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An Introduction to Computer Conferencing: a Look at Software
Available in the Academic World
------------------------------------------------------------
Alex Cruz, M.S.
Associate Consultant
Center for Advanced Study American Airlines Decision Technologies
in Telecommunications 4200 American Blvd.
The Ohio State University Fort Worth, Texas 76155
Columbus, Ohio 43210
This paper is intended to be an introduction to some of the concepts of
computer conferencing as well as a guide to some of the existing
conferencing software today. Even though the number of commercial
users is increasing, the software described is mainly used in academic
environments. It should provide novice users with the necessary concepts
and leads to visualize the applications of computer conferencing in their
fields. An special emphasis is placed on interactive computer
conferencing.
What is Computer Conferencing?
------------------------------
The concept of computer conferencing is not new and lot of definitions
have been given. It refers to the idea of establishing some type of
communication with one or more people through a computer that is
presumably connected to a network of other computers. The most basic
way of computer conferencing can be two computers connected to each
other through a wire.
The sophistication of computer conferencing is directly related to the
amount of 'wire' used, the friendliness of the software used, the
geographic location of the parties involved, the requirements of the
information to be transmitted (simple documents, graphic files, etc) and
the nature of the conference:
Types of Computer Conferencing
------------------------------
Computer conferencing can be classified in many different ways but
mainly two different variables define the types of computer conferencing
best: the size of the audience and the amount of time involved in the
question-response interval.
According to the first variable, there are three different types of computer
conferencing:
- one-to-one: one person interacts in a direct way with another.
- one-to-many: one person establishes communications with more than
one person at a time.
- many-to-many: many people are able to interact with many others
According the second variable, there are two types of conferencing:
- non-interactive: the period of time between the initial contact and
the response can vary from a few seconds to many weeks.
- interactive: the conference occurs 'live'; participants are able to
communicate to each other directly at a particular time resulting in no
delay between the initial contact and the response.
Most people involved in the academic and research fields have already
experimented with some combinations of these different types of
computer conferencing: the most basic and oldest way of computer
conferencing is the one-to-one non-interactive kind: electronic mail.
Using the concept of electronic mail, mailing lists were born: the same
message body was to be sent to many people; this refers to the one-to-
many non-interactive conferencing. Thousands of private and public
mailing lists exist today over hundredths of computer networks; this is
not surprising since most computer systems that have electonic mail
software allow distribution lists that can have many electronic mail
addresses.
The last type of non-interactive conferencing refers to the many-to-many
concept: any person belonging to a large group of users can 'post' a
message or article and many people can reply to that message, each of
the replies being able to be read by all the users. Thousands of electronic
bulletin board systems utilize this idea for discussions of different topics.
The massive use of interactive computer conferencing is more recent and
its applications are starting to flourish as the academic community
increases its involvement with such systems. One-to-one software is
very common and included in most multi-user operating system packages
such as Unix, VMS, CMS. Even one-to-one interactive computer
conferencing can be broken down in two different types:
+ line driven: in line driven environments, one user sends a
single short message to another user's address in the system.
+ screen driven: two users establish a communi cation session
where typically, the screen is divided in two halves, and each other can
'talk' by simply typing the desired text. The other party receives the
text as it is being typed or after the return key has been pressed,
depending on the hardware/software being used.
One-to-many interactive computer conferencing attracts the idea of
'public speech' or 'lecturing' in a computer environment. Even though
this concept has yet not been fully explored, it would naturally be
included as part of many-to-many interactive because of software
limitations: most many-to-many conferencing software have or can
implement the one-to-many feature (for example, as a listen-only user).
Perhaps one of the most exciting types of conferencing nowadays is
many-to-many interactive communications via a computer. Thanks to
the already existing commercial and academic computer networks, many
people have been introduced to the concept of across-the-world
interactive communications. Some examples will be provided later in
this paper.
This type of software allows a user to interact with many users at the
same time and discuss different types of issues and exchange research
and academic problems and solutions. Due to the cultural and
geographical diversity of the users of some of these systems, many
different types of useful feedback is provided when asked for.
How is computer conferencing used at the university level today?
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Non-interactive computer conferencing has been used extensively at just
about every college and university. Most higher education institutions
have a connection to BITNET and/or the Internet. The main applications
of these connections are electronic mail, file transferring and remote
login. Both BITNET and Internet connected computers have bulletin
board style software available: BITNET list servers and USENET
newsgroups are the main ones; USENET is indeed a network of its own
that sitson top of many other Internet based networks.
Academically, teachers are using electronic mail and mailing lists to get
in touch with their students on class matters and university administrators
to provide faculty and students with information related to university life
and courses. Intelligent 'fuzzy' electronic mailers [IRCCAPRIL90]
combined with other conferencing services such as interest groups lists or
newsgroups help both teachers and students get answers and suggestions to
their subjects of research as well as find answers to questions that have
already been asked. Today, it is common for a well 'networked' researcher
to search for the answer of a problem first, by asking others in a specific
topic discussion group and then apply the results to the problem if a
feasible answer is found. These and other applications reveal an extense
use of non-interactive computer conferencing in academics.
On the other hand, interactive computer conferencing is starting to
become more and more popular at the university level: BITNET users
are able to contact any user in the BITNET network by using a simple
command to issue line messages. The power of Unix software/hardware
along with the already existing Internet based networks allow academic
users to establish one-to-one screen based communication sessions by
also issuing a simple command. At the moment, limited academic
research is being conducted on the applications of interactive computer
conferencing to teaching and researching, though it is being widely used
for electronic meetings among researchers to discuss aspects of the
research as well as to collaborate in projects remotely.
Software Examples for Each Category
-----------------------------------
(The following is a small guide providing some examples of software and
hardware that is able to execute the different types of computer
conferencing as described above)
Non-interactive computer conferencing is already widely in use but the
outreach of a single computer connection (BITNET or Internet based) is
not well known yet:
+ one-to-one: electronic mail. The number of companies,
institutions and foreign countries that now are reachable through already
existing computer networks has increased enourmously in the last few
years. Companies and computer services such as Compuserve, MCI
(MCIMail), AT&T (AT&T Mail), GEnie, the National Public Telecomputing
Network, Applelink, Byte Information eXchange, Connect Professional
Information Network, Fidonet, GeoNet Mailbox Systems, NASAMail, PeaceNet,
the Space Physics Analysis Network, Telenet's commercial electronic mail
service and many regional networks are all already onnected to the
Internet or other networks reachable from the Internet and therefore
can reached by BITNET [INMG90]. For a guide on how to reach each
network from your system, get the Inter-Network Mail Guide by John Chew,
by anonymously FTPing into ra.msstate.edu (see Appendix A) and obtaining
the file: /pub/docs/internetwork.
For a more complete description of all the possible networks that can be
reach, refer to "!%@:: A Directory of Electronic Mail Addressing and
Networks" by Donnalyn Frey and Rick Adams, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
+ one-to-many: this type of computer conferencing normally
comes as mailing lists or moderated newsgroups. If you wish to get
introduced to the concepts of list servers, send a one line message to
LISTSERV @BITNIC.BITNET with the content: 'HELP'. Only an e-mail
connection is needed to subscribe to most discussion lists.
+ many-to-many: USENET moderated and unmoderated
newsgroups are more common on Unix and Internet connected machines.
Subjects of the newsgroups range in both intellectual as well as
recreational value. There is a very strong molecular biology community
that uses the USENET software and network to exchange ideas and
discuss research. Just about any type of computer software and hardware
has its own newsgroup as well as some other science topics. On the
recreational side, sport event schedules from soccer to biking are
regularly posted; also TV, music, humor, religion and foreign cultures
have their newsgroups. If you do not have access to a USENET news
feed, please contact your system administrator.
Interactive conferencing is easily reachable at the one-to-one level
because the simplicity of the software is not comparable to that of many-
to-many conferencing software. Also, it must be noticed that the type
of software described here can only be found in large multi-user systems:
local area networked personal computers normally already have software
that enables some computer conferencing.
+ one-to-one:
o Unix (Hewlett Packard, MIPS, DEC, AT&T, Sun, Next manufacture
hardware for the Unix Operating System):
Most versions of the Unix operating system support the 'talk'
command which enables the user to establish an initial user to user
session where everything that one user types appears in the screen of the
other user and viceversa until an escape key sequence is pressed. A
typical command line could look like:
talk amiller
to talk to user amiller in the presently used system, or
talk amiller@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
if the Unix system being used is other than magnus.acs.etc. Adding other
users to the initial one-to-one conversation is not possible.
In addition to the 'talk' command, most Unix systems also support the
'finger' command which allows a user to get a list of users at a remote
machine:
finger @mercurio.dm.unirm1.it
will return a list of current users in a Sun workstation used in the
department of Mathematics at the University of Rome, Italy. These two
commands compliment each other when a user is trying to find a particular
remote user and talk to him/her.
o VMS (Digital Equipment Corporation Vax machines...):
The PHONE command behaves in a very similar way to the 'talk'
command in UNIX. The PHONE command does allow for more than one user
at a time.
o CMS (BITNET based machines, IBM mainframes..):
The TELL command in this operating system allows the user to
send a single short message to another user currently logged on to any
BITNET computer:
tell CRUZ at OHSTVMB Hello, Alex how are you?
would send a short message to user CRUZ in BITNET node OHSTMVB.
All three commands in all three operating systems are standard. Contact
your local system administrator if not present in your machine.
+ many-to-many:
(Due to the diversity of interactive computer conferencing, only
three systems will be touched and given sources to)
o Bitnet Relay Chat: this software is available mainly for
BITNET based machines. It provides the use with a friendly interface to
communicate with other BITNET users. Some of the features of this
software include: switching between users/screens via PF-keys, disk
message logging, disconnected answering machine services; it is suitable
for any type of terminal from 1200 Baud PC to local 3270 terminals. It is
maintained by Eric Thomas (ERIC@SEARN.BITNET) [CHAT90].
o Internet Relay Chat: It is mainly a Unix based program that
enables machines from all over the world connected to both Internet and
BITNET based computers to establish a 'chat' connection and set one-to-
one, one-to-many and many-to-many sessions. It provides many different
features such as private, moderated, invite-only, secret channels, group
and private messaging, multiple nicknames, notification of user presence,
user list by server, channel and other properties, etc. To access IRC on a
trial basis from an Internet connected computer, type 'telnet
bradenville.andrew.cmu.edu' and provide the necessary nickname and
screen emulation information. Issue the command '/HELP' to get started,
'/WHO *' to see the current users (as an average 200+ from over 18
countries around the world) or '/LIST' to see a list of current users.
The software to run IRC is free of charge but copyright guidelines are to
be met. This is where it can obtained:
OS Site Directory/File
---- ----------------------- --------------------
Unix freebie.engin.umich.edu pub/irc/clients/UNIX
VMS freebie.engin.umich.edu pub/irc/clients/VMS
VM freebie.engin.umich.edu pub/irc/clients/VM
OS - Operating System
Site - Site to FTP to (see appendix A)
Directory/File - Filename and directory
o International Citizen's Band: this is a similar program to IRC.
It contains most of the same features but its architecture and logic for
server-client connections differs from that of IRC's. The software can be
obtained through anonymous FTP at athos.rutgers.edu, file /pub/icb-
client.tar.z; this software will only execute in Unix based machines.
Conclusion
----------
Computer Conferencing is another necessary tool for today's computer
aided research and instruction. It has all the embedded advantages that
other already used electronic media enjoy: easiness of processing, easy
data storage, quick detailed responses, easier to find the desired recipient,
speed and reliability of document/message transmission, document safety
and security, etc [CRUZ90].
There are also other advantages that are due to the character of this type
of communications: the store-and-forward nature of computer conferencing
gives the participants a response time period that is not possible in more
traditional ways of face-to-face or telephone communications [STEVENS86].
Flexibility so that any researcher with a workstation and a network
connectionmust is ableto join a discussion session; facility to search the
network for existing conferences;multiple communication channels; these
and other features are needed for collaboration during the process of
refining a theory or analysis of experimental data [SMARR90]. Interactive
computer conferencing already offers these features.
Computer conferencing is a growing field and many applications are
already surfacing in the areas of project coordination, sales management,
customer service, online marketplaces, interactive journalism, distributed
education and organization & community building.
The academic world is just a step away from fully taking advantage of
all the capabilities of Computer Conferencing.
Appendix A
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The TCP/IP file transfer protocol is called File Transfer Protocol (FTP).
FTP enables a user of a given network to remote access and then locally
transfer files existing in another computer host of that same network.
Many computer hosts allow for anonymous FTP, whereby a user can
obtain files form a remote host [QUARTERMAN88].
The FTP software is available in most Unix and VMS based systems.
Some IBM mainframes support FTP file transferring but with a lot of
limitations. In order to access the software, just type 'ftp host.name'
where host name is the archive you want to access: 'ftp ra.msstate.edu'
will access the machine 'ra' at the Mississippi State University archives.
When prompted for a USERNAME: respond with the word 'anonymous' and when
prompted for a password respond with your electronic mail address. Once
the connection is successfully established, the user may retrieve any of
the files available in the authorized directories. To retrieve the
Inter-Network Mail Guide, the user would type :
cd pub (to change to 'public' directory)
cd docs (to change to 'documents' directory)
get internetwork
(to get file transmitted from the remote computer to the current
directory of the user that is doing the FTP connection)
Exiting the program can be resolved by typing 'exit' or 'quit' at the FTP
prompt.
References
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[CHAT90] Program Filelist for Net Server at the BITNET Network
Information Center. Direct electronic retrieval, July 1991, page 3.
[CRUZ90] Alex Cruz, "An Evaluation of a State Wide Computer
Network for Small and Medium Size Industries in the State of Ohio",
June 1990, Master's Thesis, The Ohio State University, pages 30-41.
[INMG90] John J. Chew, "Inter-Network Mail Guide", June 1990, Page 2-3.
[IRCCAPRIL90] "Fuzzy Mail", "WHO-IS" Instructional Research Computer
Center Newsletter, The Ohio State University, April 1990, page 7.
[QUARTERMAN88] John S. Quarterman, "The Matrix: Computer Networks and
Conferencing Systems Worldwide", 1990, Digital Press, pages 11-13, 125-126.
[SMARR90] Larry Smarr, Charles Catlett, "Life After Internet: Making
Room for New Applications",November 1990, Symposium of the Programs on
Science, Technology, and Public Policy and Strategic Computing and
Telecommunications in the Public Sector, John F. Kennedy School of
Government, Harvard University.
[STEVENS86] Chandler H. Stevens, "Electronic Organization & Expert
Networks: Beyond Electronic Mail and Computer Conferencing", May
1986, Sloan WP#1794-86, Sloan School of Management, Massachusets
Institute of Technology, pages 1-9.