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E-networking and e-learning - how best to make use of it
09 November 2011
By Blanka Sengerová
When I was a postgraduate student, I attended the Royal Society of Chemistry's ChemCareers event at Birmingham's NEC to see what options were available to my as a chemistry/biochemistry graduate. That was in the days when it was done in a physical place, with people turning up to the location on the day. More recently the RSC have done their careers fair in electronic format, with online attendance, with the most recent event taking place last week.
I didn't make it to any of the sessions, although I felt I ought to try, but I simply could not work out how attending virtual seminars works and find the time during the working day to sit and follow discussions instead of working on what I needed to be working on in the lab (admittedly, it didn't help that I was away on holiday for two of the five days). I can see why this set-up is really useful because you can dip in and out of things, but feel that you still have to set aside the time to do this and many people don't. Many people think it might be interesting to dip into something, but then end up being busy with other things, which would not happen if they had set aside the time to attend a non-virtual event.
I found similar difficulty with following the discussions that Tennie has advertised in the past about HE and research related issues on the Guardian website - it feels that once you drop out of the conversation thread, you're mostly lost so if you can't spend the 3 hours in front of the screen you might as well not bother.
Maybe it makes me out of touch with technology (which I would argue I'm not, even though I'm still not on twitter and prefer to talk to my friends/family in person than have a discussion with some anonymous person on a blog), but I am trying to work out how best to make use of these events. Has anyone on here experienced something similar and would like to share some tips?
Sandrine Berges20 November 2011 at 07:59 AM
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My experience is limited, mostly because I never get around to participating. But I did try to participate in a conference that took place in Brazil and was being broadcast online, with I think, the possibility of participating in an online debate about the papers. I miss the actual time of the conference and found that a few days later, everything was gone... I've participated in discussion of papers on twitter (not philosophy - we're really not that good at new technology!) and found that I just couldn't follow the fast pace of the threads, esp. those containing links, etc.
Blanka Sengerová25 November 2011 at 02:07 PM
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>>I miss the actual time of the conference and found that a few days later, everything was gone...
Yes, I wonder whether the materials stay online beyond the allocated slot - I suppose it will depend on the conference type? In my non-work life, I volunteer for a local science centre (http://www.scienceoxford.com/), and the evening talks are webcast and recorded for the website for later viewing, which I find quite useful.
>>found that I just couldn't follow the fast pace of the threads, esp. those containing links, etc
I had that problem with the Guardian chats that Tennie has advertised on here, I simply lost track of the conversation...