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The increase in participation that accompanies real-time conversation also carries with it certain liabilities, most notably problems with the pace and depth of conversations. Because everybody can talk at once, real-time discussion may move too quickly for participants to keep up. Especially when a large group is interested in the topic, electronic discussion can sometimes be frustrating because the flow of the conversation can easily leave some of the participants behind.
Real-Time, Real Challenges The easiest way to solve this dilemma is to keep a transcript of the session. In a full class discussion, your instructor will probably already be logging a transcript for later reference. If not, or if this is a smaller group meeting, check to see whether the software you use to access MU*s and IRCs has a feature that will let you keep a log of the session. By keeping a transcript, you can return to the discussion for later analysis, revisiting ideas, solidifying a topic that was bounced around in a brainstorming session, or even quoting from the exchange.
Another way to help manage the flow of information in a real-time discussion is to focus on the messages and threads of the conversation that interest you the most. If you participate in one or two threads, you can concentrate on understanding the depth of a particular issue and writing more incisive messages yourself. Your instructor may also want to split the class into smaller groups so that discussion will have a slower, more manageable pace.
A second problem is the temptation to just bounce around from point to point, making quick, superficial comments that lack meaningful insight. Again, to counter this tendency, concentrate on a limited number of threads and try to compose longer, more thoughtful messages. Another strategy is to let the mediumıs tendencies work to your advantage. Instead of trying to finalize your thesis in a real-time class discussion, use the wealth of voices and perspectives to generate ideas. Youıll be tapping into the strength of the medium by drawing on the benefits of increased participation.
Though it is possible to turn the sometimes superficial nature of real-time to your advantage, conversations can occasionally devolve beyond the level of superficiality and become irresponsible, even offensive. Sometimes in real-time exchanges, people send messages that actually shut down conversation. Just because you are not literally ³getting in someone's face² doesn't mean that you can't do the electronic equivalent in your writing. To avoid these unproductive confrontations, or at least to keep healthy conflict from escalating to the level of a flame war, remember that your words carry weight and meaning and that they will often reach a wide audience when you send them out electronically.
Electronic conversations are curious in that messages seem strangely disembodied from their speakers. Without being able to attach a face to a statement, we often get the feeling that the words we see have been produced anonymously or created by the computer rather than by a particular person. Weıve seen how this can help to increase participation in a discussion; however, it also raises some important concerns about responsibility and accountability. Although it might seem that an electronic, real-time discussion has fewer constraints than face-to-face interaction, in reality, these on-line conversations have a kind of permanence that spoken discussions lack. Because itıs easy to produce and archive transcripts, the messages that you send can be carefully reexamined at any time in the future, and your conversation itself becomes a text that others may read and study. Perhaps even more than in face-to-face conversations, then, you should be careful about the things you say and the way you say them.
Adapted from Connections: A Guide to On-line Writing