shared goals and/or producing and using shared commodities’ (p. 112).” These communities seem to emerge from social processes in four ways: “forms of expression (e.g. our talking about our communities), identity (e.g. our sense of shared group identity), relationship (e.g. our connections and interactions with others in the community) and norms (e.g. the rules and conventions we agree to live by together) (p.111, Thurlow, Lengel & Tomic)” “Studies of computer-assisted social networks have shown that the stronger the ties and the more multiplex the activities, the more like a community a network will be (p. 113);” for instance, the strength of the tie may be determined by the social  positions, whether it is student to student or student to teacher, in addition to factors such as frequency of contact and diversity of information (Thurlow, Lengel & Tomic, 2004).

Another part of the edutainment factor is discussed by the U.S. Department of Education on their website. Students “can manipulate it on the computer through graphic displays or controlled experiments in ways never before possible (2003).” They use the example of a biology lesson; rather than simply reading about blood flow and circulatory systems, students can now watch the processes and experiment with the effects of different homeostatic imbalances they may want to see imposed.

Many of the features that enhance the educational process, such as the community network previously discussed, also aid students in preparing for the future. McComb discusses her pedagogical aims utilizing the educational philosophers, Freire and Dewey, arguments that students’ minds will not count in the affairs of society through traditional instructional means alone. “Their education must engage their experiences, concerns and voices (p.159).” She further explains that this active creativity and use of their voice gives them a mode for experience. Furthermore, McComb discusses the motivation of the students (initiative) as well as a shift in that students work along with the teachers to drive their quest for knowledge. You can simply see the positive aspects of CMC in education in the shift of terminology being used; dialogue rather than lecture, collaborative rather than research agenda. “If learning is not mere knowledge transmission from teacher to student and if learning is triggered by students’ own experiences, the implication is that learning is not limited to the classroom (p.163)”            

In addition to enhancing the students learning, just as Thurlow, Lengel and Tomic discuss regarding enhancing ties, CMC can enhance the instructors’ role, as well. McComb acknowledges the benefits of CMC in education can be as simple as a “an efficient “message center” for course announcements and information channel for questions and concerns and a forum for discussion (p. 160).” McComb gives a litany of reasons she has found CMC enhances education in college education along with detailed explanations of each; extends learning beyond the classroom (increased availability, demonstrates caring, includes outside experts), CMC balances power (increases student responsibility and requires initiative, responsibilities in conferencing), CMC is efficient (access to resources, facilitates quick assignment turnaround, keeps course records, focused participation) ( McComb, p.163-169).  McComb further adds that another benefit to CMC is that instructors can work at their own convenience as well as be “available to students beyond institutionalized times and places” because of CMC’s asynchronicity (p. 163).”

            Barnes acknowledges the cause-and-effect relationship technology has on our society and discusses how Technological Determinists interpret those transformations in society at various levels, such as institutions (Barnes, p.328, 2003). The U.S. Department of Education states on their website they “now know--based on decades of use in schools, on findings of hundreds of research studies, and on the everyday experiences of educators, students, and their families--that, properly used, technology can enhance the achievement of all students, increase families' involvement in their children's schooling, improve teachers' skills and knowledge, and improve school administration and management.”

 

References:

 

Addis, M. (2005, July). COMMENTARY: New technologies and cultural consumption - edutainment is born!. European Journal of Marketing, 39(7/8), 729-736. Retrieved April 14, 2009, doi:10.1108/03090560510601734

Barnes, S. B. (2003). Computer-mediated communication: Human-to-human communication across the internet. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

McComb, M. (1994, April). Benefits of computer-mediated communication in college sources. Communication Education, 43(2), 159. Retrieved April 14, 2009, from Communication & Mass Media Complete database.

Pandian, M. (2007, August). Cooperative Learning Incorporating Computer-Mediated Communication: Participation, Perceptions, and Learning Outcomes in a Deaf Education Classroom. Language in India, 7(8), 2-2. Retrieved April 14, 2009, from Communication & Mass Media Complete database.

Thurlow, C., Lengel, L. & Tomic, A. (2004). Computer-mediated communication: Social interaction and the internet. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.

U.S. Department of Education (n.d.) U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved April 20, 2009 from; http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/plan/national/benefits.html



 

In Closing......


Computer mediated Technology has had a profound effect on education.  Since the early days of computers this influence has grown stronger.  It could be argued that this cause/effect relationship goes both ways in that education has been a factor that has influenced the development of CMC technologies.  There does seem to be some evidence to support the theory that new technologies are responsible for the current state of education and culture in general. This idea of technological determinism can be seen in the short history of computers in relation to education (Barnes 327).  Not only has CMC technology affected educational systems but it has affected the people who operate within those systems.  Students today have a completely changed perspective compared to students from the days before CMC and cyberspace.  The perceptions of students and educators have been changed due to the growing use of computer technology.

 

It is clear that education today is different from the days before computers.  Whether or not things have changed for better or for worse is up for debate. 

 

If one thing can be learned from evaluating CMC and education it is this; we cant know the future but it seems to be the case that education and computer technology will continue to develop together.

 

The words of California Institute of Technology professor John Pierce come to mind:

 

After growing wildly for years, the field of computing appears to be reaching its infancy.  ~John Pierce


 

 

Barnes, S. (2003). Computer-Mediated Communication: Human-To-Human Communication Across the Internet. 327. New York: Allyn & Bacon.