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As information and communications technology (henceforth ICT) develops, com- puter mediated communication (henceforth CMC) has been experienced as fast in connectivity, rapid and secure in exchange of information, and easy and relaxed in engagement to interaction (Garner & Buckner, ; Wright & Webb, ; Stacks & Salwen, ). Irrespective of different modes of ICT and CMC (e.g., text-based or oral, synchronous or asynchronous), people have increasingly indulged in having daily contacts, business communication, and learning activities using CMC (Ziegler, ; AbuSeileek & Qatawneh, ).

3.3.1 Computer mediated communication (CMC)

Extensive studies of ICT influence on life have been carried out, although most often with a focus on communication coordination and learning effects in the disciplines of communication and education. For instance, Abrams () pointed out that CMC helped learners to interact and negotiate the learning content actively, pro- vided rich opportunities for them to recognise and adapt to diverse intellective and

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interactional patterns, and also developed their learning ability, linguistic knowledge, and communicative competence. AbuSeileek and Qatawneh () studied the Eng- lish language learners’ use of discourse functions in synchronous CMC (audio chat) and found that the question types and strategies were usually short, clear, and unam- biguous, and they took this as confirmation of the effectiveness of language use in CMC. Sins et al. () researched ICT effects on high school students’ performance in a collaborative modeling task and found that the collaboration results in FTF (face-to-face chat) and CMC (text chat) were equally good and the CMC group was more effective at reasoning and discussing than the FTF group. With a similar topic but a different context, Hatem, Kwan, and Miles () compared the effectiveness of CMC (video conferencing) collaboration in the construction industry and found that people collaborated in CMC as effectively as in FTF and sometimes even slightly more effectively. Most of these earlier research into CMC seems to focus on studying the effectiveness and the result of team (working or learning) collaboration. More or less, one can conclude that CMC collaboration is as effective and good as, and some- times more effective and better than, FTF.

3.3.2 Video-mediated communication (VMC)

One popular mode of CMC, video-mediated communication (henceforth VMC), with its high image resolution and voice quality, fast signal transmission and align- ment, and temporal (time) and spatial (logistics) effectiveness, is more commonly applied in various CMC activities, such as video conferencing and web video tutori- als. Besides numerous advantages of VMC, the notion of “social presence” or the lack of it in VMC has been highlighted since the ’s (Short, Williams, & Christie, ; cf. Anderson, ). Compared to FTF, the communication VMC’s channel is rela- tively narrow and media richness is comparatively low (Sins et al., ). VMC some- what restricts the exchange of auditory and visual communication cues, such as pros- ody and gesture, which normally help people to regulate interaction, perceive, ex- press, and comprehend information (Driskell & Radtke, ), and monitor feed- back from others (Straus, ).Even when VMC has good sound and image quality, there may be difficulties in grounding (cf. Anderson, ), because not all the sources of information available in FTF are transmitted. The explicit communicative coordination micro-feedback has often turned out to be unclear and infrequent (Paul, Seetharaman, Samarah, & Mykytyn, ; Friedman & Currall, ), even though it is very critical for communication understanding (McIntyre & Salas, ). Most of these earlier studies of VMC seem to focus on studying the interlocutors’ linguistic behaviours rather than the effectiveness or result of the interlocutors’ team collaboration, as different from the earlier research on other forms of CMC.

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3.3.3 Comparing to face-to-face communication (FTF)

Although Newlands, Anderson, and Mullin () have shown that people adapt to the communication media and adjust the way they collaborate in exchanging infor- mation and achieving mutual understanding, it is still found that certain forms and patterns of communication behaviours are different between VMC and FTF. For ex- ample, compared to face-to-face (henceforth FTF) communication, interlocutors in VMC have lower interdependency (Stone & Posey, ), lower cohesion and less conformity (Kiesler & Sproull, ), and more difficulties in achieving communi- cation goals, or have to work harder to achieve them (Whittaker, ). Interlocutors in VMC are more unaware of each other’s non-verbal communication behaviours (Stone & Posey, ), they often have more trouble understanding others’ responses (Kiesler & Sproull, ), and they are more likely to experience ambiguity and prob- lems in understanding (Shin, ). Communication technologies often lead to dif- ficulties in turn taking, and speakers in VMC are slower to detect and correct mis- understandings (Thompson & Coovert, ) and more constrained in achieving common ground and achieving understanding (Olson & Olson, ; Clark, ; Clark & Brennan, ). Most of these studies focus on investigating the communi- cative and interactive behaviours in VMC versus FTF, and most of these researchers seem to agree that the limited linguistic channels in VMC more likely result in mis- communication and understanding problems than in FTF.

However, a few researchers have found that mediating technology has little effect on interacting and understanding (e.g., Anderson, ). These studies often focus on investigating the outcome of team problem-solving collaboration in VMC versus FTF, which allow clear measurement of who knew, understood, and did what and also how and to what extent the problems were solved. For example, Anderson () analysed participants’ laboratory map task-solving interactions in FTF and VMC and found that VMC has little effect on achieving understanding between the participants and the content of the interactions. This makes VMC an interesting area in which to study understanding. Little research has been done on what understand- ing difficulties and problems are present in VMC and FTF interactions and how they are coped with in interaction. Understanding and understanding problems with richer empirical data from both FTF and VMC interactions will be investigated in Study  in this thesis.

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