Marshal B Anderson, M.Ed. Workshop 2 Co-operative Project, Spring 1999

"Interaction includes affective or emotional, cognitive or intellectual, non-verbal or meta-language, sociological or personal network components. " McLeish (1973).

McLeish wrote this in a world that had not yet seen asynchronous on-line conferencing as a tool for collaborative learning. This is a tool that effectively removes the non-verbal or meta-language element from group interaction. This study looks at the effect that might have on a specific on-line group and, when these effects appear to be negative, suggests strategies for neutralising them.

The aim of this study is explore the ways in which members of an on-line asynchronous conference engaged in collaborative learning activities interact as a group. This will be done by comparing the results of sociometric tests carried out on the on-line group and setting them against the same tests run on synchronous face to face group in a broadly similar situation. The tests used will produce sociograms as devised by Moreno (1953) and widely quoted in the literature on group psychology and sociology. By examining the data that results from these tests this study will attempt to draw conclusions about the effects of the different environments on individual behaviour in respect of the group, identify those which appear to mitigate against the principals of computer mediated collaborative learning, and explore ways in which these effects can be reduced.

This is linked to the aims of the M.Ed. workshop 2 in as much as it explores an aspect of computer mediated communications and issues relevant to Computer Supported Co-operative/Collaborative Learning environments.

It links to my own practise on the conferencing software design side especially as this is something I want to explore both later in the M.Ed. and in my role as freelance educational software designer.