As you are probably aware there have a few issues with synchronous sessions at Change 11. Tim Owens voiced his concerns after the DTLT collaboration with Change 11 for Week 5, so I don’t really want to reiterate those concerns here except to say that again the focus on the tools is detracting from the learning that is possible.

Stephen Downes put out a call for help on Google+ back on the 5th of March, and so far DTLT are the only that have put forward some reasonable solutions which essentially revolve around a polished presentation and conversation integrated with a back-channel. Tim Owens suggested using Google Voice to take live calls and pre-recorded questions during the event, an idea which deals with the concerns Stephen has about following the broadcast model too closely. I’m sure Tim has plenty of other good ideas too, so now is not the time to throw in your towel (party line, integrated chat, vodcast with reliable archiving).

In my response to Stephen’s call for help, among all the other commentators spruiking the benefits of one platform over another, I suggested that the synchronous woes might be an opportunity to beat a strategic retreat from live sessions. The higher the participation rates go, the more it becomes like broadcast anyway, and then you risk disappointing (as evidenced by the declining participation in live sessions). So I wonder if synchronous bliss has become the holy grail for this MOOC.

I hope not. Synchronicity is good when you have it, but it can’t be forced. The conversation needs to happen around the content, not the platform. I would much rather have the quality conversation, interspersed with some good questions from a few well informed listeners, that I can watch over a cup of coffee the following morning. The real conversation, the criticism and the connections are happening in the comments on blog posts after the show most of the time anyway.

I want to come back to this, but it’s Sunday afternoon here in Oz and the sunlight is fading.