The Interactional Organization of Computer Mediated Communication in the College Classroom

Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 21, No. 3, 1998

The Interactional Organization of ComputerMediated Communication in the CollegeClassroom

Angela Garcia and Jennifer Baker Jacobs

This paper reports the results of a pilot study of computer-mediated classroomdiscussions using a "quasi-synchronous" program called Aspects. The datafor this study are a discussion in a college classroom involving three students.Each students' computer monitor was videotaped, and the information on allthree screens was collated onto a single transcript. This single case analysisuses ethnomethodological conversation analysis to discover how participantscoordinate their actions in this new type of speech exchange system. Inquasi-synchronous computer-mediated communication participants do nothave access to each other's messages until they are completed and sent to agroup posting board. Thus, participants cannot rely on the ordinary means ofcoordinating turn exchange and other conversational activities (e.g., monitoringspeakers' utterances-in-progress). We found that students' attempts to importconventional procedures from oral conversation resulted in misunderstandingsand confusion. Specifically, we found that students experienced what we calledphantom responsiveness, phantom adjacency pairs, virtual simultaneity, andthe misinterpretation of silence.

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© 1998 Human Sciences Press, Inc.

KEY WORDS: computer-mediated communication; conversation analysis; ethnomethodologyeducation.

Computer technology is now being used at all levels of instruc-tion—from kindergarten to post-graduate (Phillips & Santoro 1989; Skinner1990; Hesse-Biber & Gilbert 1994; Hiltz 1986). Skinner (1990), Hiltz(1986), Phillips and Santoro (1989), Hesse-Biber and Gilbert (1994), Ahern,

Angela Garcia is affiliated with the Department of Sociology, and Jennifer Baker Jacobs withthe Department of English, at the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Direct correspondence to Angela Garcia, Department of Sociology, University of Cincinnati,P.O. Box 210378, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0378.

Peck, and Laycock (1992), list over 20 different types of courses that havebeen taught with computers. Educational uses range from curricular-basedsoftware or interactive lessons (e.g., Hesse-Biber & Gilbert 1994), bulletinboards, interactive tutorials, and online quizzes (e.g., Skinner 1990), to elec-tronic mail and computer conferencing (e.g., Cross 1983).

As computer technologies are increasingly applied in educational set-tings, methods of instruction are altered to meld with the technology. Oneof the goals of computer use in the classroom is to increase and equalizestudent participation. However, an enduring difference between computer-assisted classrooms and traditional classrooms is the nature of the commu-nicative process.

There is an extensive body of research on the use of computers ineducation and on how computer-mediated communication ("CMC") differsfrom face-to-face interaction. However, there are two fundamental gaps inthis research. First, the research on computers in education does not ad-dress the relatively new use of quasisynchronous computer conferencingprograms for class discussions. Computer conferencing programs differ inhow closely they reproduce the chronology of oral communication; there-fore, the communication patterns that develop will vary depending on thetype of computer technology (Saunders et al. 1994, p. 446). Asynchronousprograms (such as e-mail) do not engage participants simultaneously in thediscussion.1 Synchronous programs (such as "TalkDaemon") preserve thereal-time experience of oral conversation by making visible onscreen whatparticipants write as it is typed. In quasi-synchronous programs ("QS-CMC"), all participants are simultaneously engaged in the discussion, butparticipants' messages are not posted for group viewing until completedand sent.2 Thus in QS-CMC, the process of message transmission is notsynchronous with message production.

Second, the existing CMC research studies outcomes of processesrather than the processes themselves. The research comparing face-to-faceinteraction and CMC (e.g., Walther 1992; McGrath 1990; Walther & Bur-goon 1992; Kiesler et al. 1984), does not analyze the interactional organi-zation of CMC. Previous research on CMC in educational settings relieson content analysis in which the implications of the sequential organizationof that interaction are lost (e.g., Siegel et al. 1986; and Kiesler et al. 1984),or interviews (e.g., Sproull & Kiesler 1986), or surveys (e.g., Hiltz 1986)which are limited to studying people's opinions or recollections about whathappened. Methods such as Bales (1950) interactional process analysis (e.g.,Saunders et al. 1994; see Hirokawa 1988, and McGrath 1984, for critiquesof Bales) limit researchers to studying the utterances produced rather thanthe process of producing utterances. Thus the central organizing principlesof interaction are not captured by such methods. In this pilot study we

300 Garcia and Jacobs

address these two gaps by studying the interactional organization of stu-dents' QS-CMC classroom discussions.

AN ETHNOMETHODOLOGICALCONVERSATION-ANALYTIC APPROACH

In order to discover how QS-CMC discussions work, we need to studythese interactions directly, rather than merely studying printouts of the con-versations. We will use an ethnomethodological conversation analytic ap-proach (e.g., Heritage 1984) to analyze talk in this setting because itrequires the study of the process of interaction.

The goal of conversation analysis is to discover the commonsense un-derstandings and procedures people use to shape their conduct in particularinteractional settings (Heritage 1987, pp. 256-7; see also Sacks 1984, p. 413;Schegloff & Sacks 1973, p. 290; Heritage 1984, pp. 1, 241; and West & Zim-merman 1982, p. 506). Members' shared interactional competencies not onlyenable them to produce their own actions but also to interpret the actions ofothers. Because participants display their orientation to the procedures theyuse in the utterances they produce (see also Schegloff & Sacks 1973, pp.293-4; Heritage & Atkinson 1984, p. 2), analysts are able to discover conver-sational procedures by analyzing the talk itself (Schegloff & Sacks 1973, p.290). The conversation itself is assumed to be a context with regard to whichparticipants shape their utterances and interpret the utterances of others(Heritage 1987, p. 249; Goodwin & Duranti 1992). Thus the sequential con-text—the immediately prior utterances and previous utterances in the con-versation—as well as the interactional context and the physical and temporalcontexts are all assumed to be potentially relevant to the participants as theystructure their talk (Heritage & Atkinson 1984, p. 5).

Watson argues that:

[L]anguage is the medium of social life, and ... a vast number of the interactionsof the life of a society take the form of linguistic exchanges betweensociety-members. Formal education is a language-saturated institution (Watson1992, p. 259)

Further, the social order is a "communicative order" (Watson 1992, p. 262;see also Heap 1984). Thus studies of education should focus on the com-municative order and discover how participants in that institutional settingorganize their activities (Watson 1992). Ethnomethodology has alreadymade significant contributions to the sociology of education, such as Heap's(1990) study of teachers' repairs of student responses in reading groups(see also Watson 1992) and Hustler and Payne's (1982) study of how teach-

Computer Mediated Communication in the Classroom 301

ers' power in the classroom is displayed and created by the way teachersand students talk about time.

Ethnomethodological conversation analytic studies of education focuseven more directly on the communicative order by exploring the organiza-tion of interaction in that setting (e.g., Mehan 1979; Heap 1992; Cuff, Shar-rock & Francis 1985). McHoul (1978) pointed out that the speech exchangesystem of talk in a traditional classroom

cuts down the range of options and permutations available in ordinary conversation[because] only the teacher can direct speakership in any creative way. ... In thisway a 'social identity contrast' between 'leacher' and 'pupil' categorizations isgenerated (Watson 1992, p. 269).

Heap (1990) and Weeks (1985) applied conversation analytic findings oninterruptions, turn-taking, and error repair to teachers' responses to stu-dents' oral reading.

However, with the exception of Heap's (1992) ground-breaking studyof the interactions between pupils cooperatively editing a story on a per-sonal computer, little ethnomethodological conversation analytic researchhas been conducted on CMC in education. We will use this perspective toanalyze QS-CMC classroom discussions.

DATA COLLECTION AND PREPARATION

Subjects are students in a computer-assisted university level classroomwho routinely spend part of the class period in small group discussions onthe computer. The program used is Aspects, a CMC program for Macintosh,which facilitates a computer conference for up to 16 participants.3 Eachparticipant's monitor shows a "chat box" which is divided into two sections:a small "message entry box" in which they type their text, and a larger"posting box" containing the posted messages that are visible to all par-ticipants. All participants see the posting box, but a student's message entrybox appears only on their screen. Message entry boxes display the last twolines of text typed; previous lines scroll up out of view a full line at a time.Each time a participant sends or "posts" a message, it appears as the lastline on the posting box and their message entry box becomes blank. Par-ticipants can create a document consisting of all the posted messages inthe order in which they were posted and can print that document (the"printout"). These printouts are typically used by the students as notes oftheir discussion, and by instructors to monitor students' progress.

In this pilot study we analyze one 25-minute long QS-CMC discussionbetween 3 students in a college composition classroom. When the data werecollected, the students had been using Aspects in class for eight weeks. Each


student's computer monitor was videotaped directly from the computer inorder to record what each student wrote during the discussion.

The transcription system used (Jacobs, 1996) reproduces what is visu-ally available to each student on the screen, at the same time preservingthe sequential order in which actions were accomplished on a keystrokeby keystroke basis. Text formatting elements which Aspects participants donot have access to (e.g., boldface, underlining, italics, superscript, and sub-script) are used to notate students' actions (e.g., typing, erasing, postingmessages, or pausing). Using this system, we can record each participant'sactions directly from the videotape of their computer screen, and combinethe individual experiences of each participant onto a single document.

HOW QS-CMC DIFFERS FROM ORAL CONVERSATION

Several researchers have noted that computer technology changes in-teractions and relationships (Bjorn-Anderson, Eason, & Robey 1986;Markus 1984; Saunders et al. 1994, pp. 443, 446); Rogers (1986, p. 138).An oft-cited difference between CMC and face-to-face conversation is thatvisual and/or auditory cues are not available in CMC (Kiesler et al. 1984;Kiesler, Zubrow, Moses & Geller 1985; Siegel et al. 1986).4 Previous re-search on face-to-face interaction has shown that participants use such cuesto coordinate their activities. For example, Goodwin (1984) found that par-ticipants use gaze direction to coordinate turn-taking, and that gestures andhand motions may be used to indicate story structure and transitions fromone conversational activity to another (see also Psathas 1990). Jefferson(1979) found that the placement of laughter particles may indicate how tointerpret and respond to a speaker's utterance.

Because QS-CMC is a text-based medium, participants read eachother's messages instead of listening to them. It is therefore relevant toask how communicative tasks are accomplished in QS-CMC discussionswhich lack standard audio/visual cues. In addition, because participants can-not see each other's messages until posted, they cannot react to messagesas they are being produced.

In oral conversation, the turn-taking system (Sacks et al. 1974) consistsof the rules and procedures participants use to exchange turns talking.Sacks et al. found that in ordinary conversation, turn transition properlyoccurs at the end of a "unit type" (i.e., sentence, clause, or phrase). Speak-ers can select another to speak, for example by asking a question. If thecurrent speaker does not select a next speaker, any participant may selecthim or herself to speak at the end of a unit type. If a next speaker doesnot self select, the current speaker may continue. Additionally, turns at


talking and types of turns (e.g., questions and answers) are not predeter-mined or controlled by conventions, structures, or individuals outside theinteraction, but are negotiated in the context of the talk itself. Sacks et al.(1974) refer to this as a "locally managed" turn-taking system (see alsoAtkinson and Drew 1979; Suchman 1987).

The turn-taking system in QS-CMC, on the other hand, is only partiallylocally managed. Turn order is partially controlled by the software, whichtransmits messages to the posting box in the order in which they are sent.Students cannot control the exact placement of their messages on the post-ing box, because other students, acting independently, may complete andsend theirs first. Thus the placement of messages relative to other messagesis likely to differ in QS-CMC from that in oral conversation (Sacks et al.1974) or traditional classrooms (McHoul 1978).

The text-based medium results in a markedly different communicationenvironment in QS-CMC than is found in oral interaction. How do theconstraints of the QS-CMC system affect the communication process insmall group discussions in the classroom? How do students' expectationsabout how oral conversation works affect their actions in the QS-CMCcommunication environment? Is the goal of QS-CMC use in the class-room—to increase and equalize participation in class discussions—beingaccomplished? What types of communication problems occur in QS-CMCthat do not occur in oral class discussions? How does quasi-synchronicityaffect turn exchange procedures, sequencing, and response patterns? Wewill address some of these questions in this pilot study. We will argue thatparticipants in QS-CMC generally import the organizational procedures oforal conversation to the QS-CMC communication environment, with someproblematic results.

SEQUENTIAL ORGANIZATION IN QS-CMC: THEMISINTERPRETATION OF ADJACENCY

In oral conversation the position of utterances is critical to their in-terpretation (Garfinkel 1967; Goodwin and Goodwin 1987). If an utterancecan be understood as referring to the immediately prior utterance, it willbe heard that way. For example, an utterance placed after a question willbe heard as an attempt to answer that question (Sacks et al. 1974; Schegloff1984). Misplacement markers (Schegloff & Sacks 1973, p. 319) are usedto signal that a current utterance is "out of place," if an other-than-priorutterance is being referred to.

In QS-CMC, students do not have access to each others' message entryboxes.5 One participant may therefore begin to respond to a posted mes-


sage, yet not complete and post that response until other messages havebeen posted by other participants. Thus on the group posting box (and theprintout of the conversation) messages may be posted adjacently to eachother which were not designed to be positioned adjacently. The postingbox and printout, therefore, often do not accurately represent the actualsequence of turns at talk intended by participants. This characteristic ofthe speech exchange system in Aspects often results in what we will referto as "phantom responsiveness."6

Phantom Responsiveness and Phantom Adjacency Pairs

There are several instances in the printout where participants appearto be responding to each other's immediately prior messages. However, thevideotapes of each student's screen show that only some of these apparentlyresponsive messages are actually responsive to the prior messages. We de-scribe this as "phantom responsiveness" because what looks like intentionalresponsiveness is actually a byproduct of the communication environmentprovided by QS-CMC.

One type of phantom responsiveness which occurs in QS-CMC isphantom adjacency pairs. In oral conversation, adjacency pairs are pairs ofutterances in which the first creates the expectation that a specific type ofsecond will be produced by a co-interactant in the next turn space (Sackset al., 1974; Schegloff 1968; Schegloff & Sacks 1973). Examples of adja-cency pairs include questions and answers, requests with grants or denials,and invitations with acceptances or declinations (Sacks et al. 1974;Schegloff 1968). Participants will thus attempt to interpret an utteranceplaced after a question as an answer to that question. If it is not possibleto do so, participants will display an orientation to that answer's "absence."However, in QS-CMC, question-answer pairs which appear on the postingboard and the printout are not necessarily "adjacency pairs." We use theterm phantom adjacency pairs to refer to pairs of utterances that look likeadjacency pairs on the printout (and the posting box) but are actually notadjacency pairs. The apparent relationship between the first and second"pair parts" is a coincidental byproduct of the turn exchange system ofQS-CMC.

For example; when the printout in Excerpt 1 is examined, it appears asif the question-answer pair in lines 110 and 111-114 are an adjacency pair.

Excerpt 1: Printout, Lines 108-117

108 Silver: AND YOU ARE ANGRY THAT YOUR CREDITS DID NOT109 FOLLOW YOU110 Mr White: IS THAT IT?


111 FRED: YES I AM ANGRY THAT I LOST A LOT OF CREDITS BUT112 THATS WHERE I FELL INTO A HOLE WITH THE FIRST FINAL OF THIS113 PAPER I TENDED TO FOCUS IN ON THAT ANGER AND NOT ON THE114 LOGICALITY OF THE BIG PICTURE115 Mr White: AH HA116 Mr White: AND NOW YOU WILL CHOOSE TO FOCUS ON THE LOGIC,117 INSTEAD OF THE EMOTION ...118 Silver: OAKY SO YOU NEED TO BE DETACHED FROM YOUR119 FEELINGS WHEN WRITING THIS ESSAY... EASIER SAID THAN DONE120 FRED: NO THATS NOT IT THEY DO HAVE ALSORTS OF CRACKS IN121 THE SYSTEM THAT IF YOU KNOW HOW TO PLAY THEM YOU CAN GET122 MORE CREDITS TO TRANSFER THAN YOU COULD IF YU DID'NT KNOW

HOW123 TO DODGE THE SYSTEM

Mr White's question in line 110 ("IS THAT IT?") is an adjacency pairfirst pair part.7 He is asking FRED whether Silver's statement in lines 108-9accurately characterizes her position. FRED's lines 111-114 ("YES I AMANGRY....") appears to directly answer Mr White's question. Mr White's"AH HA" in line 115 appears to be a reaction to FRED's answer, indicatingthat Mr White has understood FRED's lines 111-114 as a response to hisprior query.8 Mr White's next message (lines 116-117) supports this inter-pretation, because it clearly responds to the specific content of FRED'sutterance: "AND NOW YOU WILL CHOOSE TO FOCUS ON THELOGIC, INSTEAD OF THE EMOTION .. ." Mr White picks up 2 wordsdirectly from FRED's message: "focus" and "logic." Mr White's "emotion"references FRED's "anger." In addition, Mr White uses the "and-preface,"(Heritage & Sorjonen 1994; Schiffrin 1987) which serves to show that hismessage is connected with a prior message. In sum, the picture of this ex-change which we get from the printout is one in which each student's mes-sage is reasonably and naturally interpretable as responding to another'simmediately prior message.

However, when the videotapes of each student's message entry boxesare examined, a very different picture of this exchange emerges. While onthe printout, FRED's lines 111-114 appeared to be a response to MrWhite's query in line 110, the videotape shows that FRED's message isactually a response to Silver's lines 108-109.

FRED began typing 19 minutes and 24 seconds into the conversation.She had already typed about two thirds of her message before Mr White's"IS THAT IT?" was posted 38 seconds later. At this point, FRED hadgotten as far as "YES I AM ANGRY THAT I LOST A LOT OF CREDITSBUT THAT'S WHERE I FELL INTO A HOLE WITH THE FIRST FI-NAL OF THIS PAPER I TENDED TO FOCUS IN ON THAT" It is co-incidental that FRED's utterance "fits with" Mr White's and that, takentogether, they look like an adjacency pair.


In addition, when Mr White's message appeared, the first part ofFRED'S message ("YES I AM ANGRY THAT I LOST A LOT OF CRED-ITS BUT THATS WHERE I FELL") had already scrolled up out of viewon her message entry box. While it is possible that FRED could rememberthe beginning of her message, and determine that it would be compatiblewith Mr White's message, she couldn't see her utterance to check that itin fact was compatible. This evidence lends further support to the idea thatthe apparent adjacency pair is a phantom.

Even more telling, after she posts lines 111-114, and before any othermessages are posted, FRED begins composing her next message (ultimatelyposted as lines 120-123), which appears to be a direct response to MrWhite's "IS THAT IT?". FRED starts typing "NO THAT'S NOT IT THEYDO", thus referencing Mr White's "IS THAT IT?" in the context of anoppositional utterance ("NO . . ."). FRED thus frames that message as adisagreement with Mr White's candidate interpretation in line 110 by usingformat tying (Goodwin & Goodwin 1987; Whalen et al. 1988). BecauseFRED constructs her lines 120-123 as a response to Mr White's line 110,we can retrospectively infer that her previous message (lines 111-114) wasnot an answer to Mr White's question, although it appeared to be whenonly the printout was taken into consideration.

Because Mr White only has access to what appears on the postingboard, he had no way of knowing that FRED had already begun typinglines 111-114 before he asked his question. Thus Mr White's "AH HA" inline 115 is a reasonable response. Like the subjects in Garfinkel's (1967)computer therapy experiment, Mr White reasonably interpreted a messagewhich appeared after his question as an answer to that question, regardlessof whether it was or not. Schegloff (1990) argues that "the structure ofsequences in talk-in-interaction is a source of coherence in its own right"(p. 72). Thus in QS-CMC, where adjacency pairs can not reliably be usedto create sequences, an important source of coherence is lost. (See alsoSuchman, 1987.)9

This example shows that in QS-CMC each participant in the interac-tion has a fundamentally different experience from that of the others. Forexample, FRED clearly did not interpret her lines 111-114 as a responseto Mr White's question, because she knew that she began typing her mes-sage before "IS THAT IT?" was posted. She knew that her message wasa response to Silver's message. Like in the film Rashomon, where a singleevent is described from the perspective of four different people, showingthat each had a different perspective on what happened and a differentcollection of "facts" on which to base their interpretation of the event, eachparticipant in a QS-CMC conversation is participating in a slightly differentconversation, because each has access to a unique set of information.10


TURN-TAKING IN QS-CMC: THE PROBLEM OFVIRTUAL SIMULTANEITY

Whereas in oral conversation listeners can project the end of a currentspeaker's utterance, and time their utterance to begin at the first possiblepoint of completion (Sacks et al. 1974), in computer conversations studentsdo not have access to each other's messages-in-progress. Therefore, theycan attempt to position their messages relative to posted messages, but haveno way of knowing whether a not-yet-posted message is soon to be posted,or is even in progress. Thus the coordination of turn exchange in QS-CMCis partly system-controlled and partly individual-controlled, rather than lo-cally managed by participants (as in oral conversation) (Sacks et al. 1974).

Furthermore, while in oral conversation simultaneous speech may oc-cur if two speakers begin a turn at the same time or nearly the same time,in QS-CMC simultaneous posting of messages is impossible because Aspectsposts only one message at a time. If two messages are sent at virtually thesame time, one will appear first and the second will pop up immediatelyafter it. Thus in QS-CMC actual simultaneity is impossible, and simulta-neous starts are obscured on the posting board and on the printout bysequential rather than simultaneous positioning. We refer to this phenome-non as virtual simultaneity.

If a participant is looking at the posting board when two virtually si-multaneous messages appear, they will know that they are not responsiveto each other. But students are often not looking at the posting board.Students may be visually engaged in typing a message or may have scrolledup the posting board to review previously posted messages. It is thus pos-sible that a message that was posted virtually simultaneously with anothermessage may appear to be responsive to it. This may lead to misinterpre-tation of messages by participants during the conversation, and when theprintout is read.

For example, FRED's lines 106-7 were posted virtually simultaneously(within a second) of Silver's lines 108-9.


105 Silver: SO YOU TRANSFERRED HERE FROM SU106 FRED: SO THEY HAVE TO ENSURE A CERTAIN LEVEL OF SKILLS107 FROM THEIR GRADUATES108 Silver: AND YOU ARE ANGRY THAT YOUR CREDITS DID NOT109 FOLLOW YOU

When the printout is examined (Excerpt 2), it appears as if Silver's lines108-9 are responsive to FRED's lines 106-7. Silver's use of the and-preface


appears to connect it to prior talk, either her own previous message in line105, or FRED's prior message in lines 106-7 (Heritage & Sorjonen 1994;Schiffrin 1987). But when the videotapes are examined, we see that Silverhad completed typing her lines 108-109, except for the final "u", whenFRED's lines 106-7 were posted. Silver immediately types the final "u"and posts her message, without pausing to read FRED's message (insuffi-cient time elapsed for her to read it). Silver's message was posted only 1second after FRED's lines 106-7 were posted.

Thus, Silver's message is clearly not a response to FRED's 106-7;rather it is a continuation of her own line 105, which she wrote in responseto FRED's earlier message (lines 102-3). Seen from Silver's point of view,the "and-preface" at the beginning of her message is not actually an "and-preface" as defined by Heritage and Sorjonen. Silver begins typing her line108 only 3 seconds after she posted her line 105, and before any othermessage is posted. She thus constructs her line 108 as a continuation ofher line 105, rather than an utterance in response to another speaker'sutterance (Heritage & Sorjonen, 1994). The "and" at the beginning of line108 is therefore not an "and-preface," but is designed to show that line108 is a continuation of her own prior message.

THE MISINTERPRETATION OF SILENCE

In oral conversation silences in some positions are accountable (Sacks etal. 1974; Schegloff & Sacks 1973). For example, a silence after the first pairpart of an adjacency pair (such as a greeting) would be heard as problematicbecause a second pair part is conditionally relevant upon production of a firstpair part (Sacks et al. 1974; Schegloff 1968). That silence would be heard as"belonging" to the person who should have produced the second pair part.

In QS-CMC, messages-in-progress are not available to coparticipants.This may lead to the misinterpretation of "silence" in the computer con-versations. Since participants do not have access to each other's messageentry boxes, they cannot distinguish between someone engaged in produc-ing a message, and someone who is not typing. During the time a partici-pant is typing a response to a question, others may interpret what theyperceive as a silence as a failure to respond to a question. This is whathappens in lines 108-110 (Excerpt 3).


105 Silver: SO YOU TRANSFERRED HERE FROM SU106 FRED: SO THEY HAVE TO ENSURE A CERTAIN LEVEL OF SKILLS107 FROM THEIR GRADUATES


108 Silver: AND YOU ARE ANGRY THAT YOUR CREDITS DID NOT109 FOLLOW YOU110 Mr White: IS THAT IT?

In lines 108-9 Silver asks FRED whether she was angry that her creditsdid not "follow her" when she transferred from one university ("SU") toanother. Mr White's line 110 ("IS THAT IT?") is posted after a 50 secondpause. While pauses in general are much longer in QS-CMC than in oralconversation, 50 seconds is a long pause even for this type of interaction.11

Mr White appears to interpret FRED's failure to respond to Silver as prob-lematic, and initiates the repair of FRED's absent response (Schegloff, Jef-ferson & Sacks 1977). Mr White's message is a request for clarification;presumably directed at FRED, asking FRED to respond to Silver's mes-sage. Mr White is unaware that during this 50-second pause, FRED hasbeen composing a lengthy response to Silver (which will be posted as lines111-114).

In sum, in oral conversation, silence may indicate a problem with un-derstanding. However, in QS-CMC, where the composition of messages isnot available to others, silence may indicate the opposite—not a problemwith comprehension, but time being spent composing a response to thatmessage.12

How are participants in QS-CMC to make sense of an interactionwhere such problems in achieving mutual understanding can occur? Thesedata show that Aspects produces a communication environment in whichthe ordinary procedures people use to make sense of utterances are notsufficient to achieve mutual understanding. The speech exchange systemof Aspects may lead to the misinterpretation of adjacency, the misinterpre-tation of silence, the production of phantom responsiveness, and otherproblems. We will first give an example of how QS-CMC can result in con-fusion and misunderstanding among student participants, and then showsome ways participants act to avoid such problems.

MISCOMMUNICATION IN QS-CMC

Excerpt 4 shows an instance in which participants displayed an orien-tation to confusion or misunderstanding that resulted from the speech ex-change system of QS-CMC. When the printout is examined, it appears asif Mr White failed to understand FRED's use of the term "SOG'S" in line71, and requested clarification in line 72. FRED responds to this requestwith her line 73. Mr White is apparently unable to interpret FRED's line73 as a response to his query, and expresses this frustration with his em-phatic "WHAT?!!!" in line 74.



67 Silver: YOU SAISD THAT YOU CHANGED YOUR POSITION SIND=CE68 THE FINAL DRAFT?69 FRED: INSTEED OF DEALING WITH ON A TOTAL PERSONNAL LEVEL70 I INTEND TO GIVE MORE COLD HARD FACTS, AS TO THE SCHOOLS71 WRITTEN SOG'S72 Mr White: SOG'S?73 FRED: CHANGE MY POSITION NO FOCUSED MY POSITION YES74 Mr White: WHAT?!!!

When the videotapes are examined, we learn why this confusion occurred.There is quite a long delay after FRED's lines 69-71 are posted before MrWhite posts his line 72. By the time Mr White's query is posted, FREDhas almost completed her line 73, which she posts only 2 seconds after MrWhite's query is posted. Because it is adjacent to his query, Mr White at-tempts to interpret it as a response to his query (following normal proce-dure for oral conversation). His "WHAT?!"' in line 74 displays his inabilityto interpret FRED's line 73 as a response to his question.

The videotape reveals that FRED's line 73 is not a response to MrWhite's line 72, it is a response to Silver's lines 67-68. In fact, FRED begancomposing line 73 twenty-seven seconds before Mr White posted line 72.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, computer conversations in QS-CMC cannot be under-stood by studying the printout alone. It is impossible to follow the flow ofevents, understand who is responding to whom, and interpret what is beingreferred to by each message unless the process of producing the messages isstudied as well as the messages produced. Thus we recommend a data col-lection procedure, such as videotaping, which preserves the process of pro-ducing the messages for analysis along with the output of the conversation.

Second, we conclude that students' attempts to import procedures fororganizing talk in oral conversation to QS-CMC were generally unsuccess-ful. It is not safe to assume that a message is responsive to its prior, orthat a message that appears to be designed specifically as a second pairpart to a first pair part is a response to that message. Messages which areplaced sequentially may have actually been sent simultaneously. Silence onthe part of a recipient of a first pair part does not necessarily indicate aproblem producing a response. In order to discover the procedures andassumptions underlying successful interaction in QS-CMC, an under-standing of its interactional organization is necessary. For this purpose we


argue that an ethnomethodological conversation analytic approach providesthe necessary analytical tools and conceptual framework.

In sum, there are some problems for participants which may resultfrom QS-CMC. However, from the instructor's point of view, there are alsobenefits. In QS-CMC, users must respond during the period of time allottedfor the discussion but can edit or delay each message before sending it.Hence, students can make contributions to a conversational topic long afterit has been introduced, unlike in an oral classroom, where students whowait too long to contribute may miss the opportunity. Not only do studentsin QS-CMC have more time to respond, but they also have an infinitenumber of slots for answers to a question. Every student's answer can beincluded (Finholt & Sproull 1990).

There may also be implications for teachers' use of QS-CMC softwarein their classes. When teachers know the system's communication possibili-ties and limitations, the ways students devise for getting around them, andthe ways students fail to deal with the system successfully, they may developtechniques for instructing students in how to interact in QS-CMC.

An analysis of the interactional organization of QS-CMC discussionscan lead to an understanding of how technology affects the communicativeprocess (e.g., Walther 1992; Kuehn 1994; Siegel et al. 1986; Poole et al.1993) and how QS-CMC differs from oral classroom discussions. This lineof research will enable us to learn something about how computer-assistedclassrooms work, and how the organization of the interaction enables par-ticipants to accomplish the goals of the class. Thus this line of researchhas significance for the improvement of computer classroom discussion for-mats (c.f. Ahern et al. 1992).

The findings of this study will also enable us to perform future researchon the extent to which student participation is equalized in QS-CMC. SomeQS-CMC programs provide tallies of how many messages were posted byeach student. These tallies generally show that students participate morefrequently in QS-CMC discussions than in oral discussions, and that par-ticipation is more equal between students.

However, unless an analysis using the methods described in this paperis conducted, it will be impossible to get more than a crude and inaccuratemeasure of equality of participation. Tallies of total messages produced donot take into account issues such as the following: Which messages wereinterpreted correctly by the cointeractants, and which may have been mis-interpreted? Which questions were responded to, and which were left un-answered? Whose moves to change the topic were followed and whose wereignored? Whose work and ideas were focused on by participants and whosewere ignored?

Garcia and Jacobs312

Previous conversation analytic research on oral conversation has shownthat women and men do different types of interactional work, with mendoing more of the talking and women doing more of the support work(e.g., asking questions and providing feedback) (Fishman 1978, 1983). Ifthese patterns are carried over to QS-CMC classroom discussions, such in-equalities between the genders could be perpetuated without being discov-ered by simplistic measures such as tallies of numbers of messagesproduced. The approach used in this paper will enable future researchersto produce accurate analyzes of the amounts and types of participation ofeach student in the conversation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank the students who allowed us to videotape theircomputer mediated conversations in the classroom. We are indebted to theTaft Fund at the University of Cincinnati for a research grant which sup-ported part of the work on this project. We would also like to thank theanonymous reviewer for providing helpful suggestions for improving thepaper. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the North CentralSociological Association meetings in Cincinnati, April 13, 1996.

ENDNOTES

1. Several studies analyze asynchronous computer conferencing ("AS-CMC") (e.g., Poole,Holmes, Watson & DeSanctis 1993; Rice & Love 1987, Sproull & Kiesler 1986). Manyresearchers have found that the various uses of computers improve educational processor outcomes (see Skinner 1990, pp. 351-2). Ahern et al. (1992) note that traditionalclassrooms often result in little student participation or little student-student interaction(see also Mehan 1979; Hertz-Lazarowitz & Shachar 1990). The opportunity to conductclass discussions asynchronously is a potential advantage because students can "partici-pate in class activities at times other than the normal class period ... which . .. increasesthe level of member participation" (Ahern et al. 1992, p. 292).

2. S-CMC and QS-CMC differ from AS-CMC by providing a "real-time" online environ-ment for class discussion. While S-CMC most closely duplicates oral discussions, it is arelatively uncharted territory in the application of computers to education. Previous ex-perimental studies of S-CMC programs, e.g., Walther (1992), Siegel, Dubrowsky, Kiesler,& McGuire (1986), and Kiesler, Siegel & McGuire (1984) do not examine educationalsettings.

3. Aspects is a trademark of Group Tech, Inc., 1408 North Fillmore St., Suite 10, Arlington,VA 22201.

4. Walther (1992) cites several ways in which CMC users can mimic or replace many ofthose cues. Relational icons (Asteroff 1987; Sherblom 1988, p. 44), "intentional misspell-ing, lexical surrogates for vocal segregates, spatial arrays, grammatical markers, absenceof corrections, and capitalization" (Walther, 1992) can all be used to communicate emo-tion or to replace nonverbal gestures, tone of voice, etc. Participants can also spell out


minimal responses or laughter, and manipulate spatial arrangement of their text (seealso Carey 1980, p. 68).

5. This alone constitutes a critical difference between oral conversation and QS-CMC. AsGoodwin (1986) describes, in oral conversation speakers and hearers act simultane-ously—because the recipient's response to an utterance occurs while it is being producedin addition to after its production. Speakers can thus adjust their utterance to coordinatewith the recipient. In QS-CMC, this type of coordination is not possible because recipi-ents only have access to a message after it is completed and posted.

6. Speech exchange systems (Sacks et al. 1974) are unique interactional organizations suchas ordinary conversation, trials, interviews, and therapy sessions. To the extent that theturn-taking system and participation framework (Goffman 1981) in QS-CMC s unique,it constitutes a separate speech exchange system.

7. Participants' aliases ("FRED", "Mr White", and "Silver") are reproduced here exactlyas participants typed them, as are all messages quoted in this paper. Students often postedmessages without correcting typographical errors.

8. The third turn position is often used to provide a receipt or an acknowledgement of asecond pair part (Jefferson & Schenkein 1978). See ten Have (1991, p. 141) and Heritageand Greatbatch (1991, p. 111), for examples of third turn receipts.

9. In oral conversation, adjacency pairs are successful in organizing talk. If a second pairpart isn't given in response to a first pair part, an insertion sequence or insert expansion(Schegloff 1990) may be used to get the information necessary to provide the secondpair part. But in QS-CMC, no speaker, even the producer of what would be a first pairpart in oral conversation, can control what happens next. A first pair part could eventuallyproduce an answer, but there is no way of knowing where that answer will be placed.Therefore, while in oral conversation, adjacency pairs can be used to structure largeunits of talk (Schegloff 1990), in QS-CMC they can not achieve this purpose.

10. The film Rashomon (1951) was directed by Akira Karosawa, produced by Jingo Minora,and is distributed by Sultan Entertainment.

11. Wilson and Zimmerman (1986) found that pauses in the oral conversations they studiedwere rarely longer than 1 second.

12. In addition to disturbing the sequencing function of adjacency pairs, the interactionalorganization of QS-CMC also changes the dynamics of another organizing principle inoral conversation—preference organization. Dispreferred responses to utterances aregenerally delayed before being produced, thus signalling the speaker that the preferredresponse will not be forthcoming (e.g., Pomerantz 1984). Because participants in QS-CMC cannot orient to each other's messages-in-progress or control placement of com-pleted messages in the conversation, delay of a response cannot be used to "announce"a dispreferred response.

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