The Interactional Organization of Computer Mediated Communication in the College Classroom

This paper reports the results of a pilot study of computer-mediated classroom discussions using a "quasi-synchronous" program called Aspects. The data for this study are a discussion in a college classroom involving three students. Each students' computer monitor was videotaped, and the information on all three screens was collated onto a single transcxript. This single case analysis uses ethnomethodological conversation analysis to discover how participants coordinate their actions in this new type of speech exchange system. In quasi-synchronous computer-mediated communication participants do not have access to each other's messages until they are completed and sent to a group posting board. Thus, participants cannot rely on the ordinary means of coordinating turn exchange and other conversational activities (e.g., monitoring speakers' utterances-in-progress). We found that students' attempts to import conventional procedures from oral conversation resulted in misunderstandings and confusion. Specifically, we found that students experienced what we called phantom responsibeness, phantom adjacency pairs, virtual simultaneity, and the misinterpretation of silence.