No matter how much we can read about chatting or any other communication tools, it is always helpful to actually try using them. This Tuesday was the first time I tried chatting with multiple users. Before I tried it, I had a more positive attitude towards this kind of chatting. Of course I read about the negative sides, such as difficulty to managing multiple topics, or difficulties associated with not being able to see people you’re talking to.
The biggest (and probably the only) source of frustration for me was the topics. Either we were discussing several different topics (even though we had one task) and at times and it was hard to follow the discussion because it was fragmented, or when one topic prevailed, not all of us were interested in talking about that particular subject, so we ended up watching 2 people chatting, etc. However, this problem could be eliminated by having fewer participants. And I also can see how this may be helpful when all participants are interested in the same area of studies but have different amount of experience.
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Hi Katya, I also noticed that although we were divided into several groups, it's still hard to manage topics. Sometimes several topics were being discussed at the same time and it's annoying.
ReplyDeleteI agree we should have fewer participants in each conversation; 2-3 would be the best.
Also I'm thinking the letter-by-letter and reply features of google wave might be able to solve the problem of topic management. I look forward to trying it in class!