In Learning

The challenges chat went well tonight. It was good to catch up with everyone from EDIT517, thanks Chris. I just realise now that I had the chat transcript on my clipboard, but now its gone. I might have a chance to grab it again at 11pm when the next session starts.

In virtual teams the establishment of trust is seen a critical for collaboration to occur. Jarvenpaa and Leidner (1998) found that some social behaviours helped to establish trust more than others. They asked the question of future researchers:

What are the most effective ways of communicating social information in virtual teams?

In turning this question over to participants I asked everyone to consider their experiences of the online learning communities they were involved in.

Adrienne encouraged us to start working within people’s comfort zones and the tools they are familiar with. Joanne suggested that people might be afraid to come forward if their isn’t a clear way of communicating set out from the start. Cathie suggested that even in textual communication there is a “voice” that people need to tune into citing the work of Simpson (2006). Hearing someone’s voice through their writing allows people to evaluate trustworthiness.

Beyond protocol for establishing trust there are visual cues that come across when engaged in video-telephony. Although in some cases synchronous video link-ups might present further challenges. I asked everyone to consider how musos might collaborate when video telephony lag times are unacceptable.

Jodie suggested that it’s all about getting together and seeing what works, what fits and what doesn’t. These same concepts could be brought across into other genres of collaboration.

James and Stanton (2011) reviewed literature from various online repositories, sampling articles that contained the phrases “collaborative music” or “networked music”. They found that in many cases synchronous communication worked against novice artists, and suggested that there may be other tools to use to help novices collaborate, including the use of tools that supported metaphor.

Cathie suggested that asynchronous communication worked well for writers, as it gave them more time to think.

I showed everyone a picture of a metaphorical way of capturing social information about the “status” of team members in a group, which I have shared before here. My adaptation of it appears above. I want to know how everyone is feeling about the upcoming assessment pieces for EDIT517.

If I was to follow the suggestion above I would say that Part B - Learning Community Plan gives me the most tension. I’m Yellow on the stress meter because I’d like to replicate some successful aspects of open learning in my context, but I’m afraid that being too prescriptive about tools would limit the openness of the plan. Otherwise elsewhere the weather is fine and sunny!

How is your weather map?

References

James, D., & Stanton, J. (2011). Beyond being (t) here: the social and personal implications of making music at a distance. Proceedings of the 2011 iConference (pp. 686–687).

Jarvenpaa, S. L., & Leidner, D. E. (1998). Communication and Trust in Global Virtual Teams. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 3(4), 0-0. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.1998.tb00080.x

Simpson, K. P. (2006). Collaboration and Critical Thinking in Online English Courses. Teaching English in the Two-Year College, 33(4), 9.