Is the asynchronous online seminar just doing what we would normally in a seminar do but online, or does the shift online change the nature of the communication and potentially the nature of your learning?
I wouldn’t say learning online is just a remediation of seminars and face-to-face learning. It’s not just translating this way of learning to the internet, but actually changes the nature of the learning in several small but noticeable ways.
a) Navigation – how do you get around the web forum; is it an online conversation?
The forum is arguably arranged into topics and points of conversation far better than a face-to-face conversation would be. This allows organisation and ease of finding information, but arguably jumping from one topic to another in conversation is often a fruitful way to form new ideas. Maybe this limits asynchronous learning slightly.
b) Expression – do you express yourself in the same way? How do we ‘take turns’?
Asynchronous learning allows everyone to ‘have their say’, even quieter members of the group who may not always feel free to do this F2F.
c) Time – activities being over a week? (not quite sure what this one is asking, so maybe i’m missing the point...?!)
Stopping to think may stunt the natural flow of ideas but also gives time to think about them over a longer time period and come back with new ideas discovered in this time. This also allows time to further research topics discussed and post in an informed way (Also through hypertext online).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Do you personally think that time is a positive or negative aspect to online seminars. I understand your idea of being able to come back later with possibly better ideas, but do you think that this is time consuming having to wait for responses, especially for the forums.
ReplyDeleteRINCY!
ReplyDeleteGood work, well done!
ReplyDeleteI think the best seminars are ones where people who know the material find new angles and implications through open f2f discussion, changing their minds, misunderstanding, learning more deeply by working through that misunderstanding etc. This can be inspiring and can result in people identifying 'selves' that 'do cultural studies' (or whatever). But if I'm honest, I almost never see this actually happen (I was lucky enough to have this happen for me as an OU student! at Summer School)
As an observer of this unit's student work for 3yrs now, I'd say that something a bit similar does happen (but very differently) through this method of study for a small percentage of students -and that's enough of a result for a realist like me!
Go for it!
I agree that seminars allow 'learning more deeply by working through that misunderstanding etc. ' and this made me consider some possible negatives of online learning. Perhaps it's so easy to skim over material online and just hop onto the next post/topic if you can't understand that we don't really need to bother trying to understand what we imediately don't.
ReplyDeleteWith blogging, if there's something I haven't understood, I have sometimes just thought 'never mind!' and clicked on the next post or gone somewhere else. It is easy to dismiss things you don;t understand online.