One thing I found interesting last week was the idea that gender could play a role in how people interact in a discussion board. According to the article by Victor Savicki and Merle Kelley, Computer Mediated Communication: Gender and Group Composition, in CyberPsychology & Behavior from October 1, 2000 there are gender differences in how men and women generally respond in an online forum.
Savicki and Kelley's finding suggest that males tend to use "authoritative language (e.g. strong assertions), male language features (e.g. absolute adverbials), and negative socioemotional discourse (e.g. disagreement, challenging utterances)".
Females, on the other hand, will often communicate in "attenuated language (e.g. personal opinion, qualifiers), female language features (e.g. intensifiers, self-disclosure), and positive socioemotional discourse (e.g. agreement, requests opinions)".
Trying to get females and males working together cooperatively can be difficult in the best of elementary and middle school classrooms, but trying to do it online without nonverbal and verbal cues make it even a greater challenge. Encouraging the males in the group to support their assertions with reasons and to have females try to refrain from sharing personal opinions during the course is one way I could use this information.
Regardless, it was an interesting thought.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Two Bs or not Two Bs
The thing I was most interested in learning about during Module 2 was to wonder how things were going to work in my next group. As two of the members of the group are Type A personalities and two are Type B personality, I wonder how things will work. I suppose the pressure of having the As pushing the Bs into meeting their deadlines will allow us to finish earlier. But I hope they don't get too stressed out if we Bs don't get going right away.
This learning will benefit me as an online facilitator because it will encourage me to consider personality types when setting up groups. Today, one of my fifth grade classes was supposed to be working in cooperative groups. A number of different students came up to me and said they couldn't work with either individuals at their table or that some weren't trying. I'm not sure how much of it was personality issues and how much was the class was being cranky as the teacher confirmed to me after school that they were the whole day long.
In an online environment, being able to place students who will work well together is a much greater challenge than in my library. I know my students (generally), so I can tell who to definitely not have at the same table if I want to keep the chaos to a minimum. Knowing who to place together is hard to do online. By providing the group the opportunity to try out different personality tests and share the results will let the members understand what they are getting into and what to expect based on personalities.
This learning will benefit me as an online facilitator because it will encourage me to consider personality types when setting up groups. Today, one of my fifth grade classes was supposed to be working in cooperative groups. A number of different students came up to me and said they couldn't work with either individuals at their table or that some weren't trying. I'm not sure how much of it was personality issues and how much was the class was being cranky as the teacher confirmed to me after school that they were the whole day long.
In an online environment, being able to place students who will work well together is a much greater challenge than in my library. I know my students (generally), so I can tell who to definitely not have at the same table if I want to keep the chaos to a minimum. Knowing who to place together is hard to do online. By providing the group the opportunity to try out different personality tests and share the results will let the members understand what they are getting into and what to expect based on personalities.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Following Directions and Pet Peeves
While I don't believe I gained any new skills, I did have the opportunity to review for myself the importance of really reading directions very carefully. Over the years of practicing skimming and scanning and trying to teach those skills to students, I have ingrained them as well. So when I thought I was responding correctly, I wasn't really.
This will help me as an online facilitator because it will encourage me to read and review my directions ahead of presenting them to the class. Also, by saving my posting/directions in a draft form overnight should allow me to return to them with a fresh perspective and see if they make sense to just me or to everyone.
I was really glad to see in the directions for Module 2 that it will be encouraged to drop the whole posting that a person is responding to. Unfortunately, it doesn't just happen here. On most of the listservs I belong to people simply hit the reply button. It's not a HUGE problem when they are simply responding to a single post. It is a problem when they are responding to a digest version. THEN I get to scroll through the whole previous digest trying to find the next message. Grrrr.
This will help me as an online facilitator because it will encourage me to read and review my directions ahead of presenting them to the class. Also, by saving my posting/directions in a draft form overnight should allow me to return to them with a fresh perspective and see if they make sense to just me or to everyone.
I was really glad to see in the directions for Module 2 that it will be encouraged to drop the whole posting that a person is responding to. Unfortunately, it doesn't just happen here. On most of the listservs I belong to people simply hit the reply button. It's not a HUGE problem when they are simply responding to a single post. It is a problem when they are responding to a digest version. THEN I get to scroll through the whole previous digest trying to find the next message. Grrrr.
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