Today I participated in an online module, the first of a few in the next few weeks that I will be participating in. It was done through Google hangouts, and there were two academics giving the presentation, with grad students monitoring the Google questions, Facebook questions, and Twitter questions.
My favorite part was under the screen, there was a thumbs up and down button, and it was tracked across the bottom of the screen, increasing or decreasing when the academics said something people liked. Of course, you know my love of google, when I hit the "green thumbs up button" a little yellow smiley popped up and there was applause. I'm assuming not at the presenter, but it amused me none-the-less.
I mostly participated in the conversation on Twitter, folks really weren't engaging on Facebook, and there were just too many questions and complaints about technical difficulties on the Google Hangout for it to be an effective space. Twitter also seemed like the venue where there was the most community happening - through the favoriting and retweets and getting others not at the presentation (Which, why not, it was free), to at least see some of the glimmers.
In reflection, I'm glad I'm participating, but often when people said "enjoyed the conversation", I struggled. What conversation? We heard some awesome smart people talk, showed folks what our favorite parts were, and highlighted the things that really resonated with us individually, but did we have a conversation? Or did we just watch a conversation unfold?
In reflection, though, I just took a class with hundreds of people across the country, where some really smart people shared some information, I didn't pay for it, and also did some work while listening and getting a little inspiration. Yes, there were some technical issues and it seemed like some people really struggled with getting connected, but, overall, pretty cool.
Thank you for your insightful post. I do struggle with technological advancements sometimes as well. They provide new ways to learn from others but do lack in providing that "connection" that you refer to. It reminds me of the Webinar we had for this course. We had some technical difficulties throughout the meeting and we could not get a conversation going. However, we did get to 'interact' with the author of the course book, which is an amazing experience all together. I think we still have a long way to go for a true conversation to happen in these arenas.
ReplyDeleteI think the same things that apply in f2f settings apply online. If a guest comes into a class of 20, you can have conversation. 100? No, not really. Different vibe. Our webinar could have been more interactive, I think, if we'd all been on our own computers at our own locations. I've had guests visit classes that way in the past, and folks have seriously interacted with the guests. However, our guest really wanted to have the view of a classroom of people, so we arranged that for him. Tying to the old-school method of doing things, however, came somewhat at a cost. That said, not everyone who does a webinar is OK with the interaction, which I think is unfortunate.
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