Reading Reflection #2


To me the most powerful statement that Joy Peyton makes in Theory and Research: Interaction via Computers is that ‘Computers are not replacing teachers but rather are changing the nature of their work’ (p. 26). In her chapter she outlines the need for negotiation in light of this new challenge. However, at the same time, she draws attention to how rooted computer networking is in long-standing, interactionist and socio-cultural, Vygotskian principles.

She also notes how the concepts of ‘text and talk,’ whether in real or delayed time, are no longer as discrete and distinct as once perceived. To all these shifts that computer-mediated learning has brought, she argues that teachers need to be continually examining their interactive learning spaces toward understanding how they can shape them for best learning outcomes.

As I reflect on Peyton’s chapter in light of our own online class CALL 530, I am struck both by the variety of modes of interaction, and the quick and subtle shifts in the relationship between talk and text that I myself do. This claim warrants an explanation, so here goes:

I was unable to schedule my online tutorial for any of the group Messenger chat times that my instructor had set, so we scheduled a mutually agreed time for a one-on-one. On the appointed day, we knocked on the door of time at 8 p.m. and began our conversation.

We began in text, both of us in a writing conversation (real-time), but as the written chat (Note the oxymoron!) proceeded, my instructor remembered that I had posted on our class forum earlier (time-delayed), that I had a webcam. By mutual agreement we switched modes to voice and video conversation. Therefore, in this chat room tutorial, not only was my instructor who had known me for a week, seeing me for the first time, but we had switched modes of interaction.

These varied modes of interaction and my merged use of text and talk were not the only classroom interactions that I had done for the day. A couple hours earlier, I had had yet another kind of learning interaction – this time through peer-scaffolding. In that instance, I had a joint conversation with two members of the class whom I had seen online, and asked for help with an assignment that I did not understand.

Of course, Peyton’s chapter focuses on text and talk in quite a different way from my experiences above, in that she examines text and talk from the perspective of the nature of writing instruction in the language learning classroom. My CALL 530 is not a traditional language learning classroom. However, a fundamental analogy between her classroom and mine exists. As she puts it: ‘Computer-mediated interaction revolutionizes notions about writing, radically challenging traditional distinctions between speech and writing’ (p. 20).

Peyton also develops the challenges of computer-mediated interaction, citing its newness, its immediacy, its faceless and diffuseness, as features that often make it prone to (1) antisocial prankish responses, (2) less thoughtful effort from students, and (3) the teacher’s feelings of loss of control. In my opinion these challenges are most likely to found among adolescents. They require ‘negotiation,’ and certainly justify her call for teachers ‘to continually examine the types and quality of [their learning] interactions and find ways to shape them.’

Peyton cites Kremers (1990) on the kind of computer-mediated interaction that was once a dream, but has now become almost the norm in my view – the networked classroom, ‘in which authority is shared, decentralized, distributed, even communal; a class in which teachers sometimes participate directly in the discussion and t other times stay out of things, letting their students take control of their own dialogues; a class in which students compete among themselves for influence in the group through the force of their language and the clarity of their arguments’ (p. 25).

In my opinion, CALL 530 has achieved that platform.