The Auspices Of The Behavior And Responsibilities Of Teachers Meeting Impact. Synchronous Online Meeting

Computer-mediated communication has received a great deal of attention lately in all fields, especially in education. It is adopted not only in the higher education, but also in the primary and secondary school in China. However, the bulk of research has focused on asynchronous environments (such as web-based bulletin boards, e-mail systems etc.). Synchronous communication, by contrast, despite its popularity, has received less research attention. Of particular interest is the manner in which the moderators manage the ebb and flow of the online onfenrences and how this affecs the participant engagement. This dissertation study attempts to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between teacher moderating and participant engagement.The primary data sourse for the study was 30 transcripts collected from 3 groups of project teachers over a whole term in a moderated synchronous online instruction in the distance collaborative learning projects. The study process was divided into three steps, including contextual analysis, content analysis and case characterization. The study used a mixed method design where the results of the quantitative analysis were used to select cases cases for qualitative analysis to better understand the prosess of the online conference. It also used the "conding- counting" method to reveal the manners and functions of the moderators. At last, a descriptive discourse analysis of the transcripts was adopted to unpack the moderating functions worked on the online conference.In summary, the very modertator made her conferences to be the most efficient and popular ones as she:· Planned by both ways, made the project teachers to be the leading actor and keeped her power,· Thought on the project teachers' feet, thought about what they need;· Made most use of the conference time by all ways, set up norms to improve the efficiency;· Moderated well on the very conferences by referring to moderating in other field;· Maked summaries and shared them with project teachers.