The Development and Testing of a Tool for Analysis of Computer-Mediated Conferencing Transcripts

Background Interaction by means of computer-mediated communications (CMC) is widely discussed in the distance education literature (Abrami & Bures, 1996; Anand & Haughey, 1997; Bates, 1995; Dede, 1996; Jonassen, 1998; Maier, Barnett, Warner & Brunner, 1996; Nixon & Salmon, 1996). However, much of the literature is more arbitrarily prescriptive or merely anecdotal than empirical (Gunawardena, Lowe, & Anderson, 1997). It appeared that, despite several possible candidates, a notable barrier to more rigorous research was the lack of a recognized C M C analysis tool.