Techniques

In week 5 of the IT5670 course, we had a discussion on the different techniques presented in our reading that might be applied to our Web Conference sessions and how those applicable techniques might be altered as well. My first post (and maybe most beneficial) was about the idea of team teaching, which is something we started doing back in the first semester with the conference. We shared in facilitating the different discussions in our shell. This seemed helpful because with the shell being available 24 hours a day, it can be beneficial to have more than one facilitator available to respond to incoming posts and steer discussions where one person may not have time to constantly check on the forum and keep up with everything. I think this is different from a live classroom because one person can maintain the class that occurs during a set time.

Kerry Escobodo brought up some interesting points about the team teaching. She said she uses this style in teaching yoga and has found it sometimes useful because the other teacher can often share things she missed and also brings a different style. The down side, which Bender also discussed, is that there may be conflict in whose time it is to teach or ideas on just how the class should be taught. Bender also notes that it may cause confusion for the students as to who has the authority.

I also found the discussion on chatting interesting. Working with high school students, I am sure many of them are well versed in the world of chatting. It seems like many people in our class have a negative view of chatting. Concerns include confusion and the facilitator not realizing if some people are not participating. There was some discussion on grouping, which might help alleviate some of the problems, but the facilitator might have to find a way to jump into all these chats to keep an eye on what is being said and to steer the discussion. David Beattie had an interesting idea about sending people to new groups if a chat room got too full and then adding a facilitator. There was some discussion as to why this would not work. But I think there may be ways to set up groups ahead of time, maybe even schedule them for different times, so this resource could still be used, especially if it is something the students feel connected to and can respond to better. We aren’t using it for our Web Conference, and I’m not sure that it would fit in with my EdWeb either, but I still have a feeling it could be a valuable resource in teaching eLearning.