A particularly useful activity I found last week was listing my goals for this course. The moderators based this task on a study by Scardamalia wherein school students were asked what they would like to learn if they had an extra hour each week for learning whatever they wished. I found it was even better that I got to do this mid-way through the course. At the beginning of the course, I would have probably said that I wanted to learn more practical, hands-on strategies for using instructional technology. But as I had had a chance to go over a few excellent discussions already in the course of this semester, I thought my real goal was to find out multiple perspectives and assimilate, integrate and synthesize my understanding of computer-mediated communication and reach a holistic perspective.
At the end of the week, Clare’s video was a great source of inspiration. Despite all the administrative work she is doing, the problems in the software she was using and a terribly busy schedule, she effectively summed up the main issue in this week’s discussion. She was honest in stating that we are not quite there yet in terms of evaluating online discourses. The readings of the week made an attempt to compare online courses with face-to-face ones and even though some inferences can be drawn, it is a difficult task to compare the two media. They both seem to offer distinct advantages different from the other.
In retrospection, I am thinking that one big advantage of online courses seems to be the ready repository of resources. Not just the class notes and discourse, but the actual resources are also easier to compile and refer to. For my other in-class courses, I have binders – supposedly organized well too – but I find that I don’t consult them often, even though sometimes I remember something from one of them and feel I could reference it. I prefer resorting to my online collection of resources – most of which have been gathered from online courses or self-learning.
On another note, yesterday some group members on the team for the Elementary Case Study assignment met in a KeC chatroom. The synchronous discussion turned out very productive. Although we have a separate asynchronous conference for this assignment where we have been firing off our own ideas and trying to organize them clearly, yesterday’s ‘meeting’ seemed like a pretty important step. This makes me wonder whether the entire class has been undermining the importance of synchronous discussion as evidenced by the Week 3 responses to the task of stating preferences for the system of their choice. Most of us had picked asynchronous, articulating the need for flexibility, control, ‘no-pressure’, better focus, choice of time and so on. But I guess, what one can do, the other sometimes cannot. For example, after yesterday’s chat, we all have a timeframe, are clear on what sections each person is to cover (as opposed to randomly contribute wherever whenever) and what the general outline of the paper is to look like. With a large group, it was getting difficult to smooth out these issues all on asynchronous forums.
So, definitely my perspective has broadened this week about computer-mediated communication in general as well as about the modes and principles through which it is carried out, in specific.
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