Online Conversations

Found a good post by Annette Kramer at Learning Lab on Online Collaboration: (How) Does it Work?

 

Of particular interest to me was the following:

There was a sense both of disconnection and of coming together, sometimes in different ways at the same moment. Class members drifted from the reading to participation, from one topic to another, and from answering others to contributing their own ideas. The discussion was imbued with more of an expectation of a traditional class (eg information flows downward from the teacher) than of community.

During the week, however, Nancy had added a podcast, and by Friday there was a live chat with brainstorming about how chat can compliment a tool like Moodle for an NGO. The effect of hearing Nancy's voice and the synchronous communication seemed to galvanize the group in a way different from their asynchronous replies and participation throughout the previous period.

The Bold is mine for emphasis.

 

Team Synergy recently had its first conference call and it was so good to hear the voices of those that attended. The call went by so quickly. We had so much to talk about. I came away with a similar feeling of the group being "galvanized" in a way different from our email and blog comment conversations.

 

Need to do more in this area. There must be something there.

 

 

Technorati Tags : moodle, open+space, online+conversations, group+dynamics, synergy

 

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