LEARNING MODULE IN ENG 110 (COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION)

Agusan del Sur State College of Agriculture and Technology MODULE 2 ▪ Page 1 of 8
Main Campus, Bunawan Agusan del Sur

INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Computer Mediated Communication, a self-instructional learning module.
This module is designed to take you through the study of the History and Development of
Computer mediated communication. By the end of this lesson, you will be able to identify
understand the origins and the development of CMC throughout history.
This learning module allows you to learn in your own space and pace. So, relax and
just enjoy doing the tasks! To get the most out of this module, here are a few reminders:
 Kindly take your time in reading the topic.
 Write down notes for clarification. You may discuss these points with your instructor
through Messenger and other online platforms.
 Accomplish and answer all tasks. The activities are designed to enhance your
understanding of the ideas and concepts being discussed. The tasks at the end of
each module will give you an idea how well you understand the lessons. Review the
lessons if necessary, until you have achieved a sufficient level of proficiency.
 Do not write anything on any part of this module. Write the answers to the tasks in
a notebook required by your instructor. This shall be part of your formative and
summative evaluations.
OVERVIEW
This learning module aims to enhance your understanding in the historical context of
communication technologies and technologies like the telephone and telegraph. We will then
describe the internet and the web; identify the development of interactive technologies on
the internet which concern of computer mediated communication. We will end the discussion
by recognizing how quickly the field covered by CMC is changing.
The module follows the phases of 5Es Instructional Model, namely Engage, Explore,
Explain, Elaborate and Evaluate. Each lesson begins with the objectives and follows the five
(5) parts vis-a-vis the phases of 5Es Instructional Model.
The GET READY part is the OBJECTIVES to be achieved in each module. This part
states the expectation of the module in line with what you should know, understand or
perform. The LET’S START section which is the ENGAGE phase starts the process of
understanding the topic. This will serve as a drill. In the LET’S DISCOVER and the EXPLORE
phase of the lesson, it relates to your common base of experience or prior knowledge like
hands-on or minds-on tasks. LET’S LEARN corresponds to the EXPLAIN phase. This will allow
you to explain the concepts you have been exploring as you will be provided with explanations
about the topic. This part serves as the discussion. In LET’S EXAMINE phase, you will practice
what you have learned since this is the ELABORATE phase. You will engage in different
formative tasks. LET’S EVALUATE or the EVALUATE phase encourages you to assess your
understanding and abilities on the topic. This will serve as a summative assessment in
understanding the target concept or skill.
This module contains features that you need to understand as you undertake each
task. There are activities that necessitate the presence of Internet to get you to online works.
This is done to tract your progress and status with regards the module.
The modes of delivery will be in the form of tutorials and self-directed study. You are
encouraged to visit the instructor concerned for assistance during office hours. If the office
hours do not meet your schedule, notify the instructor through Facebook or Messenger. These
platforms will be used as a communication tool and information portal for you to access
module materials, project briefs, assignments and announcements.
It is hoped that this module will achieve its aim of producing alternative learning
experience on the target concepts necessary to the development of literary abilities to
effectively meet the demands of education amidst a world pandemic crisis.

-The Author

CHRISTIAN M. CONCHA
Instructor, AB English Language
Material Developer, Copyright © 2022
LEARNING MODULE IN ENG 110 (COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION)
Agusan del Sur State College of Agriculture and Technology MODULE 2 ▪ Page 2 of 8
Main Campus, Bunawan Agusan del Sur

MODULE 2
THE ORIGINS & DEVELOPMENT OF COMPUTER-
MEDIATED COMMUNICATIONS

Welcome again to this Learning Module on Computer - Mediated Communication. This

lesson will enable you to understand the origins and development of computer mediated
communication throughout history.

in Intended Learning Outcome

At the end of this lesson, you are expected to:
1. Revisit the antiquity of CMC.
2. Elucidate the development of CMC throughout history

ENGAGE
Historically speaking, major developments in technology have found communication
being mediated in a number of revolutionary new ways. This is why, in trying to understand
CMC and new communication technologies, it’s really helpful to have a sense of their historical
antecedents.
This learning module attempts to guide you through the history and development of
CMC. However, there are still tasks you need to accomplish before digging in into the lesson.

Learning Task 1

List some communication technologies during the late 90’s and present used by
people.

Late 90’s CMC Technologies Present CMC Technologies

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_________________________________ _________________________________

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_________________________________ _________________________________

__________________________________ __________________________________

CHRISTIAN M. CONCHA
Instructor, AB English Language
Material Developer, Copyright © 2022
LEARNING MODULE IN ENG 110 (COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION)
Agusan del Sur State College of Agriculture and Technology MODULE 2 ▪ Page 3 of 8
Main Campus, Bunawan Agusan del Sur

EXPLORE

As you go through the lesson in this module, you will be able to understand how CMC
as communication has grown to be one of the most important aspects of daily life.
Thinking more specifically about communication technologies, let us test your
reasoning power. In your activity notebook, answer the following questions.

Learning Task 2

Close your eyes for a while and imagine a world and your daily life without the Internet.
What do you see? Write it on the space below.

Life without the technology is…

_____________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________
_

Answer these:

1. Are you an avid user of Internet? What do you use it for?

______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________

2. How your life has been transformed through the use of CMC?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________

Answer this question:

If these words are put together, what definition may be forwarded?

_______________________________________________________________________
CHRISTIAN M. CONCHA
Instructor, AB English Language
_______________________________________________________________________
Material Developer, Copyright © 2022
_______________________________________________________________________
LEARNING MODULE IN ENG 110 (COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION)
Agusan del Sur State College of Agriculture and Technology MODULE 2 ▪ Page 4 of 8
Main Campus, Bunawan Agusan del Sur

EXPLAIN

Welcome to the origins, history and development of computer mediated

communication!
Computer Mediated Communication is part and parcel of the modern daily life, but it
actually has quite a long history. Let's take a whistle-stop tour of the evolution of Computer
Mediated Communication technologies.

THE HISTORY
of computer mediated
communication
The Beginning: Circa 500 BC to 1945

The human web has been around since the

beginning of time. People have always had some form
of communication across great distances, since
antiquity through everything from smoke signals to the
written word.

City webs developed over 5,000 years ago,

allowing people to stay in contact with a larger of
citizens of the same metropolitan areas. These people
could visit and communicate with other communities,
usually by the transportation of animal. Rivers and
ships also played a key role in the network system that
Image 1: Primitive Communication
was evolving. (Dijk, 2012)
The better use of transportation and
communication connected people even more so,
some 2000 years ago. In the period of the third
human web, empires were born, for example China
and Rome. These civilizations were connected with so
many, it made them powerful and rich. Researchers
believed that the first alphabetical systems of writing
evolved in this period among different cultures. (Dijk,
2012)
Image 2: Writing System

This changed very little until the advent of the

telegraph in 1792.
This technology finally offered a "faster than
horse" method of communication over long distances
and was revolutionary at the time. There were, of
course, other methods of communications aside from
letter-writing, but their utility was limited to line of sight.
Image 3: Telegraph

CHRISTIAN M. CONCHA
Instructor, AB English Language
Material Developer, Copyright © 2022
LEARNING MODULE IN ENG 110 (COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION)
Agusan del Sur State College of Agriculture and Technology MODULE 2 ▪ Page 5 of 8
Main Campus, Bunawan Agusan del Sur

1865 saw the development of pneumatic post, which

you might still see in banks and supermarkets. This allowed
for an even greater speed of communication - but over a
much shorter distance. Then, when the telephone and radio
hit the scene in the 1800s everything changed.
With their ability to provide, more or less, instant
communication, the world would never go back. They both
remain very important methods of media to this very day.
The technological explosion in computing after the
Image 4: Telephone
1940s paved the way for the social media world we see
today.

1969 First Email Message Sent

•The U.S Department of Defense implemented ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects).
This network connected many computers for the purpose of communication which then
grew into the Internet. The first email message was sent on October 29, 1969, beginning a
new form of communication that would quickly become essential in day-to-day life.

1978 Bulletin Board Systems (BBS)

•The Bulletin Board System is essentially a computer server running software that allows
users to perform functions such as uploading and downloading data, reading news and
other information, and communicating with others via mail and public message boards.
The first public dial-up BBS was developed by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, which
officially went online on February 16, 1978.

1980 Chat Rooms

•In 1980, CompuServe release its own take on the “chat” concept, that allowed over
123,000 people to sign on nightly. CompuServe chatrooms were accessed by lengthy dial-
up modems, and contained “channels” in which people would subscribe. Chat room users
never really knew who they were talking to, as most users used a pseudonym to maintain
anonymity (Dewey, 2014).

1991 Invention of the World Wide Web

•British computer scientist, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, invented the World Wide Web in 1989. By
October of 1990, Tim had written three fundamental and lasting technologies: HTML
(HyperText Markup Language), URI (Uniform Resource Identifier), and HTTP (HyperText
Transfer Protocol) all of which are still used today (World Wide Web Foundation, 2018).

1997 Social Sites

•From 1997 to 2001, Six Degrees, the first social media site that enabled users to upload a
profile and make friends with other users.

1999 Creativity and Status Blogs

•In 1999, the first blogging sites became popular. LiveJournal was a platform where users
could blog as a form of keeping friends updated with their lives, a format later used by
Facebook for their status.

2002 Social Media (SocMed)

• After the invention of blogging, social media began to explode in popularity. Sites like
Friendster, MySpace and LinkedIn gained prominence in the early 2000s, and sites sites
like Photobucket and Flicker facilitated online photo sharing. In 2004, Facebook was
launched by Mark Zuckerberg, along with his Harvard roommates. By 2006, it became
available to users tgroughout the world which remain as one of the most popular social
media on the internet.

CHRISTIAN M. CONCHA
Instructor, AB English Language
Material Developer, Copyright © 2022
LEARNING MODULE IN ENG 110 (COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION)
Agusan del Sur State College of Agriculture and Technology MODULE 2 ▪ Page 6 of 8
Main Campus, Bunawan Agusan del Sur

The timeline of computer mediated communication demonstrates how it all began to

modern media, as communication has grown to be one of the most important aspects of daily
life. All individuals under some circumstances are influenced by the emerging technologies in
the field of communication. Pivotal moments in computer mediated communication success,
have transformed society to be more reliant on devices like cell phones and computers to stay
in connection to others; creating a new environment for people to communicate and share
with each other without sacrificing the intimacy of person-to-person communication. The
integration of these new media has led to globalization of information at the touch of a button.

Interactivity

Modern electronics have led to the detailed, and even real time communication of
information. Computer mediated communication is the future of our civilization. The world is
now globalized like never before, we can communicate to outer space when astronauts go to
the moon.

“A new social operating system has been

emerging for several generations but has
accelerated in growth thanks to the recent triple
revolution: the widespread in growth thanks to the
recent triple revolution: the widespread adoption of
broadband, ubiquitous mobile connectivity and the
move from bounded groups—largely closed circles
of interlinked contacts—to multiple social networks”.
(Rainie, 2012).

In some cases, people are more comfortable

in an online setting verses a face to face communication event. (Van Der Heide, 2009). Some
research suggests that this maybe a bad side effects, of so much computer mediated
communication. Other individuals feel that the no limits, and freedom to information on such
devices, is the best invention yet.

CHRISTIAN M. CONCHA
Instructor, AB English Language
Material Developer, Copyright © 2022
LEARNING MODULE IN ENG 110 (COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION)
Agusan del Sur State College of Agriculture and Technology MODULE 2 ▪ Page 7 of 8
Main Campus, Bunawan Agusan del Sur

LET’S EXAMINE

This time embark on the in-depth understanding of the lesson by doing the following
tasks.

Learning Task 3

In your activity sheet, make your own infographic timeline showing inventions,
innovations and other significant events in the history of Computer Mediated
Communication. Your infographic timeline should compose of Dates, Descriptions, Header
and Images.

Example Infographic Timeline:

CHRISTIAN M. CONCHA
Instructor, AB English Language
Material Developer, Copyright © 2022
LEARNING MODULE IN ENG 110 (COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION)
Agusan del Sur State College of Agriculture and Technology MODULE 2 ▪ Page 8 of 8
Main Campus, Bunawan Agusan del Sur

LET’S EVALUATE
Amazing! You are doing great! This time, let us find out if you really have learned from
the lesson you read and studied. In your activity sheets, answer the following tasks below.

Learning Task 3

Develop a narrative report on how communications tools have been used in your community
or at home. (e.g., the evolution of the phone system)

CHRISTIAN M. CONCHA
Instructor, AB English Language
Material Developer, Copyright © 2022