It always happens in the wee hours - the answer to a problem, the realisation that you've forgotten to do something crucial, or, in this case, suddenly you can see the wood for the trees!
"The trees" in my case are the various social media tools we have been examining in INF206. Like others in this subject, I have been blinded by logins, interfaces, options, privacy settings, hashtags, friends, teleporting and so on.
And so at about 3am this morning, lying awake musing on how I will cope with the Second Life meeting this week, I realised that INF206 has been the most engaging, stimulating subject I have tackled so far in my academic journey at CSU.
Why? Because the very tools we are studying encourage exactly what I have missed in Distance Learning - a real opportunity to interact with my fellow students and my lecturer. Whilst the subject forums are clearly designed for such interaction, in many ways they fail, with scant entries from either students or lecturers.
The INF206 Facebook page is alive with both academic discussion - links, opinions, and discussions, but this is glued together with personal interaction: encouraging messages from the cohort and Judy.
We dare to Tweet that we're struggling with a task; in return, fellow students tweet "Hang in there", "Me too." Many students fear admitting a lack of understanding on the subject forums - the feeling being that only posts which are thoughtful and that add to the academic discussion (if one actually gets off the ground) should be posted. "Clogging up" the forum with "lesser" conversations doesn't feel right. I love the immediacy of Social Media.
"The Wood" in my analogy is the way in which Social Media tools deliver distance education in a fashion which far better mimic a real classroom - the to and fro of discussions, the development of relationships between the cohort and the lecturer, the quick and straight answers to queries. I'm currently wishing that all CSU subjects could be delivered in this way.
No comments:
Post a Comment