Discussions started by Nick Kearney

"the most important thing is to go beyond everyone just posting and sharing."

I think this is a vital insight, if there is one criticism I would level at this and other similar spaces it is that often we stay at that stage, we share, we comment, we may even enlighten each other, but we often leave it there, rather than attempting to move further and draw conclusions. The attitude, I would hazard, is that we feel each can and should draw their own conclusions, and we are often diffident and tentative (how we love those modal verbs) and avoid clear declarations, but I wonder if that is not to waste opportunities. The process of trying to draw conclusions might be a positive way of making sense of the rich variety of perspectives most threads on Scope throw up.

The literature on dialogue, and online facilitation, has often emphasized the "weaver" role. This is perhaps statutory in paid courses; the tutorial obligation to make sense (albeit by hook or by crook) and provide answers is often an institutional requirement. In a voluntary context such as this, the idea may be anathema, running counter to the collegiate atmosphere, that warm buzz. But it might be that this kind of activity would be useful. Perhaps Scope could promote critical friendship.

So, a suggestion: each of the Scope seminars is led as usual by the people that proposed it, but we add the role of one (or more) independent weavers, whose role is to periodically summarize the discussion, identify salient ideas, suggest tags etc. This role should be external, in the sense that it is played by people who though part of Scope, have nothing to do with the seminar in question, and perhaps by people with thick skins, as weaving is not an easy task: things get left out, emphases get changed, and this can provoke controversy. However that process might be enriching.

Nick Kearney

(Edited by Sylvia Currie - original submission Tuesday, 31 August 2010, 01:35 AM Split this topic from the thread SCoPE & Web 2.0 http://scope.bccampus.ca/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=15841)