Week 13: Online Communication

Week 13: Online Communication

"Top 3 Most Effective Ways of Communicating with My Peers on this Online Course"

The internet is a wonderful medium for communicating and sharing with others and a critical element for our national infrastructure. There are many technologies for communicating online. Some might prefer live, multipoint, audio-video communications. This can make it seem like the other people are in the same room, and you can see facial expression and hear vocal inflection. It can be a great tool for making quick decisions in a group, for a series of questions and answers, or for providing social support.

However, among the drawbacks are that all users must be online at the same time, and they all have to have hardware, software, and bandwidth required. While archives can be stored, they are arranged chronologically rather than by idea or topic. And when the session is over, it is over, often with some comments and questions still left unsaid. Thus, for the bulk of one online communications, text-based systems might be used.

One key in improving technology to communicate, is to all communicate clearly and openly. For example, if you do not understand what I meant in an assignment, let me know. If you have some good feedback for other people, offer it. And, if someone else offers feedback, keep and open mind. The students in the class represent a variety of backgrounds, experience, and interests, and we can gain a lot from each other.

Here are our groups "top 3 effective ways of communicating with my peers on this online course."

1.Email

For our course, our email was also connected to our forums/discussion board, so whenever something new was posted in there, we would be alerted to go check that out, so through email, we were all kept up to date with eachothers posts. In online classes, emailing becomes a huge form of communicating but it does have to go both ways in the sense that the person you email, has to respond in an orderly fashion for it to be effective.

2. Face-to-Face

We feel that this is the best form of communication. The only struggle in this is that we have to make time for it that will fit into everyones schedule. Face-to-face doesnt neccessarily mean that we have to drive away from home to meet somewhere else to talk, nowadays, we have online tools such as skype, face time, etc. that we can use from our own home, but again, we all have to fit it into our own personal schedules, all at the same time, which may be inconvenient for those who are taking online courses for the reason of not needing to do that.

3. Cellphone/Telephone

If emails doesnt work, if meeting face to face doesnt work, a phone conversation is a great fallback. Lack of communication when put into groups in an online course is definitly not good. To make an online course successful for everyone, we all have to communicate effectively in anyway possible and make complete the group work as a team, and as a facilitator or teacher, the grading needs to be done fairly and equally.