Abstract

VIVAS, Jorge Ricardo; TERRONI, Noemí  and  RICCI, Lila. Channel communication restrictions psychosociological effects in educational envioronments. Psicol. esc. educ. [online]. 2002, vol.6, n.1, pp. 21-29. ISSN 1413-8557.

The growing interest on the open and distance education mediated by new technologies is one of the most remarkable phenomenon in educational field. Although the gain as regards accessibility of the actors is undeniable when they are free of time and space limitations in electronic mediated interaction, the emergent consequences of the social presence restrictions are not so well known. This paper suggested that the access and the distribution of the actor’s participation are affected as a product of intrinsic properties of the communication media. There are reported results of an observation of student groups working face to face and computer mediated in a making decision task called Moon Survival. Significant differences in the level of activity, participation and communication network cohesion, for each medium, were established by the use of social network analysis.The distribution of the agents’ participation in computer mediated communication reveals that this medium increases and expands the differences in the use of the resources by the different actors who are involved in the task.

Keywords : Social presence; Participation; Computer mediated communication.