Venus and Mars

One thing I found interesting last week was the idea that gender could play a role in how people interact in a discussion board. According to the article by Victor Savicki and Merle Kelley, Computer Mediated Communication: Gender and Group Composition, in CyberPsychology & Behavior from October 1, 2000 there are gender differences in how men and women generally respond in an online forum.

Savicki and Kelley's finding suggest that males tend to use "authoritative language (e.g. strong assertions), male language features (e.g. absolute adverbials), and negative socioemotional discourse (e.g. disagreement, challenging utterances)".

Females, on the other hand, will often communicate in "attenuated language (e.g. personal opinion, qualifiers), female language features (e.g. intensifiers, self-disclosure), and positive socioemotional discourse (e.g. agreement, requests opinions)".

Trying to get females and males working together cooperatively can be difficult in the best of elementary and middle school classrooms, but trying to do it online without nonverbal and verbal cues make it even a greater challenge. Encouraging the males in the group to support their assertions with reasons and to have females try to refrain from sharing personal opinions during the course is one way I could use this information.

Regardless, it was an interesting thought.