ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the instructional communication literature in the emergent context of human-machine communication (HMC). It begins by providing an overview of HMC in the classroom and describing the origins of the research tradition. The chapter explains the major theoretical frameworks guiding the research and offers a section that presents cutting-edge instructional research surrounding emergent machine sources. It examines by offering knowledge claims derived from HMC research, suggesting practical teaching applications, and proposing directions for reflection and future study. The first studies of HMC in the classroom focused on students' uses of mobile technologies, including phones and laptops. By the early 2000s, mobile devices were portable and affordable enough to become a common presence in classrooms. In instructional communication research, this theoretical perspective is used to predict that traditional models of human interaction will apply to HMC. Valuable traits for human instructors, like immediacy or teacher caring, should still be relevant when evaluating machine instructors.
