Where is my study group?
I started my bachelors degree in 1975. Within two years I'd earned an appointment as a Teaching Assistant for the Computer Science faculty, even though I was still an undergraduate. There were about a dozen of us TAs working for the faculty altogether.
It would happen two or three times every week. A group of us would settle into lunch or a few beers at the Student Union Pub. Somebody would make a provocative statement or float an idea. Usually the topic related to a subject we were either studying or tutoring. Then we'd poke it and stretch it. We'd pick up subtleties we'd missed and see things from new perspectives. We were making sense of it all, even if sometimes we ended up with more questions than answers.
We were an informal Study Group. Our face-to-face sessions were incredibly valuable because we could cover so much breadth and depth quickly and directly. We respected each other without question.
In retrospect, we were already relying on a connectivist distribution of our knowledge too, as we each brought our particular expertise and passions to the Group, and relied on others to do the same.
Sometimes we'd get stuck in with a Professor for a couple of hours exploring and debating particular subjects. It was exhilerating.
Now thirty-one years later I've started my Masters Degree. How times have changed. Where is my Study Group? The available collaborative online facilities don't even come close to providing a medium for an ordinary conversation, let along the breadth and depth of a Study Group. Asynchronous discussion forums are useful, but the energy and focus of a group of people gathered together in a room is sadly missing.
I want technology that lets me join an online Study Group that affords nothing less than the kind of engagement and facility of such an intellectually productive face-to-face gathering. Can a computer-mediated gathering ever be that transparent?
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