This process of viewing the new medium through the conceptual filter developed for the older
medium necessarily colors our understanding of the teaching process in a computer mediated
communications (CMC) context. Part of the challenge, as mentioned above, is to develop
compensatory behaviors for the relative lack of non-verbal and paralinguistic communication in a
text-based medium such as computer conferencing. Another part of the challenge is to overcome
the difficulty of conceiving the role of the teacher in online courses within the long established
conceptual framework that we have built in the context of conventional, face-to-face teaching