text chats ·         Advantages ·         Disadvantages ·         Issues collaborative activities ·         Advantages ·         Disadvantages ·         Issues

Well last week’s activity made me aware of the quick convenient nature of text chats and the fact that a structured activity can guide students away from mistakes (like well defined roles/task to accomplish). Similarly it doesn’t require the same level of computing power or software compatibility. It is kind of slow, when you’re reading through all the comments. You have to stay focused on what each individual said because one person can interrupt another person’s topic of conversation. Christina handled this by putting in each comment the name of the person her comment was addressed to. You can also hit send way too quickly and not have a fully developed thought. This has no visual, audio, or other communicative support. It makes it difficult to interpret ambiguities. Evaluations of contributions to chat are likely to be very biased, or very informal. A detailed rubric for what you must do in a chat session must still promote engagement and interaction. Collaboration improves individuals and promotes high quality learning and engagement. Having a project based learning component increases the desire to learn new tasks and presentation formats. You can give detailed projects, rubrics, and feedback. You can have an end result of learning that is better for all participants than an individual piece of work. Interaction and community learning also help learners understand how to communicate with audiences better. NONE – not really but I will try. The disadvantages could include role alignment and growth tolerance. By role alignment, I mean that you can’t have many masters. Individuals must accept each peer as a legitimate contributor of equal value. In many cases you will need someone to take charge. Therefore, there may be some tolerance of subpar work for inclusion purposes. Also, there is a presentational component that makes some individuals nervous. They may only comply strategically for a score instead of authentic engagement. The big issue to me is that the activity must be structured in a way to engage each person and support students in new learning challenges. For individual contributors – there are some dangerous behaviors. “Pit-callers” (Harvard lecturer nickname). Some people are quite clever at putting in a small amount of text that motivates everyone else to lead out. They don’t actually contribute a great deal. This can be confused with someone who is not a natural leader that is stepping into the role to help the group succeed. “Dominators”. They know it all, and they are always right. “Critical not creative” – point out flaws, without offering suggestions. “Underprepared” – they don’t know the material. “Chatty/Complimentary” – lots of talk, not work.