Principles and Guidelines for Task Design in CMC Learning

Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to describe principles and guidelines that are to serve course designers and materials developers as a guide to task design in computer-mediated communication (CMC) learning environments. Drawing on cognitive and sociocultural perspectives, it argues that in task design it is imperative to bring into alignment a range of factors, such as the linguistic and cognitive complexity of the content, goals and outcome, processing conditions, and number of participants, in order to maximize targeted outcomes. The chapter is divided into three sections: First, a brief overview of theoretical perspectives and different design variables is provided. Second, different guidelines that are based on current research on CMC task effects are discussed. Last, the chapter concludes in the appendix with the description of rationales and procedures for 11 different task configurations that are to serve as prototypes and illustrate how task effects can be maximized in CMC-based online language learning.