Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Online Conferences
I have been participating in an big international conference on assessment organized by REAP. Derry drew my attention to it. The conference was entirely online. So far, I think the pros and cons of online conferring are:
1. Contributions like keynotes and intros are mercifully short and to the point, because they are usually in document form (there has been one rather flashy webcast)
2. All the main contributions and all the participants' contributions as well have been archived for further reference.
3. Although the chat sessions are in real time, everything else can be downloaded and read at suitable times -- for Australians and for British night owls like me, that means well after midnight BST.
4. I like being fairly anonymous when I chat. I have an online identity and that can be handy if you are old, ugly or notorious for writing spiky stuff on distance education.
5. I can go to an international conference with no travel and no personal costs. I can log in at College, at home or in any Internet Cafe. If I had a laptop I could log in on the bus!
There just are no cons from what I can see. One thing about online chat though...it is different from face-to-face (f2f) in several ways. For one thing, responses are sometimes interrupted by other questions or responses, which can make it fun to work out who is actually replying to whom. Moderators do their best, but it really is pretty unconstrained discussion. I found people dying to get in, not waiting for replies, having little side chats -- the very opposite of f2f seminars. In fact it almost made you long for the nasty regulating side of f2f where you can quell interruptions with a nasty scowl or a derisive sniff. I am sure new textual regulators will evolve.
The chat was followed by asynchronous discussion on a bulletin board (forum) thing so anyone who felt edged out could still have their say, and references and links and other things unsuitable for actual chat could be posted.
Very useful and productive.
Dave Harris
1. Contributions like keynotes and intros are mercifully short and to the point, because they are usually in document form (there has been one rather flashy webcast)
2. All the main contributions and all the participants' contributions as well have been archived for further reference.
3. Although the chat sessions are in real time, everything else can be downloaded and read at suitable times -- for Australians and for British night owls like me, that means well after midnight BST.
4. I like being fairly anonymous when I chat. I have an online identity and that can be handy if you are old, ugly or notorious for writing spiky stuff on distance education.
5. I can go to an international conference with no travel and no personal costs. I can log in at College, at home or in any Internet Cafe. If I had a laptop I could log in on the bus!
There just are no cons from what I can see. One thing about online chat though...it is different from face-to-face (f2f) in several ways. For one thing, responses are sometimes interrupted by other questions or responses, which can make it fun to work out who is actually replying to whom. Moderators do their best, but it really is pretty unconstrained discussion. I found people dying to get in, not waiting for replies, having little side chats -- the very opposite of f2f seminars. In fact it almost made you long for the nasty regulating side of f2f where you can quell interruptions with a nasty scowl or a derisive sniff. I am sure new textual regulators will evolve.
The chat was followed by asynchronous discussion on a bulletin board (forum) thing so anyone who felt edged out could still have their say, and references and links and other things unsuitable for actual chat could be posted.
Very useful and productive.
Dave Harris
# posted by A Sociologist : 8:09 AM
