Project update

VoxBoxRsamd is slowly getting underway. The teaching sessions have been really good, with enthused students and some really positive comments and discussion in class. However trying to continue this online has been problematic. I know students are viewing the site, but are not leaving comments or participating in a more meaningful way. During the last session I asked the students and one said ‘I was going to leave a comment, but it was half twelve and I didn’t want anyone to think I was a wierdo, being on-line at that time.’ Perhaps the public nature of the site is off-putting for the students, with colleagues like Ros Steen and Hugh Hodgart being viewers of any comments, it may be too much of a risk to expose yourself online. So I had a rethink and have invited students from the MA Classical and Contemporary Text to contribute and allow some reflection on the session I spent with them last week. This is a more mature group of post-graduate learners, many of them from America, and already has provoked some response. Perhaps they feel more confident in the use of the technology, or more confident in their ability to express themselves. I am hoping there is a trickle down effect and that once people see that no-one is jumping on their comments, or that they are not the first to leave a comment, then their will be more participation. It is surprising though that students are happy to leave comments and quite inventive pieces of work on facebook etc, which are equally public, but are a bit shy on leaving comments on vocal work. Perhaps the nature of the work, involving a personal response, is better suited to reflection at the moment, using the medium of voice, the voice that has just been worked. There is never any reluctance on the part of students to engage in discussion during class when the opportunity is presented, indeed there is often a fertile brew of opinions bubbling up. So does the interface with the computer, the solitary nature of online work preclude that mutual encouragement and interaction? It seems to be at the moment. Perhaps it is not too surprising when I think of the Moodle group for PGCert, where activity seems to have dwindled to the point of invisibility, and seemed to exponentially decrease as we became more familiar (tired? bored?) with the technology. I had a request to be followed on Twitter and I just ignored it, just as I ignore requests from facebook to discover ‘What kind of furniture are you?’ and ‘Sally just threw a carton of ice cream over you, do you want to throw one back?’. The answers to both these questions are obvious and need no reproduction online. I am an elegant but slightly austere chair, and if Sally chucked a carton of ice cream over me, Sally would be wondering what happened to her nose.

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