Thing 6: Online Meetings and Webinars

Attending online meetings and webinars is old hat for me.  Maybe because there are many fewer archivists than librarians, most archivists seem to be more familiar with these methods of getting additional training than librarians are.  There are so few of us archivists that we often have to travel a distance to get in-person training on more advanced topics or to meet with one another. 

I find webinars be a useful and easy way to gain knowledge.  The most successful and enlightening webinar experiences for me have been those where several of us gather in a room to participate in the webinar.  We usually gather together like this to spread the cost among many people. The Society of American Archivists offers their webinars for the same price to one location whether there is one person in the room or twenty.  An unexpected benefit of this economically-motivated decision has been the engaging discussion in the room after the webinar is over.  The webinars are usually short enough that people don't feel the need to rush off afterwards, and often there is discussion of what people liked, didn't like or learned in the webinar.  Because of the medium and short format of webinars, people leading webinars often have to generalize.  The discussion in a room after a webinar helps participants better understand the nuances of the topic.

I find Rose, the librarian at Maria's post on online meetings interesting.  She said that she found it easier to ask questions in the online format than in a large meeting.  When I have been in group webinar meetings, I have not found that to be true.  People who often ask questions at in-person workshops do not ask them at webinars.  I don't know why - maybe because they know there are LOTS of people in the class?  Maybe because they don't know who else is in the class - there maybe some people prominent in the profession and the participants don't want to look dumb?

A difference between online and in-person training is the role of discussion between the participants.  Last weekend, I had the opportunity to attend the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference meeting in Alexandria, Virginia.  I ran into a former supervisor of mine who is now teaching both in-person and online courses at the iSchool at Drexel University.  She said one of the hardest things to get used to was the etiquette of chat in online courses.  Students would have side conversations in online courses in a way that they never would in-person.  She did not want to squelch student interaction, which can be difficult to develop in online courses, but she was finding it extremely difficult to keep track of the conversation and conduct her lesson.  She finally told her students that if they had a question that they wanted her to respond to right then - espcially on parts of the lesson that they were having difficulty understanding, they should type the question in the chat box in all caps.  Otherwise, she ignores most of the chat during the class and reads it after the class is over so she can discuss it and incorporate the ideas in future lessons.   I thought this was a good solution to the problem, but it also got me thinking about how many students might be missing the main focus of the lesson by getting too involved in side conversations through chat.  In an in-person class, it is easier for the instructor to teach and pause for questions, making sure that everyone is getting the benefit of both the lecture and the discussion. 

Online learning is great for the motivated learner, especially when limited to a specific topic.  However, if the training is required for staff or something you really want your staff to learn, and they are not signing up of their own accord, you may want to stick to in-person instruction.  A certain attorney I know, who shall remain nameless, does some of his continuing education online.  He just turns on the computer, loads up the training, and then goes about other business.  Although I would like to think that the library profession is more responsible than the law profession, this is probably a temptation for everyone who is required to learn something for which they did not take the initiative.  

I have added Web Junction to my RSS feed, something I probably wouldn't have done without this class.  So that in itself is probably worth the class's price of admission.  I have taken advantage of Web Junction classes before, and I have found them very useful.  Previously, I was only aware of classes that I received an email about. 

I have never moderated a webinar.  The tools look fairly easy to use, so Thing 6 is motivating me to take charge of a webinar or online meeting in the future.  However, I only learned how to moderate a conference call this morning.  First things first!