Having lived overseas, the high school I was accepted to back home in Toronto required I complete several research projects to fulfill certain provincial education standards and checks the summer before starting the 9th grade. Due to the task being somewhat daunting for an almost 9th grade student I was assigned numerous advisors in various fields; history, math, science, etc. I had one main advisor who I collaborated with determine my research topic and prepare for a 10-15 minute presentation at the end of the summer. Since I had yet to move to Toronto my relationship with my soon to be teachers began through the internet via email and specifically designed forums for the project. Despite some technical hang ups, I posted my questions on the forum for my teachers, emailed my thoughts, and read their responses. Over the course of the summer, I begin to develop what I thought was an understanding of the people I was communicating with.
However, after meeting some of my teachers a couple days before the big presentation I had an overwhelming sense of confusion and distance from people I had been talking to all summer. Suddenly it felt as if the summer had just started and my questions seemed awkward, and it was weird talking to these teachers. What happened in the shift from online to the real world?
My experience seems to reflect what Ramirez and Wang hypothesized and found consistent with their study that when moving from long-term computer mediated communications (CMC) to face to face (FtF) there will be additional social information evaluated negatively and uncertainty provoking rendering the switch overall negative. It seemed as if the knowledge I thought I know about my teachers was naïve, incomplete, and inadequate. As a result, when real life filled in the gaps, there was confusion and somewhat of a withdrawal.
The hyper personal model could help to explain what had happened. During my time communicating through CMC, all I knew of my teachers were their responses to my questions, I did not even have photographs of who was teaching me. As teachers are expected to be, their responses were polite and helpful. Due to lack of conflicting information, the over attribution process develops. They were polite and helpful so they must be really polite and helpful. This was reinforced throughout the summer, but when I met them in real life their politeness seemed stiff, formal and the help; just enough to get by. I was a simple 9th grader, among many others taking up valuable summer time, so it seemed. The extra visual information tempered my reactions. In addition to hyper personal another effect could have also played a part. In a sense, I was self-centered. Emails were directed to me. I was having real conversations with my teachers. In reality I was student number twenty whatever out of thirty whatever. After meeting in real life, it was clear that the teachers’ priorities were elsewhere and understandably so.
As it stands, my experience seems to lend support to the hypothesis of Ramirez and Wang, after a relatively long online relationship, moving offline has an overall negative effect on the relationship.
2 comments:
Interesting post and analysis. I wonder if perhaps SIDE could be applied to your experience. Taking the perspective that you and your advisers were in the same in-group online, SIDE would predict that the modality switch would have a negative outcome, consistent with your experience. It would probably make more sense though to presume the opposite; that online, they as teachers were in a separate social category. SIDE would thus predict a positive outcome for a face-to-face meeting, which definitely did not seem to be the case for you.
I liked your explanation of the relationship and analysis of your experience with modality switching. Hyperpersonal model certainly does seem applicable in your experience. I wonder if perhaps that behavioral confirmation also reinforced your belief your teachers were polite and helpful. They may have sensed that was your perception, and wrote their emails in such a way to emphasize those qualities. The asychronous nature of your communication with your teachers may have exacerbated your initial perception because they had time to tailor their messages, where as in FtF they could not delay dealing with your questions till a more convenient time when they could dedicate themselves to it.
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