Monday, December 17, 2007

Social Networks

In my doctoral program at UPenn, my “team” of four has been using a wiki and Skype to extend our learning between face-to-face meetings. While the tools have kept us connected on some level, I feel that we really haven’t yet experienced the benefits of the network. More on that a little later…

In the program, we are wrapping up a quantitative methods module. I suggested to one of my cohort members, Jenn (not on my team), that we establish a wiki to encourage all 22 cohort members to contribute their knowledge and understanding about statistical methods. Since we all were looking for something to tie our work together, we thought this might be a good way to tap into the thinking of other cohort members. (Surprisingly, we don’t get to do that often.) The response to the project was very positive from many cohort members. But here is the catch, and I think it is a problem with networking electronically. In order for it to work, people need to regularly participate. Otherwise, it becomes, yet again, the work of a few, while the rest sit, content and happy with their individualistic model of learning. This “project” is only a few days old, but I am interested to see how people follow through on their initial enthusiasm.

And I think follow-through is also the issue with my team. It is a lot of work to stay connected to people. And often it seems that it is more work than simply doing your own thinking in isolation. People who lead a “check off” life find connecting to people through technology a nuisance. “Just let me finish it so I can move on to the next thing - so I can check that one off, too.” Those that are really interested in learning find the payoffs of connecting far greater than work required. Count me in this second group.

At school (in my day job), I have a group of teachers working with Ning to collaborate and share ideas and multimedia. They are in three different buildings so I’m hoping this experiment will strengthen their relationships and learning between our monthly face-to-face meetings. They’ve been at this for a few weeks, and I can already see how the novelty of it is wearing off. Some need prompting and some don’t. It’s just too easy to fall back into the same old routines. Kinda like dieting, I guess…

Anyone with experiences in getting folks from 0 to 90 in not a lot of time where networking is concerned? Or is this just a hump we need to get over?

Posted by Randy on 12/17 at 10:36 AM
Leadership • Social Networking • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages