How To Collaborate with Computers

Synchronous and Asynchronous Electronic Communities

Synchronous or same-time electronic communication, more familiarly known as "chat," might be known best for its social applications; however, educational chat rooms can be powerful learning spaces. If students in different locations log on at the same time, geographical barriers are eliminated. If students go online within a networked classroom, they converse with written rather than oral discourse, and they have a transcript of their discussion to use later for studying or for generating ideas for papers. For immediacy and spontaneity, synchronous collaborations are valuable.

Asynchronous or not-at-the-same-time electronic communication offers the same benefits for eliminating geographical barriers with the added advantage of flexible times. Collaborators have more time to read and reflect as well as time to edit their own writing before they publish it to teammates.

Both synchronous and asynchronous collaborations can be informal and student-directed or formal and teacher-guided depending on your instructional purpose. Making computer collaborations an integral part of a class rather than an extra credit or optional component leads students to take them seriously. Establishing the class (or the world if you publish their writing to the Web) rather than the teacher as the primary audience provides a meaningful context for any online activity. With small groups, 3-5 members, students can carry on a conversation and build a social-intellectual network for the project and for the class.

If access to computers is problematic, build online conversations into a session scheduled in a computer classroom so that students write to and with each other rather than talk or listen for that class period. If computer labs or individual computers are accessible to all students, give them the equivalent of class time for their participation; for example, "submit your e-mail message by 3 p.m. Friday instead of meeting in class at 8 am. Friday."

Take advantage of helpful tips for one type of software that you can then apply to other types of software. For example, many of the ways we can use email and listservs can easily be modified to support collaboration in threaded web discussion forums and newsgroups. Websites that support software developed for networked classrooms offer assignment design tips that can be used with other software, including the Web, among them CommonSpace, Connect, and Daedalus.

Some general tips for productive online conferencing appear in the References and Resources at the end of this Website.

Synchronous Electronic Conferencing

Some of the characteristics of face-to-face discussion are present in synchronous online discussions; in fact, among the reasons Trent Batson, one of the originators of synchronous educational  software, took his hearing-impaired Gallaudet students online was to provide them an experience similar to informal oral conversation. Some small talk may occur; people may interrupt each other; several conversations may take place at the same time. And like our students, we probably will become more adept at coping with several conversations at once–or we may follow one topic and ignore the others.

Whether we use groupware such as newsgroups, threaded Web forums, networked classroom software, Internet chat, or more complex synchronous environments like MUDs (Multi-user Domains) and MOOs (Multi-user Domains-Object Oriented), we need to decide whether to have full-class chats or to divide students into smaller groups (separate chat rooms or MOO spaces).

For more information about educational MOOs and links to a variety of MOO and MUD resources:
MOO-Teach at Lingua MOO
Strategies for Teaching in MOOspaces by Claudine Keenan and Peter Sands
Composition in Cyberspace: Diversity University

Asynchronous Collaborations and Epistolary Pedagogy Online

Asynchronous collaborations can support informal class discussions or long-term projects when students cannot go online at the same time as well as projects in which reading, writing, and reflection are important. Email collaborations are a good starting point for introducing instructional technology into the teaching of writing or of any other discipline in which student-generated collaborative projects are valued. Because email activities can be built around a familiar genre, the letter, students and teachers new to instructional technology might find a letter exchange with one or two partners to be a comfortable way to begin.

The exchange of letters as a writing-to-learn strategy for any discipline has been advocated in writing-across-the-curriculum pedagogies, in particular by Elbow and Belanoff, Fulwiler, and Young. Adapting this strategy to email may be as easy as asking students to use greetings and complimentary closings with their messages. However, the most effective email exchanges share the characteristics of all effective learning tasks with a few additional features:

• They are clearly defined.
• They have clearly expressed objectives and expectations.
• They are designed to generate thinking.
• They are structured to lead students to "right" answers.
• They provide opportunities to revise.
• They have appropriate (perhaps designated by the teacher) subject lines.
• They are addressed to designated groups or individuals.
• They are signed by the writer.

In other words, the loose "post your thinking about last night’s reading" approach to instructional email has its place in providing a social context online, but to elicit messages on the topics we would like students to think about, we must design thoughtful and thought-provoking activities.

Partnerships in which two students explain their understanding of a topic and then request further clarification from or ask a question of a classmate give students an opportunity to teach and learn from each other, to forge an alliance with another emerging scholar, and to preserve the dialogue in order to share it or to use it within more formal academic writing later.

Peer review letter exchanges encourage students to write like friendly editors and to develop writing companionships. Email allows students to carry on these conversations between classes and to include their teachers when necessary as CC recipients. For the past several years, I have emailed each student a message after reading their drafts. A real letter from me in the medium many of their friends and relatives use to correspond with them seems more comfortable for this stage of the writing process than a note on their manuscripts, even when presented as a letter. The e-note also allows me to model the kind of peer response I would like them to use.

Additional suggestions are included in the links at NEXT: References and Resources.

Collaboration in the Online Classroom: Why and How: Home/Index | Why Collaborate? Why Collaborate with Computers? | How To Collaborate with Computers | References and Resources | developed by Donna Reiss February 2000 and updated 20 September 2000, 15 September 2004