Orchestrating Closure

April 24, 2003.
Excerpt from online chat re paper Of Drugs, Messages and Time

Pia: Our Staff Development program offered a workshop for the faculty on How to Say Hello and Goodbye in the semester.

CaroleM: A debrief can enable students to see the ROI in their sharing and alternative methods of reusing them [i.e. work on file or work in progress]

CaroleM: sounds interesting Pia

Beverley: Pia, can you elaborate a bit?

Pia: The faculty agreed that we are good at getting started and acquainted in the class

lachance: When do you begin to say goodbye?

Pia: But at the end of the semester we faculty are mostly concerned with grading the finals

Pia: Rather than creating an environment to reflect on what was learned throughout the semester.

lachance: Portable & shareable creations worthy of commentary spring from recognizing we must say goodbye

lachance: a good learning situation creates memories.

This interaction led to another online contribution in the form of "Infrastructure and Transactions: students as custodian-enablers" for the Online In Higher Education, School of Arts and Sciences, Indiana University Purdue/University Fort Wayne, November 2003. That paper has a feisty conclusion:

I do know that characterizing the online learning experience as a perpetual field trip, a magical show and tell, means that we can do a lot more with less. And someone someday will tell some dean that online learning is all about an encounter: pedagogy of the oppressed meets the theatre of poverty.

And so for day 1120
06.01.2010