Media Richness, Social Presence and Technology
Multiple Choice
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1.
Media Richness Essay
Media Richness theory describes how media carry both the intended information and symbolic information about the intended communication and the communicator. Face-to-face is considered to be the richest form of communication available because it offers the most channels for carrying information. Because of this, all communication is compared to face-to-face communication and in many ways we work to adapt other types of communication to be more like face-to-face communication. Where we canīt adapt a medium we try to find ways to make up for the mediumīs lack of richness. In this activity you are to choose a communication technology that you are familiar with and discuss how it compares to face-to-face communication, adaptations that have been made to make the medium more like face-to-face communication and how users try to find ways to make up for itīs lack of richness.
(Expected response is 100-400 words.)
example:
Email is a text-based asynchronous technology that is very lean in comparison to face-to-face communication. Because e-mail is text-based it relies on the senderīs ability to write to communicate. This means that there is no way to use tone of voice, voice inflection, or gestures to shape the message. Feedback is a problem as well! When you send an email you sometimes have to wait to get a response. In a face-to-face communication someone might ignore you, but you will know it, and probably will know why. When using e-mail, you canīt be sure that the message ever arrived, or if the person you sent it to just hasnīt been checking e-mail, or if they sent you a response that got lost etc.
There are a number of adaptations that have been made to e-mail to try to make up for its lack of richness as a medium. Among the earliest, in the days when email was text only, included the use of characters to indicate emphasis. For example someone might write. ´I went to the zoo yesterday and the alligators were *really* scary. The ī*ī was used to indicate emphasis or where the person would change their tone of voice if they were speaking the sentence.
The later development and use of emoticons is another adaptation that has been made to email (and text-based-chat) to try to make up for the lack of media richness that email possesses. Emoticons use text characters to create a face in the email that is intended to express some meaning. Often these are used to share information with the reader that he or she might receive by observing body language or facial expressions in a face-to-face environment. The most popular emoticon is the smiley face :) which is comprised of a semi colon and a right parenthesis. Together, and when viewed by turning your head to the side this emoticon looks like a smiling face. Many other emoticons have been developed and are used as an adaptation of text-based environments to try to make them more like face-to-face environments.
More recently, new ways of using email have been created that add richness to this medium. These include html or other formatting, the ability to include pictures, sounds and even videos. Interestingly, some people reject the use of these new capabilities that have been added to email because they cause problems of interoperability, bandwidth, and storage and may contribute to the spread of computer viruses.
2.
Social Presence Essay
Social presence theory helps us understand why some people may treat others online differently from the way they would treat that same person if they were in a face-to-face communication setting. What are the factors that contribute to building greater social presence in online environments and why might it be important to do so?
(Expected response 100-400 words.)
example:
Social presence is how, or to what degree, people in mediated communication situations perceive each other to be real. It is important in some mediated communications situations to build greater social presence to increase the likelihood of completion of an activity, to maintain interest in an activity, and to increase the satisfaction of the participants in an activity. Factors that may help build greater social presence are time spent communicating, the immediacy of responses, the appropriateness of responses, and the richness of the media used.
Time is an important factor because it seems to take more time to build a relationship online than it does to build a similar relationship in a face-to-face environment. Because of this it may be useful to ensure that there is sufficient time in an educational activity for this to occur.
The immediacy of responses may be an important factor in the building of social presence because in a communication activity when a person places something in the dialogue they see the response to their work as a measure of how important they are to the other person. Also, with passing time, people forget the context of their previous statements or their thinking progresses to other topics. These factors combine to make what the other person says in response seem less important or relevant.
What is communicated in response to a question or comment is important to building social presence. As with immediacy, the appropriateness of responses is a measure of how others perceive the person making the preceding effort at communication. If subsequent communications do not address the same topic, or dismiss the ideas of the previous commenter this has a deleterious effect on social presence.
The richness of the media that you choose for a communications activity can influence any of the preceding factors. Synchronous media in particular can help with immediacy of responses. Making photographs of the participants in a communications activity available might help build social presence. Another media factor that might increase social presence would be to use media that allows the communicators to hear each otherīs voices. Along with the richness of the media it may be important to help students understand ways of presenting themselves, and acknowledging others, to help ensure greater social presence.
3.
Available Technology Survey
It is a good idea to make effective use of the communication technologies that are available to participants in an activity. Also it is a good idea to use technology that students are already capable of using. In this exercise you will conduct a technology survey. There are many ways of doing this, but the one that is suggested is to use this matrix to list technologies that are available to your classroom in the left column and then indicate what activities you might be able to support using the technology. Finally, rate your best estimate of the average studentīs facility with this technology on a scale of 1-5.
Technology
Activities
Studentīs Ability to Use
1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5
example:
(Responses will vary considerably, these are presented as examples.)
Technology
Activities
Studentīs Ability to Use
1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5
Email, 4 stations in the classroom.
One-to-one activities:
Peer feedback activities such as a poetry exchange.
5
Video conferencing, in the computer lab.
One-to-one, one-to-group and group-to group activities.
Impersonation or Guest appearances. Contact NASA to find out if we can participate in the woman astronaut guest speaker program via desktop video conferencing.
3
4.
Using Technology
Unscientific observation leads one to believe that teachers who use a particular technology find it easier to design activities in which students use the same technology. Is this because the teacher is comfortable with the mechanics of the technology in question or is it because the teacher finds it easier to integrate a technology that they find use for in their personal or professional lives. Does a teacher need to be an expert in a technology to use it effectively with students or does the teacher just need to be able to relate a technology to a real world experience to use them in their classrooms? In this exercise you will explore the issues of teachers being experts in technology and the role that using technology in other settings has in a teacherīs use of that technology in their classroom.
You may choose to respond to this activity in one of several ways.
First, you may use a text-based-chat system to discuss these issues with another person. You may submit the relevant text of this chat as evidence of your work.
Second, you may take one of the issues above and present your thinking on the topic in a short paper. (expected response 100-400 words)
Third, you may review your own use of technology in your personal and professional life and compare that to your integration of technology in your classroom.
(expected response 100-400 words or a matrix or chart.)
example:
There is no sample response in this activity
Technology Enriched Learning
