should definitely discuss issues you feel important but are not included in the
questions.
Choice I for those of us who are interested in CMC and education
1. Have you experienced distance education or taken online course before? If so,
could you describe some favorable or unfavorable experiences associated with
distance education in general or an online course in particular?
If this is your first online course or first distance education experience, please
discuss what have you heard about or expected for distance education. And then
you can compare what you have heard or expected with what has happened so far
in this course.
2. You have taken this online course for two months now. You have probably also
taken in–person courses. Please compare online courses with in–person courses in
classrooms. Do some review and research on the features of online courses and
then discuss these questions: Are there features of online courses you like better?
Are there features of in–person classrooms you like better? Please describe those
features with concrete examples. Please do some research for your analysis of the
online experiences.
3. Please do research (you need at least two references) for these two questions:
What skills do you think learners need to have for distance education? What are
some effective ways for online learning to fulfill its informational and interactional
functions? Please apply the research to yourself and see if you have become a
skilled and effective online learner.
OR
Choice II for those of us who are interested in CMC and business/commerce
Please do some reading about business built upon CMC. This article titled “Baby,
You Can Drive My Car” by Joel Stein http://time.com/3687305/testing–the–
sharing–economy is a good start. The print version is published in Time Vol.185,
No.4 on February 9, 2015, pp. 31 – 40. As Stein mentions, “To get here, we
needed EBay PayPal and Amazon, which made it safe to do business on the web.”
(p. 34) Reviewing his own business experiences, Stein explains, “In the interest of
eliminating bureaucracy, overhead, middlemen and waste, I turned myself into a
corporation.” (p.35) You may also read “Clothing Retailers Learn How to Mix
Brick and Click” by Austen Hufford and Cara Lombardo in Wall Street Journal
(August 24, 2018 Thursday, B3).
1. Do you think CMC has provided platforms for new types of business and new
ways of conducting of business? Do you think the e–business is shaping a new
relationship between owners and customers and a new attitude among people in
general? In which ways CMC has made the prosperity of this kind of business
possible? In which ways they are different from the established ways of running
the same business?
You may do some research and then review a couple of successful (or
unsuccessful) cases. You may also review your use of e–business during the
pandemic, share your stories, and do some research to find out the importance and
problems of e–business, especially during the stay–at–home period. Please support
your points with specific examples or cases. What have you learned from these
cases for your own future business practices?
2. Individuals create social media content in exchange for compensation is referred
to as influencer advertising Voorveld (2019). “In 2019, the U.S. spend on
influencer advertising increased by 70.4% over the prior year, and influencer spend
is predicted to increase in 2020 from 32.4% to $3.4 billion – the highest percentage
growth out of all online advertising categories (Oster 2020 as cited in Campbell
and Rosengren 2020). If you have experiences with influencer advertising (e.g.,
being compensated for giving good reviews) please share and review your own
experiences. If not, you may want to do some research on this new trend of social
media advertising and share your views.
3. Please observe some e–mail commercials or social media commercials (“pop–
ups”). In which ways do you think those commercials are effective or ineffective in
communication? Make sure you describe the features of some of the commercials
you have chosen to analyze. Please do some research for this question: what are
some guidelines or successful tips for advertising online? When you use CMC to
advertise for your products or service in the future, what would you do and why?