Computer mediated communication: online instruction and interactivity.

A major concern for many educators appears to be that there is an inherent reduction in the type and level of interaction between the instructor and students in web-based and web-enhanced courses. This assumption, however, does not appear to be based on any empirical, experiential, or significant anecdotal evidence. In fact, this view entirely ignores a fundamental aspect of web instruction: Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). In our experience, the effective use of CMC has resulted in an increase, not a decrease, in student-student and instructor-student interactivity.

In this article we explore the different forms and potential applications of CMC for web-based and web-enhanced courses. Further, based on our experiences with three different web courses (Research Methods in Psychology, Statistical Methods in Psychology and Basic Learning Processes) taught repeatedly over the last five years, we address the effectiveness of different CMC forms for attaining specific goals.

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Over the last 10 years, the World Wide Web (WWW or Web) and related technologies have developed and dramatically expanded. Not surprisingly, this expansion has impacted undergraduate and graduate education. Each year, more colleges and universities decide to provide entirely web-based or web-enhanced courses (Ewing-Taylor, 1999; King & Doerfert, 1996). As this trend continues, politicians and educators are voicing concern over the quality of online courses.

The Chronicle of Higher Education (Camevale, May 2000) reported that the Chairman of the House of Representatives science subcommittee on basic research (Rep. Nick Smith) expressed such concern when he stated that "students who take courses online don't interact as much as their peers in traditional courses, and that they may walk away with knowledge but not with an understanding of how to think for themselves" (p. 51). Educators voice similar concerns. David Noble (1997), cofounder of the National Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest, questions the implementation of technology with little regard for pedagogical issues. He is concerned that universities may develop and implement these programs "... at the risk of student and faculty alienation." Kearsley (1998) suggested that the numerous computer programs that have been developed and used in schools don't allow students the kind of personal learning experience that individualized instruction does. Sherry (1996) suggested that online courses, while accessible, contain far less dialogue than traditional classes. As demonstrated by these comments, interactivity is a key concern for many when considering web instruction. The underlying assumption appears to be that there is an inherent reduction in the type and level of interaction between the instructor and students in web-based and web-enhanced courses. This assumption, however, does not appear to be based on any empirical, experiential, or significant anecdotal evidence. In fact, this view entirely ignores a fundamental aspect of web instruction: Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). In our experience, the effective use of CMC has resulted in an increase, not a decrease, in student-student and instructor-student interactivity.

While many may consider CMC solely as it relates to interactions between the instructor and students in a course, one must also broaden conceptualizations to encompass interactivity between and among students. Student-student interaction is especially crucial for the development of web-based learning communities that increase student learning (Dede & Kremer, 1999). Conveniently, the mechanisms for creating interactivity in web courses serve to increase both instructor-student and student-student interactions.

In this article we explore the different forms and potential applications of CMC for web-based and web-enhanced courses. Further, based on our experiences with three different web courses, Research Methods in Psychology, Statistical Methods in Psychology, and Basic Learning Processes, taught repeatedly over the last five years at a large, metropolitan, southern university, we address the effectiveness of different CMC forms for attaining specific goals.

Computer-Mediated Communication 

In general, there are two categories of computer-mediated communication (CMC) available for web instruction. The first, asynchronous communication, is time and place independent because the instructor and students can send messages to one another from different locations at different times. Asynchronous communication represents information or material delivery that occurs at the reader's convenience. Typically, asynchronous communication in web instruction occurs in one of three ways: (a) through course web pages, (b) posting of forum (electronic bulletin board) messages, or (c) through e-mail messages.

The least interactive form of asynchronous CMC is through the posting of information on course web pages. Normally, the course homepage contains information that is more general in nature since it is available to anyone going to the site. As long as someone has access to the web address, the information on the course homepage is available 24 hours a day. Alternatively, most web courses have a password-protected portion of the web site that contains information only available to registered members of the course. Typically, information that appears on these protected pages relates more directly to the teaching of the course and evaluation of student performance. Therefore, lecture notes, practice quizzes, study aids, and grades are available in this protected area. Whether private or public, this type of material is posted by the instructor and is then available to the students whenever they choose to read it or print it out. We have found this method of CMC to be effective for disseminating general information to potential or current members of the course.

A more interactive form of CMC is accomplished through the use of electronic fora (e.g., bulletin boards). Typically, a course has a single forum or topically designated fora located in the password-protected area of the course web site. Therefore, any member of the course has access to messages on a particular forum whenever they choose. The fora allow the instructor and students to post or read comments or questions. (e.g., "Do you need to calculate the estimated standard error before calculating the t-obtained value?"). Once a message is posted, the instructor or students can respond (e.g. "Yes, for clarification look at the example on page 325"). While responses are not immediate, this is a convenient way to facilitate interactions between the instructor and students or among the students.

In our courses, we tend to use the forum for updating the students on particular polices and for any issues of concern to all of the class participants. This removes the need for the instructor to respond to redundant individual inquiries about a particular topic. For example, we frequently use this form of asynchronous CMC to announce deadlines, corrections to any error on assignments, and resolve issues that are creating confusion or concern in the class. Further, we have found that the forum has the added benefit of allowing students to quickly and conveniently respond to many questions that are posted. While we tend to use the forum to exchange information and answer questions, other instructors use the forum as a vehicle for creating discussions regarding topics posted by the instructor and to facilitate the development of the discussion. In some cases, the quantity and content of the forum postings are evaluated by the instructor at the end of the semester and contribute to the participation grades for the course.

Perhaps the most interactive asynchronous form of CMC is e-mail. This allows instructors and students to send and receive information on topics that are of a more individual concern. For our courses, use of e-mail is twofold. We respond to e-mail inquiries from students regarding course material, grades, or policies. This method of CMC allows students to inquire about issues of individual concern (e.g., "When I calculated the regression formula, should I have used the unrounded slope value?"). This type of e-mail interaction is similar to a student asking questions in an office hour or immediately after the end of a class. For our courses, we typically respond within one hour to e-mails from our students.

We also use e-mail to provide individualized performance feedback to the course participants. Through this use of e-mail, we can tailor feedback to each student to aid understanding of the material (e.g., "Two points were deducted on #2a since the sum of the squared values is not 32.716"). In fact, we have found that the feedback we provide by e-mail often is easier for the students to understand than the brief notations we normally write on assignments in a traditional course. First of all, it is clearly typed, rather than handwritten. Second, students often make the same, or similar, mistakes or omissions on their assignments. Therefore, once we compose a thorough, well thought out, written comment, it can easily be copied and pasted with minor changes tailored to the specific student. Certainly, the economies of scale associated with word processing are of particular importance in this case to both the instructor and student. Third, the e-mail format allows the students to easily reply with any questions about the feedback. Rather than wait in line after class, or set up an appointment, in the near or even distant future, to discuss the feedback noted on the assignment, the student can quickly, easily, and conveniently respond to the e-mail, which they often do. In general, our students have been very positive about this form of feedback.

There is one additional use of e-mail that we have found aids student learning in our courses. Our students tend to make extensive use of e-mail for communication, among themselves, regarding lecture material, assignments and group projects. This type of student-student interaction can effectively reduce feelings of isolation they might otherwise feel in a web-based course.

Overall, we have found that the use of asynchronous communication allows us to address student concerns, throughout the semester, resulting in a reduction in confusion and providing an environment more conducive to understanding and learning of the course material. Additionally, research supports the importance of asynchronous CMC. Wang and Newlin (2000), found that when asynchronous communication in a course was analyzed, final grades in a web-based class were correlated with the number of course forum postings read and written by students during the semester.

The second category of CMC, synchronous communication, is place, but not time independent. Synchronous communication represents real-time interactions. Typically, this means that individuals meet, simultaneously, at a particular location in cyberspace. They may do this, however, from any location that has Internet access. We have found this form of CMC to be very convenient and useful for students who live long distances from the university, travel frequently, have familial obligations (e.g., childcare responsibilities), or disabilities that affect mobility. Usually, synchronous CMC occurs in a chatroom (i.e., virtual meeting place) where the instructor and students meet and interact through typed statements or questions. Most web-based course management systems (e.g., WebCT, Blackboard, etc.) provide a chatroom option to allow for this form of synchronous communication. In our courses, we use chatrooms to meet student and course needs in two different ways.

First, we use the chatroom to provide students with web-based ("cyber") office hours. These are specific times that we will go to the chatroom and answer any questions from students who chose to "drop in." If students do not want to wait until our designated chat time, do not want to post a forum that will be accessible to everyone enrolled in the class, or prefer not to wait for a return e-mail, they may log into a chat room and discuss any questions or concerns with the instructor. This option is particularly convenient for instructors, as well, since they can hold their "cyber" office hours from any location at any time of the day or night. In our experience, this allows for increased access by students who may not be available during normal business hours. Further, they do not have to drive to campus for a short interaction about a specific issue.

Conveniently, many chatrooms are equipped with a bell that indicates that a student has entered the room. This feature allows the instructor to concentrate on other tasks until a student enters the office hour chatroom. Most chatrooms also have an additional feature that allows for private communication if more than one student is present. Using this feature, an instructor can communicate about issues such as grades even if others are present in the "cyber" office hour.

In the "cyber" office hours, students often have questions regarding an assignment or quiz and prefer not to wait for an asynchronous response, or they feel that a one-on-one discussion would be more helpful. This format allows for much more in-depth interactions on topics that are of concern for a specific student or group of students. These "cyber" office hours, as with any class, are an important way to address these concerns, as well as involve the student in the class and course material. This form of interaction also affords the instructor an important way to assess a student's level of understanding of the course materials or assignments.

Second, we use synchronous CMC to deliver mandatory web lectures. As noted by Ellis (1997), the challenge with web information delivery is that a large portion is typically asynchronous, with few of the traditional classroom features. "Synchronous internet delivery more closely matches what we consider the traditional classroom model." Here, again, we make use of the chatroom feature. In this case, at the appointed times, all of the registered students are required to log into the course and click on a "chat" icon which allows them to enter a chatroom. We believe that it is important to address the class as a whole in an attempt to foster learning communities. Additionally, the content of these core courses does not lend itself to student driven activities. We have found that the best approach, when discussing topics such as research methods, experimental design, descriptive and inferential statistics, and analyses, is one of synchronous lecture and discussion with the class as a whole.

As is typical of any live class, not all students attend the lecture. However, it is a requirement of the course, therefore, we find that a comparable percentage of students attend our live and web lectures. Our web lectures are offered for 1.5 hours one evening a week with a mirror lecture offered one afternoon a week throughout the semester. The names of everyone who have entered the chatroom are listed in one section of the chatroom screen. This means that the instructor and students in the chatroom are aware of each other's presence. In a separate section of the chatroom screen, students type what they would like to post before submitting it. These additions to the chat are usually one or two sentences long, but can be much longer as is the case when the instructor lectures. Once individuals submit their contributions, they appear in the main chat area with their names preceding the messages.

When we lecture using the chatroom, the instructor types the lecture content in two or three sentence blocks. Initially, this lecturing format may appear problematic or cumbersome, but we find it is close to a traditional lecture in a classroom. Instead of speaking and writing on the chalkboard, we type the lecture materials. Figures and diagrams that cannot be displayed in the chatroom can be made available to students by posting them on a web page prior to the lecture or as part of a set of lecture notes. Students can then print them out and refer to them during the lecture. Additionally, figures within textbooks can be very effectively discussed, as long as the instructor provides the appropriate page numbers during the lecture.

During chat the students are able, at any time, to ask a question or note that something is unclear. The instructor can then respond immediately to any student concerns during the lecture. Further, the instructor can directly ask questions of the students in the chatroom (e.g., "if the standard deviation is 20 and the sample size is 64, what is the standard error?"). These questions can be directed to individual students, groups of students, or the class as a whole. Such questions can be an important way for instructors to assess the level of student understanding as the lecture progresses. Additionally, we have found that a 1.5-hour chat, per week, greatly reduces the number of emails the instructor must handle throughout the semester as the majority of concerns and questions can be addressed during the chat. Aside from assignments or projects, which often require submission by e-mail, there are, in our experience, very few e-mails to address. We provide all our students with our e-mail addresses and find that students enrolled in our live classes make use of the e-mail almost as often as do our web students.

Overall, we have found that student and instructor questions during the chatroom lecture greatly increase the amount and quality of interactivity during a lecture. In fact, our chatroom lectures routinely produce greater interaction than when the same material is taught in a traditional classroom format. We have found that almost every student in our chats participates by asking or answering questions. And what we find in our chatroom that is not present to the same degree in our live classes is the student-to-student interaction. For example, we often find that when a student asks a question of the instructor, as many as four or five students may respond with ideas or answers. When a student asks a thoughtful question, or makes an observation, there are a number of responses from other students in the chatroom commending the student or reiterating the question, as well as attempting to answer the question posed. We do not experience this level of interaction in these classes when offered in the live format. Additionally, the chatroom provides a virtual place for the students enrolled to meet, any time of the day or night, any day of the week, to discuss individual or group projects, to share information, or to study together for examinations.

In our case, a direct comparison can be made between these web and live classes. The same instructors teach these upper-level, core classes, concurrently, in both the web and live formats. The number of students in our web classes generally equals that of the live classes (30-40 per semester), with student populations composed of traditional and nontraditional aged (mean age of 26 for our undergraduate students), psychology majors. All students, whether in a live or web class, are provided with a lecture, lecture discussion time, access to the instructors during posted office hours, and access to the instructor's telephone and fax numbers, as well as e-mail addresses. Comparable numbers of students access these services, regardless of course format.

Tracking student attendance and web online activity is a simple matter in that WEB CT courseware, which supports all online classes (60-80 per semester) at our university since 1997, has a "student tracking" function that allows the instructors to monitor individual student's visits to the various pages on the course website. For instance, it is possible to determine, not only how many "discussion" postings were written, but also how many were accessed by individual students. This allows faculty of web courses to quantify student access of the various course website pages. Through these comparisons we have found that students enrolled in our web classes earn grades comparable to those enrolled in our live courses, are engaged, and meet with success. We attribute much of this to the use of CMC, specifically synchronous communication.

While this anecdotal evidence provides insight into the use and value of CMC, recent research also supports the effectiveness of CMC, particularly synchronous, in web courses. Wang, Newlin, and Tucker (2001) maintained a record of all online chatroom activity for one of their courses. A discourse analysis revealed that several types of chatroom interactions (e.g., responding to instructor queries) were correlated with the final grade the student earned in the class. Additionally, preliminary analyses conducted by the authors suggest the presence of a significant correlation between office hour and chat attendance with quiz grades, as well as with final course grades in an upper-level, core course.

Overall, we have found that the use of synchronous forms of CMC produces distinct advantages in web courses. It enables us to effectively deliver course content, assess student comprehension, and foster the development of learning communities. Further, we find that these forms of interaction help ensure that the students and instructor develop a feeling of community and connectedness to the course (Newlin, Lavooy, & Wang, 2002). The participants become members of a web course instead of being a progressively lonely individual in a "distance" course.

CONCLUSION

Critics of web instruction have suggested that offering web-based courses at the college level is not a step forward but is, in fact, a step back (Noble, 1997). We agree that course design driven by technology, rather than pedagogy, can do the student a disservice. The implications of web-based courses without sound pedagogy can be as bleak as the critics make it sound. We have found, however, that irrespective of course format (traditional or web), success is attained through the use of appropriate course design. Careful design of web-based and web-enhanced courses, particularly with respect to the use of CMC, can produce very effective learning environments with high levels of interactivity.

References

Carnevale, D. (2000, May). U.S. lawmaker questions quality of the online-learning experience. Chronicle of Higher Education, 26, 51.

Dede, C., & Kremer, A. (1999). Increasing students' participation via multiple interactive media. Inventio, 1, 1.

Ellis, B. (1997). Virtual classroom technologies for distance education: The case for online synchronous delivery. Retrieved October 18, 2002 from: http://naweb.unb.ca/proceedings/1997/ellisb/ellisb.html

Ewing-Taylor, J. (1999). Student attitudes toward web-based courses. Retrieved January 25, 2002 from: http://unr.edu/homepage/jacque/research/ student_attitudes.html

Kearsley, G. (1998). Tips for training online instructors. Retrieved October 26, 2002 from: http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/papers.htm

King, J.C., & Doerfert, D.L. (1996). Interaction in the distance education setting. Retrieved January 20, 2002 from: http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/ssu/AgEd/ NAERM/s-e-4.htm

Newlin, M.H., Lavooy, M.J., & Wang, A.Y. (2002). An experimental comparison of conventional and web-based instructional formats. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Noble, D.F. (1997, October). Digital diploma mills, part I: The automation of higher education. Retrieved October 10, 2002 from: http:// www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_1/noble/index.html

Sherry, L. (1996). Issues in distance learning. International Journal of Education Telecommunications, 1(4), 337-365.

Wang, A.Y., & Newlin M.H. (2000). Characteristics of students who enroll and succeed in psychology web-classes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 137-143.

Wang, A.Y., Newlin, M.H., & Tucker, T.L. (2001). A discourse analysis of online classroom chats: Predictors of cyber-student performance. Teaching of Psychology, 28, 221-225.

MARIA J. LAVOOY AND MICHAEL H. NEWLIN

University of Central Florida 

USA

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