Week 4: IDEL so far – evolving communication dynamics and continuing adaptation – Jemima Collins/An introduction to digital environments for learning (2018/2019)[SEM2]

In this post I’d like to talk about my experience over the past couple of weeks of interacting with my course colleagues and tutors via numerous channels of communication. The IDEL course so far is designed in such a way that participants gradually build up a ‘portfolio’ of experiences of synchronous and asynchronous interaction using a variety of online platforms and tools. There are a lot of exciting learning opportunities to be seized here and plenty of cause for reflection, so without further ado…

I have so far been quite an active participant in the Moodle discussion forums and have found it interesting to see the nature of the threads and posts evolving and diversifying over the past four weeks. At first it seemed that many of us were anxious to make a good impression by producing well-crafted, well-informed, carefully-considered and often lengthy posts. Now a few weeks later the overall tone of posts appears to be a little lighter and at times chattier, although the topics under discussion are generally no less academic or complex. During the peak of last week’s critical analysis-induced perturbation, it was really interesting to see how one thread developed into less of a topical discussion and more of a group therapy session, as one by one people began to express doubts, concerns and lack of confidence surrounding the task we has been set. It struck me how sharply the character of this discussion contrasted with the initial discussions mentioned above in the degree of subjectivity being expressed, and I personally found the supportive element very effective in helping to reassure me that other people were experiencing similar feelings to me. It was encouraging to see people beginning to appropriate the forum discussion in order to meet their need for personal expression. The whole experience was significant in that it genuinely made me feel closer to my course colleagues, it generated in me a sense of empathy and solidarity which I perhaps hadn’t expected to happen at such a relatively early stage of an online course.

Last week we also had our first experience of using Discord for text chats about the critical thinking task. In some ways the chats resembled face-to-face conversation, for example in the way that they kicked off with a bit of ‘small talk’ about food, drink, weather etc before getting down to more serious business but with welcome smatterings of humour, often in the form of gifs and emojis. As a not-quite-proficient Spanish speaker living in Spain, I found it particularly interesting to observe how the fast-flowing nature of the text chat was at times reminiscent of participating in a face-to-face conversation in Spanish with a large group of people: lots of people talking at the same time, the difficulty of finding an opportunity to contribute, the topic of conversation moving on before I’ve had time to formulate a legible response…the key difference being that in the text chat I could at least take a quick glance back at previous messages and I never had the feeling of being utterly lost as I sometimes do in Spanish! One limitation I soon had to come to terms with though was the fact that some comments inevitably get swallowed up in the constant stream of messages, which meant that some of my comments, among others, seemed to go unnoticed and didn’t receive any response. I was reminded of the need not to take this personally but to accept it as an unavoidable feature of this type of communication, but wonder if others would accept this so readily or whether it could potentially generate frustration or possibly even cause offence. This could be something worth flagging up to students who may have limited experience of fast-paced synchronous chat.

This week we had our first voice chats using Discord, which provided an ideal opportunity for comparison with the experience of the text chats while they were still fresh in my mind. One immediate and anticipated difference I noticed was a reluctance to speak on the part of some participants, quite in contrast to some of the direct and almost confrontational messages I had seen in the text chat. One of the tutors suggested this was likely due to a desire to maintain what we would consider to be the polite conversational convention of turn-taking, in response to which she advised us not to worry if several people started talking at the same time; that somehow it would work itself out so that only one person was left speaking – survival of the fittest? loudest?! And sure enough after a few extended silences, this is what actually started to happen. In fact, of the two voice chats I participated in, the one in which the conversation flowed most smoothly was actually that involving 12 as opposed to 5 participants. Perhaps knowing that they were in a larger group encouraged people to be more assertive in order to ensure that they had a chance to contribute. Perhaps also knowing that they were less likely to be ‘picked on’ by the tutor in some way made them feel less obliged to speak and therefore ‘freer’ to take the initiative and volunteer themselves. It could be interesting to conduct a comparative study of the interaction and turn-taking patterns and conventions of face-to-face and digital voice chat, to identify the kinds of adaptations that participants make when communicating orally via a digital platform. The findings could have important implications for advising and supporting students in their use of voice chat, especially on courses with a significant interactive component, such as language courses.

I guess what these experiences have emphasised to me overall is that, although in some senses communicating via a digital platform could be said to mirror face-to-face communication, the ways in which it differs are significant because they require participants to adapt their existing behaviour in order to interact effectively within the digital realm. This is much like what I have had to do while living in Spain and working on my Spanish, having to adjust to new communicative conventions and interpersonal dynamics, gradually becoming less hesitant to interject for fear of committing what in my culture would probably considered the ultimate sin; that of interrupting. Hopefully, the process of adapting to the various modes of digitally-mediated discussion used in this course will turn out to be faster, smoother, less awkward and more fun; it will surely be educational at least!