Changing Conceptions: Support for the Adoption of Computer-mediated Communication

The last year has seen a dramatic rise in the use of Computer-mediated Communication (CMC) in the form of web-based conferencing, at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). TopClass, a webbased conferencing system, is being used to support student learning for more than 6,500 students in 80 subjects. As CMC starts to move into the teaching mainstream, reflection on the factors contributing to this successful adoption of an educational innovation will be of use to teachers and institutions considering the use of CMC. This paper reports on the strategies used by staff from the Institute for Interactive Multimedia, a UTS central unit with a strong focus -on teaching and learning with technology, to support the introduction and use of CMC. Details of, and reasons for, the success or failure of these strategies are given. By drawing connections to theories of innovation diffusion and to some of the literature on staff training for the use of IT, the reasons for the success of the program to date become clear. For teachers adopting CMC, learning the tool is only part of what’s needed. Socialisation in the medium and an understanding of the institutional context are also important. Successful practitioners of CMC at UTS see their results coming from an understanding of how students learn, and from choosing effective teaching strategies that make use of this understanding. Engaging with the pedagogical issues of CMC like these is an effective way for staff to examine their conceptions of CMC as a teaching strategy. One-on-one meetings for teachers served well for introducing CMC, but were not well suited to learning the features of the tool. Workshops tailored to the needs of units are also used. These have helped teachers achieve technical proficiency but the wider implications of CMC, such as appropriate use efficiency/effectiveness issues can be difficult to discuss. The main strategy in use is for teachers to attend one or two half-day workshops during which they learn how to use the tool whilst taking part in a series of verbal and online discussions exploring some of the pedagogical and institutional issues. Development of more tightly focused tailored workshops and of materials for a self-managed learning course is underway, the latter motivated by Salmon’s observation (1998) that teachers should ‘learn online before teaching online’