Week 6 - Synchronous Communication

The technology we are looking at this week is synchronous communication. My experience and reactions are all over the map. Repeated attempts to set up multi-person video connection proved quite frustrating. I could manage good audio links but never got stable video with more than one person. At first I was disappointed. However, in the end, using the audio through voice-over-internet (Skype) or speaker phone and sending pertinent web links via email was quite efficient.

I also used chat one-on-one through Google and Facebook and with a large group through Moodle and a Facebook group. Some of the experiences were planned, others just dropping in on someone I noticed online. I found the lack of non-verbal cues can be almost maddening at times. For a quick question and answer; or sending a link for a short comment, chat seems quite adequate. What sometimes bothered me most about the chats was the slow speed. More than once I looked up and realized an hour had passed online. I chided myself for wasting so much time. But was it a waste? I had deepened social and professional connections. I had learned about things I would have not otherwise encountered. I remember having similar reactions when I would spend an unplanned-for amount of time chatting with friends and extended family I might encounter on walks around my old neighborhood. Same activity - chatting - different medium. The computer replaces the front porch for spontaneous synchronous communication. Despite the frustration and the time “wasted,” I think have found value in this opportunity for serendipitous chat.

Is there nonverbal communication during computer-mediated communication? 
I notice some level of non-verbal communication even in text-only communication.  Silence, level of formality, spamming, lurking, attempts to control the flow of the conversion - these are non-verbal aspects of text communication. I think users of text are so hungry for non-verbal signals that we have invented a set of non-verbal conventions such as emticons and graphics and typing all capitals to fill the gap caused by the scarcity non-verbal cues. The addition of audio adds many non-verbal cues to computer communication. Cues such as physical appearance, dress, adornment and many emblems and gestures come into play in when video is added to computer communication.. However, unless great effort is made to rectify the problem, camera placement contravenes the communication we generally glean from eye contact. For me this is a major loss.  I find that many of the regulators, adaptors and facial feedbacks we depend on in face-to-face conversation seem distracting when caught on camera.  Signals from touch are not conveyed. Certainly video connection provides much more non-verbal communication than text-only communication, but many of the nuances of face to face-communication are still lost or distorted.