For adult students, going to school is a challenge measured in moments juggled. These students choose to go to school, to make their lives better, to prepare themselves for all the changes. For them, the sacrifice of time becomes the challenge. Computer conferencing offers a classroom removed from a specific meeting time and a classroom meeting place. Its appeal is a class anywhere anytime.
Necessary comes from the Latin word, necessaruis, which means unavoidable or inevitable (Webster's, 1979, p. 1200). Would students take the courses if they did not feel that they were unavoidable in their set of circumstances? Are there other imaginative ways that classes can be arranged that leave them thinking they have choices? Are computer classrooms the inevitable future? If they are inevitable, is there a way to design them that they aren’t “evil?” Evil comes from the Anglo-Saxon word, yfel, having bad moral qualities, sinful, bad. It also means causing pain or trouble; harmful; injurious (Webster's, 1979, p. 634). Clearly, the students I interviewed in a previous study did not prefer computer conferencing. Their personal circumstances dictated its use. For a middle-aged single mother:
I think of computer conferencing as a necessary evil…as something you’ve got to do. It’s not something fun. It's not something interactive. It's just a tool. It is an impersonal tool. I use it and that’s it…. It's funny that now we are so computer literate we are dying to meet the person. I just want to meet the person. I feel like I need that. (Mary, 1997)It is the impersonal nature of the computer conference that makes it a necessary evil. While the benefits of flexibility in terms of time and place are appreciated by students, they miss the interaction—the connection with the instructor and other students. Is it possible to make this environment personal? Is the quality of “impersonal” because of the computer? Is it the nature of the relationship between human and machine? Can a computer classroom feel personal?
We did the introduction [of ourselves] at the very beginning, but basically that was for him because I didn’t read anybody else’s. I guess I am a people person, but I had five classes that I went to. This was just a class I liked because I set my own time, my schedule. I didn’t get to know any of the other students. I mean, I went to the discussion room [on the computer] every Tuesday and Thursday just because. Even if I didn’t have a question, I wanted to make sure he [the instructor] wasn’t going to tell us to do something, but very few people took advantage of that. (Ann, 1997)How do students get to know one another? Does it require face-to-face interaction? Can a matrix be created on the computer that enables the formation of relationships? Is it tied to a matrix that is socially created?