This blog post is one part of the series “learning diary” for a course at my university.

Goals:

Based on the title and the provided links for that unit I assume we will learn something about the discourse in chats, forums and co. The links provided were about the Minerva Project (an online university) and an article as response to the first link (so, pro and con about the Minerva project).

What have I learned:

The lesson wasn’t at all about the Minerva project, but the difficulties which occurs if one tries to have a discourse via an online media.

The first thing I learned is that a discourse only can happen if both sides are willingly to change there opinion. Otherwise it’s not a discourse. The next takeaway was that I should learn 10 finger typing, to improve my typing speed.

Our professor showed us some examples how she is preparing herself for mediated discourse: She thinks of topics in advance, prepares questions so she can copy and paste them in the chat window.

Whilst a discourse a moderator (our professor) is needed to shape the flow of discussion. Shaping means providing a framework (topic, predefined questions) but also cutting out trouble makers and preventing off topic discussions. Interestingly to me she proposed to forbid “me too” in the chat. Her reason was to prevent to flood a chat window. Some of these rules are also written down in the chatiquette.

Update 26.11.2015: Inserted the “What have I learned” section