Technologies certainly contain within them a potentiality or disposition towards certain forms of use which l believe heavily influences what we do with them. This certainly applies to electronic learning environments such as video conferencing and audio-graphic systems.
We bring to this new electronic learning environment strong understandings of what other "environments" mean to us, and to others. For example, this discussion focuses on distance education, yet l feel that participants may have a variety of understandings of distance education. So, are we talking about the same environment? What are our expectations of teaching and learning in a distance education environment? How does this differ, if at all, from our understanding of what teaching and learning is about in a classroom situation? Are electronic classrooms (using video conferencing for example) distance education environments, or face-to-face learning environments, or something else?
How we respond to these type of e-mail communications may have much to do with our sense of how frequently we are likely to communicate with the group or a single individual. If we have a sense that we will need to maintain a continuing working relationship with some or all of the group, then our form of response may be influenced by this factor. Consequently, the urge l felt to speak strongly against the notion of a hierarchy of discussion groups will be tempered by my desire to maintain my involvement in the group and to be taken seriously as a "positive" contributor. Otherwise, how do l really know whether anyone is reading my contributions, unless there are responses (which are not guaranteed)?