Linnda,
As other people have noted, there doesn't seem to be too much in the way
of an organised body of research on this area as yet - or at least not
from the kind of perspective you outline. As one contribution, however, I
have recently been involved in editing a special issue of the Journal of
Computer Assisted Learning on Computer Mediated Communication in Higher
Education, which will appear in December. This consists of a collection
of papers by researchers in the UK and Italy reporting on a varied set of
implementations of on-line communications resources in instructional
contexts. One dominant theme of the papers is the influence of
pre-existing relationships and patterns of activity on usage of these
resources. Overall, I guess the collection is more about constraints than
potentialities, but you may find it of interest. The abstracts of the
papers and an introductory editorial can viewed on-line at the JCAL web
site (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/ktru/jcaljrnl.htm).
Andy Tolmie
Dept of Psychology
University of Strathclyde
Glasgow
chhs17 who-is-at strath.ac.uk