I must confess, I found myself signing off from today's internship web conference feeling frustrated. The conferences are incredibly crowded, so generally true conferencing with voice and video is out of the question. So instead, the process is much more like the chatrooms from times gone by. However, although the flow of information requires some diligence to follow, I don't find that particularly challenging.
What I do find exasperating is the repetition of questions, not only within a single conference, but over the course of several conferences, and between the written course material and the conferences. I suspect some of this stems from having several different cohort groups conferencing at the same time, and some of it comes from the few-second delay that we all experience as we essentially IM back and forth on the conference board. We had multiple questions about whether or not to purchase TK20, our new assessment and portfolio platform; about whether or not to blog on our web conferences; about whether to include said documentation in our wikis; and about the due date for this week's assignment. Dr. Abernathy seemed generally unruffled by the repetitiveness, and was exceedingly respectful in her responses, even those that were asked and answered more than once. I was not so placid. Although I did get an opportunity to ask two questions about our action research project that I had developed for the conference, I walked away from the conference feeling that we spent far too much time on "nuts and bolts" logistical information, much of which is answered in our written coursework.
The questions that developed as I conferenced today are; first, "How could the web conferencing system in the Lamar Academic Partnerships Program be made more valid for different groups of students?"; second, "How could the web conference schedule for the Academic Partnerships program enable more students to participate with both voice and video?"; and third, "How is the dissemination of logistical information affecting student outcomes in the Lamar Academic Partnerships program?" Although I'm not in a position to complete action research on these questions, I find it helpful for me to look at all professional functions with an eye towards inquiry. I will join in the web conference on July 31, and collect more data on the web conferencing process. In the meantime, on with my research.
I find myself almost happy that I missed the conference now. Was this another conference of 80+ people? When I attended my first one for this course I barely got in a question, and for some reason a group of adults decided to talk about how they can wear pajamas to class.
ReplyDeleteI do need to ask, is there a place that the conference links are being posted. I had wanted to review the previous conference for items missed in the delay of information, but have yet to receive an email with the link or see it on a website.