Abstract
This article explores the practice of videoconferencing and draws on interaction in class based on ethnographic ieldwork carried out at local learning centres in Sweden. The study is based on participant observations focusing on communication and the role of the teacher in a videoconferencing class. The results of the study shed light on different functions of the teachers' questions such as rhetorical, expanding and provocative. Further, talk in videoconferencing lacks systems of proper back-channel cues and communication often fails as a result of low feedback. The study also shows that there is a lack of balance in the distribution of utterances between the teacher and the students and that interaction is often one-way. The teacher becomes an actor in class reacting against low feedback. Questions and statements posed by the teacher are designed to break through the barriers of mediating technology. Also interaction patterns are impaired by misunderstandings and the practice is described as a learning space imbued with the rationale of communication technology.
Highlights
In recent years, videoconferencing has been established in the context of local learning centres in Sweden to promote adult and distance education in rural districts
The videoconference classroom is a socio-technical environment in which communications technology plays a significant role and is an inseparable part of practice
The local learning centres take on an ‘intermediary’ function as brokers of education in the region (Roos, Dahlöf & Baumgarten, 2000; Roos, 2001; Lögdlund, 2008) distributing undergraduate studies, municipal adult education and inservice training provided by university colleges or other educational arrangers situated at a distance
Summary
Goffman (1959) explores the identity of the individual and the significance of group behaviour to evaluate the meaning of encounters in everyday life. The physical distance between students and the teacher in remote settings is one topic in studies carried out in the field of videoconferencing. McHenry and Bozik (1995) as well as Unander (1999) report little or no interaction in videoconferencing classes due to students feeling distant from the teacher. It seems as if physical and psychological distance poses potential problems for effective distance learning (Wolcott, 1996) and ‘transactional distance’ may lead to. This study takes the perspective of the teacher and seeks to describe how participants talk in videoconferencing classrooms in terms of verbal and non-verbal communication
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