Elluminate discussion

I attended the session on whether or not we take mistakes on the internet as seriously as we would take mistakes in person (and whether we should). This sounded like an interesting topic—reading it made me wonder where I stand on the issue so I was curious to see what others thought, but I also chose it because the description said it would be in an open discussion format, instead of a presentation format. I've worked with elluminate before in my classes and managing participation is very difficult. Usually, students don't participate because they're shy or have technical problems with their mics and I can't call on them or encourage them with gestures and eye contact the way I would in a traditional class room. On the other hand, if people really did get into participating, it would be hard to control the discussion for the very same reasons. When students can't see me or each other, how would anyone know who's turn it was to speak? So, I thought, in addition to the subject matter, I could learn some practical skills about managing an online discussion.

It didn't work out that way. My theory was correct: uncontrolled online discussion can easily get out of hand. But I didn't get any tips on how to prevent it because the entire presentation was completely unstructured. The moderator did not ask specific people to speak or engage them in discussion. She kept talking about her own thing while people, more or less continually, typed comments in the chat box (we'd been asked to set up mics but nobody used them). Very occasionally, she would make a brief comment on one of the chat box entries, then go back to what she had been talking about previously. I was very confused the whole time and didn't participated in the discussion because I felt uncomfortable about “jumping in” and “interrupting” others. One of the things I like about asynchronous communication is that it removes this problem. However, a skillful moderator CAN still conduct a useful and coherent discussion synchronously, if it's done properly, which is what I had hoped but didn't get to see here.

As far as elluminate itself goes, I like the system pretty well. Since I've used it before, there weren't any difficulties, my computer was already configured properly to run it and everything. I've never had a technology problem with elluminate in a student type role. I admit there is a bit of a learning curve thought, especially if you're the moderator. I still hit glitches where I can't get my slides to load properly or forget how to turn on the students mics. Would some students have trouble using this technology? Probably. Downloading the Java support could prove difficult for those who aren't familiar with this process (I don't remember my experience when I had to do this the first time but I think I made my boyfriend do it for me). However, once inside the session the student shouldn't have any problems, if the moderator is doing their job right, since the moderator controls the function of all the tools in the system. The little icons next to the names of the participants do get a little confusing sometimes though. We were supposed to applaud at the end of the presentation and I accidentally raised my hand instead, since the icons for both actions are similar looking hands. Then I saw that several other people had done the same thing. Besides, the point of the presentation was to be accepting of mistakes so its all okay.