| September 1996 | http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1996/sep/goldbar4.html |
Barriers to Getting Educators Online, by
Denise Ethier and Jennifer Gold
Barriers to Building Community: Recruiting the "Right" People
Part of recruiting the "right" people--those who have the most potential to contribute and benefit from CMC--is partly based on chance. Although NCIP has strategies for reaching the right audience, we are often befuddled when it comes to explaining why a potentially "perfect" person does not log on. In some cases, people may go so far as to inform others about NCIPnet, but never follow through themselves. Others, who may not have appeared right to us (due to either role or position) surprise us by being the most active participants. Therefore, in addition to the more concrete barriers of access, time, or inadequate training, an individual's lack of enthusiasm or other attitudes toward the medium may be a barrier to making use of CMC.
Recruitment is further complicated by trying to correctly determine
what people want. Although we often believe that we understand the kinds
of resources and conversations people are interested in most, we are
sometimes
surprised when people's choices are different than our own. A topic we
might have felt was going nowhere could all of a sudden be the hot topic
of the week! Indeed, Nancy Baym agrees in her article entitled, "The
Emergence of Computer-Mediated Communication" when she writes, "Rather
than seeing participants in CMC as operating in ways dictated by the
available resources
of rules, appropriation implies that participants pick and choose from
what is available, at times using things in unexpected ways, at times not
using some of the possibilities" (Baym, 1995).
| Contents | Archive | Sponsors | Studies | Contact |
|---|