Real education in non-real time: The use of electronic message systems for instruction

Abstract

Educationin different communication media takes place with functional differences that have consequences for the course of instructional interaction.In this paper, we examine instructional interaction among people using a computer-based electronic message system, contrasting it with conventional face-to-face discussion in a college level class. Interaction via the non-real time message system contained multiple "threads of discourse," a higher proportion of student turns to teacher turns, and other deviations from the "initiation-response-evaluation" sequences usually found in face-to-face classroom interactions.Based on the results of our contrast, we describe ways to organize instruction using electronic message systems to take advantage of new properties and to avoid shortcomings of these new instructional media.Electronic message systems are possibly important new media for education because advances in microelectronics have lowered the cost of computing dramatically and made the cost of telecommunications increasingly independent of distance. The uses of these new media for instruction raise several issues. The initial uses of any new media almost always follow the forms of usage of existing media, even though these uses may not be well suited to the properties of the new media. We have compared the differences between instruction in non-real time interaction inherent in an electronic message system and real time interaction found in face-to-face interaction. The results of this comparison are used both to propose ways that the new non-real time media can be fruitfully used for instructional interaction and to illuminate the social organization of existing face-to-face instructional interaction.* We would like to thank the students of Sociology 117 for their patience with our project.TWO common types of electronic message systems are text teleconferencing and electronic mail. Text teleconferencing systems are mod&d on face-to-face meetings, and can be used to conduct meetings in "real time." Each participant types on a computer terminal, and sees the text typed by other participants. Messages generally are seen by all participants (unless the sender specifies otherwise), and the system is designed so that a message can get an immediate response.Electronic mail systems are modeled on letters and memos typed or written on paper. In these systems, a person addresses a message to another person and transmits it, and then sometime later may receive a return message. Generally the sender does not expect to receive an immediate response. Thus, a key difference between text teleconferencing and electronic mail systems is whether the interaction is in real time (with immediate response expected) or in non-real time (without immediate response expected).However, it is possible to add features to allow electronic mail systems to be used for real time interaction, and to add features to teleconferencing systems to allow non-real time interaction. For example an electronic mail system can immediately inform a user whenev...

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