Blog #4

Artiz, J. (2010). Cognitive organization and identity maintenance in multicultural teams. Journal of Business Communication 47(1) 20-41.

When teaching writing courses, we often assume that we need to focus on written communication only while we design an assignment or course. However, when planning for a collaborative writing project, speaking, specifically meeting-talk, might be important to pay attention to especially at the beginning stages of a group writing project when ideas are considered and decisions are made about what direction the group should proceed. This issue becomes even more complex, when such projects take place in an online course.

While the talk of meetings in general has been observed in culturally homogenous groups, this article by Jolanta Artiz concentrates on culturally heterogeneous groups and observes that group members alter their conversational styles and strategies depending on the cultural makeup of the team. In this study, Artiz analyzes the discourse patterns of small teams made up of US-born and East-Asian-born English speakers. Her findings indicate that the US-born English speakers dominate discussions and even increase their conversational presence in groups where they are minorities. On the other hand, East Asian English speakers take even fewer turns when they are in the minority as to signal their different cultural background. Artiz points out that educators need to be aware of these trends and need to inform their students of such tendencies, so that they become more conscious of their speech patterns that can have a direct influence on group participation and on the outcome of the project.

How does this apply to an online course? Instructors who are convinced that certain phases of the group project can be more productive when approached through synchronous communication, might arrange videoconferencing or synchronous chat sessions for each group. If videoconferencing is used, rules of spoken discourse definitely apply. However, if groups engage in synchronous chat sessions, additional factors need to be taken into account. Markman (2009) highlights the differences between conversations and chats. She explains that while we perceive online chats as very similar to face-to-face conversations, the turn-taking structure of the conversation is completely ambiguous as each speaker’s turn appears in the order that the server receives the entry. In addition, no one can see a turn until it is complete. These qualities of online chat make it more difficult and require more turns and attempts on the side of several participants to start and end meetings or to change topic. To avoid such problems, and to make meetings more productive in chat sessions, Markman suggests that groups create an agenda for each meeting, which will serve as a shared organizing principle for all members. In addition, appointing a chair who calls meetings might be a good idea, as it works very well in corporate settings. However, the effectiveness a leader in the educational group setting to keep the group focused has not been established in this study.

What all writing instructors can take away from this article is that we cannot neglect the guiding principles of synchronous interaction, be it face-to-face conversation or text chat, because it has a significant effect on how successful collaborative group projects will be in our online classes.

References

Markman, K. (2009). So what shall we talk about? Openings and closings in shat based virtual meetings. Journal of Business Communication 46(1), 150-170.