Building richer, closer learning experiences

Janet, this post resonated with me on several levels.

Haagen-Dazs used to make a carob ice cream (don’t know if they still do). I liked it. It wasn’t chocolate; I didn’t see it as a substitute for chocolate. I just liked the carob.

Some people only meet virtually, and that suits them, as the carob did me. Many people benefit from a variety of ways of interacting, and my taste buds benefit from switching to blueberry or pumpkin pie ice cream.

For people greatly separated by distance who are unlikely to meet face to face, virtual contact (by phone, by email, by blog) offers the potential for increasing the size of their network, which in turn offers the potential to increase its richness. A lot depends on how they interact and how they experience interaction (e.g., genuine sharing versus flame wars).

I think that all things being equal, face-to-face meeting offers the greatest potential — but as you say, having virtually met Joan Vinall-Cox through her blog helped to enhance your physical meeting with her. My opportunity to bump into you physically is much less than my opportunity to listen to and respond to you here.

It’s not either-or, of course, it’s both-and.

Dave-
I love the analogy. I didn’t really think about the negative ways people interact online (flame wars, etc.). The edublogggers are a pretty nice bunch. If I had a political blog, I’m sure it’d be a very different experience. I’ve found everyone in my virtual social network to be helpful and generous; there isn’t one person I wouldn’t want to meet f2f. As well, the opportunity to listen and respond to people you would never have met in any other way has let me see the world through many different eyes. Like right now. Thanks, as always.

When you’re in the DC area, the ice cream (or the Guinness) is on me.

Many of my virtual connections are like yours; I’ve made professional and personal friends even through listservs (read, comment, exchange back-channel notes). Still, we all know people (including some in the training/learning realm) whose first reaction would be, “You like carob? What’s wrong with you?”

As with the media-in-learning issue, maybe the central question is the nature of your relationship with a given person (analogous to the goals you have for your own learning) and whether the channels available for that relationship can help achieve the goals at a given time. Some folks hate to talk on the phone, but face-to-face, their relationship thrives as if there’d been no hiatus. Some folks can feel awkward in new face-to-face and can take quite a while before they feel free to give and take; the virtual realm can help them manage that.

Your analogies really resonated with me. I am currently in an online masters program and the f2f vs online time is challenge for many of the cohort (including me) to manage. We are all new to online networking, and although some of us have been blogging for awhile we haven’t come up to speed on some of the other web 2.0 technologies. It still feels a bit weird to network online — and I wonder sometimes… how often do people check email and blogs to keep up with this all?

Dave, I’ll go with the Guinness. Thanks.

Hi Nora-
I think bloggers check other blogs and email more often than the non-bloggers. It’s been a trade off of time- for me it was dumping a bit of the TV I was watching. The online component was more time consuming for me than I’m finding the f2f environment. However, online environment was easier to deal with because I spend a little time each day vs. a lot of time the day before class and class time. Karyn Romeis had a post a short time ago that made me laugh. She said, “he other view I encounter quite often is that we are a sad bunch of people with no real friends.” http://karynromeis.blogspot.com/search?q=bloggers

I’m seeing another analogy (too bad there’s not a brisker market for these). It has to do with structure versus content… the way a Word document or a web page has structure (styles, fonts, spacing, etc.) that’s separate from but attached to the content (the words, images, and context).

So too with our interpersonal networks. I do think there are some people whose online networks probably are sad bunches of people with no real friends… but that’s not very different from people who hang out at some bar or people whose lives revolve around being fashion-forward.

(From the outside, of course, people tend to onflate structure and content, as in “online network = not a real network = no friends.” Or, “adds ’2.0′ after stuff” = “must be cool and cutting-edge.”)

Other people are in networks that hang out at the same bar (that’s the structure, the beer-and-margarita CSS), but the content of the network is different for them. Richer, broader exchanges; openness to others, openness about oneself.

A tangential notion is that if you only go to sports bars or string quartet concerts, you tend to run into people who are into sports or into string quartets. Not good, not bad — it has to do with how varied you want your networks to be. If everyone you know has an iPod, you tend to forget that lots of people are getting by with other brands, and millions more are managing to survive without any kind of portable media device.

I’m late to the party because my fall has been amazingly busy but I wanted to say that I agree fully that our previous blogging connections not only ALLOWED us to get together; it made the f2f time richer and more substantial. Now, even when I’m buried in new work, I make a real effort to get to your blog, even if I’m late, ’cause I KNOW you.

Janet,
When I read about this “research” that proves that f2f is richer than online, I worry. I have “lived” online for about 10 years now. I think what we need to focus our research on is the new skills we need to have to make online as rich as f2f.

I met my husband online. He is from Dublin, Ireland and was living there when we met. We chatted and used various media (but mostly chat) to get to know each other over 2.5 years. I also met other men this way. Several of them I met in person. Most of them were, in person, just as they were online. So was my husband. I fell in love with him before we even met in person. He did with me, too. We met in person in March, 2002, filled out the fiance visa application in April, were engaged in July, and married in October. After 5 years, he hasn’t done or said anything that has surprised me (except the oouple of times he did something romantic).

I have worked with people around the world and then met them in person. In my mind, the f2f was just a continuation of the online. It wasn’t richer, because the interaction online is already quite rich. And the beauty of it is, that, because we are all comfortable building and sustaining relationships online, i don’t have to worry about losing touch.

My two best friends from my childhood live nearby. We all did the family thing at different times, so we don’t have that to bind us together. Because they don’t have online lives, I find it harder to stay connected with them.

I dunno. Does anyone else find it odd that such a definitive line is drawn between online and f2f?