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? ---------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ---------- 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 ---------- [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.