As I mentioned in my post to the forums reflecting on the activity, I am currently looking into using discussion forums in an online course I administer. I hadn't considered how much extra time you need to allow for online discussion tasks as opposed to their face-to-face equivalents.
John and Mitchell had initially suggested using the wiki to collaborate our efforts on this task. As the task was based around filling in a template, this seemed ideal as it would allow all members of the group to add their thoughts directly to the template.
However, this only highlighted the delays in online discussion, which I feel many of us had not taken into account, as no general concessus was reach over it. In the end as it was getting towards the end of the week and the task would need writing up anyway, I created the wiki page using the contributions on the discussion forum from various members of the group (particularly those of Brian and Colleen).
Mitchell added his additions to the wiki directly later.
As of week 4, the only people who have editted the wiki page for this task are Mitchell and myself. I'm not sure whether this is because the task was essentially done by the time it went on the wiki or whether people are unfamiliar with using a wiki.
Although, it was in some of the introductions, I'm not sure how familiar the rest of the group are with technology. It could be that they are all experts or all complete novices, but assuming there are some people there who are not familiar with wikis, this may have been another factor which slowed getting our work online.
Reflecting on this, I can see that, although it was a useful eye-opener in my experience and so a useful activity for this course, in general, activities using the wiki and discussion forums would benefit, at least in the early stages of a course, from more guidance as to:
- what is expected
- how to use the technology
- how online group tasks differ from face-to-face ones
- the allowances students need to make as a result
Comments
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Hi Owen
I thought your reflections were very interesting especially about the length of time that online collaboration requires and the degree of uncertainty about reaching agreement. These are key points – you may want to review your conclusions in a few weeks time when the group has know each other for longer and see if anything changes. We are still learning about online interaction and an important part of the course is to experience how students may feel when undertaking these types of programmes.
Cheers
Alan