Flash meetings

Report and comments on flash meeting

20th November 2006

The first flash meeting of our group took place on Monday, 20^th November. The meeting was organized by Maria and many thanks to her for that. The meeting did last almost one and half hours and all four group members were signed up though because of some technical problems some of us could not fully participate. For example Jaroslaw could only listen and comment by remarks in chat environment. See more about technical problems below, where you find a report composed by Kristina.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the draft versions of questions every group member had to prepare during last week-end (17.11-19.11). The propositions for questions were either written down in our working document or in separate documents of docs.google.com, which were made available for other group members.

1. First item on the agenda was specifying one more time the target group and definition of the concept of e-learning, as many of the questions proposed by group members did not follow the same focus point. So it was recapitulated that our target group will be internet users aged between 18 and 30 years and that we define e-learning in the broader way, i.e. including also searching for materials and news or using internet for whatever purpose by one’s own hand.

2. The second subject discussed encompassed “Demographic variables”. There was pointed out by Maria that we had prepared too few demo bloc questions. And that’s true, because the group had decided first to discuss what variables would be needed for differentiating our target group members. Otherwise there had been too much overlapping in work done by each of us. So next, the possible characteristics of respondents were reckoned and discussed whether they are relevant or not. The group decided to prepare a demo bloc including questions on respondent’s age, sex, educational level, occupancy, marital status and household composition, habitation.

3. Next all the questions prepared by group members were analysed and discussed. The discussion was lead by Maria, who kindly commented all drafts prepared. Thanks for that once more time. Unfortunately, not all of us could respond to the comments due to technical problems that were already referred to hereinabove and reported below.

4. Finally the further tasks were set. Jaroslaw kindly agreed to open for us a new document and copy all our drafts there. So subsequent work will be done there. First we will critically analyze all the questions and eliminate those which are not directly connected to our research questions, which do not consider properly our target group or which treat the concept of e-learning in the narrower sense than we have agreed on. After that we will see how many questions there will be left that suites to our questionnaire and the group will have a meeting for discussing what aspects of our research problem still are not covered and for what new questions are needed to be elaborated. This will be done during this week. The meeting time is still open.

This report is composed by Gerli (21.11.2006) but all group members should add their notes and specify mine in case I have forgotten something important.

Technical difficulties with flash meeting

Yesterday, 20th November, our group had our first flash meeting. It was supposed to start at 20:30 CET but for technical difficulties our meeting delayed about 30 minutes. For that reason it started at 21 CET. And it was mainly my problem that I couldn‘t connect to the flash meeting.

Firstly, I didn‘t know how to sign in, I mean other groups should know what they need to select guest option and they don‘t need to write e – mail, or password. Then you must write your‘s own nick name. And after this you will be able to see all your group members at flash meeting. But still, can be that you will not be able to hear anybody, I had this problem too. So then you need to select the microphone, to tick it. And after that finally I could hear, I could see and to talk to my wonderful groupJ. But still I couldn‘t hear so clear the voices of my group members. And the reason can be slow internet connection or other technical problems because Jaroslaw had technical difficulties too. He couldn‘t talk, or when he tried to talk we couldn‘t understand him. Thereby he started to chat.

But despite of all technical difficulties we had lovely flash meeting with our group and adjutant dr Maria. She kindly tried to lead us how to make effective questionnaire, many thanks to her.

And thanks to all in my group they tried to help me with connection and thanks to Andrej, he taught me and other Lithuanian’s how to use blog and yesterday he helped how to connect to flash meetingJ

[reported by Kristina]

 

Thus the suggestion would be:

There should be prepared a proper instruction for students how to get to the flash meeting (where and how they should sign in) and how to operate during the meeting (how to start the conversation and how to end it, where can they join and see the parallel chat and etc).

[Gerli on behalf of our group]

 

Technology of flashmeeting is very specific solution to meet people on the Internet. Our last meeting which took place on Monday was my first personal flashmeeting besides skype comunnication. I have to admit that besides my problem with microphone this kind of communication made on me good impression. Possiblity of recording our meeting is an option which introduce in whole conference some order and also help to collect and analyse our meeting. Some problems can appear when we are using such thing like flashmeeting first time, but I think that in the future it will be one of the most popular and effective solution for Internet relationships and community.

 

JK