Learning to Confer: the Interplay of Theory and Practice in Computer Conferencing.

This dissertation presents a description and analysis of CONFER, a computer conferencing and multi-purpose communications system designed and developed over the past half dozen years at The University of Michigan. Chapter 1 deals with the group communications context from which CONFER emerged: the face-to-face meeting. The time, technological, psychological, and cost constraints which are problems governing traditional face-to-face group communication are discussed. The theoretical "solution" is presented as a cluster of elements of a model communications system. In this system all individuals are able to control their input and output and the style of their interactions, time and space constraints are eliminated, anonymous behavior is possible, and participation is facilitated. In Chapter 2, the methods and procedures used to develop the CONFER system are discussed. The context from which CONFER emerged, a concern with small group governance in both its communications and decision making dimensions, is described, as are the principles operationalized in the CONFER system: individual equality, freedom, privacy and flexibility, and the facilitation of individual participation. The historical development of a unique feature of CONFER, the "vote," is presented in Chapter 3. This operationalizes the emphasis placed on interactivity and feedback in the system. The premise that underlies this permeating feature of the system is that the individual participant should continually alternate between being a producer and being a consumer of communications. In Chapter 4, the results of actual CONFER use are set forth via the construction of a typology of CONFER conferences drawn from an examination of actual conference usage. The typology is based on three independent variables: "who" participates--whether a "well-defined" or "ill-defined" set of individuals; "when" the conference takes place--whether for a "fixed" or "indefinite" duration; and "how" the content is approached--whether the agenda is of a "focused" or "full-scope" nature. Eight conference types are identified and described. Descriptions of actual conferences of each type are presented and analyzed. CONFER's future, sketched from the perspective of the constraints potentially impinging on its dissemination is the subject of Chapter 5. These constraints are identified as falling into two general categories: the technical and the conceptual. The former are viewed as being more or less automatically correcting. The latter are seen as being more profound and therefore more critical. They have to do with the seemingly simple but profoundly difficult matter of people underst and ing that computer conferencing is a genuinely new communications medium, not the augmentation of old forms of communication.PhDEducationUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/158327/1/8116315.pd