Event Education

Looking at the images found here it occurred to me that the way events are handled online and in person could be a way to handle classes.

In the same way physical seats are better than digital seats for conferences, they are better in classes. So, with that similarity it seems like a reasonable leap that ways to support digital attendees for conferences could be used to support digital attendees for classes.

The second image looks just like mapping out a social network. If that is the same, which it should be, the things that work for social networks should work for a new arrangement for the class environment. The same problems are also likely to show up.

A class is like a conference or workshop. People find out about it somehow, and people attend. Hopefully they take something away from it. The difference is in the assessment. That will have to be dealt with, but there are ways.

Precedent

Personally I've been attending meetings through Teamspeak for about a year and a half, attended a webinar and gone looking through videos and audios of conferences I couldn't attend. Twitter has been used in some of the conferences in conjunction with normal presentations. All these things spread the discussions and knowledge beyond the physical location. They also supplement the event for those who physically attend.

Similarity

A lecture is a lecture whether you are attending a class or conference. So, why would the things that improve conferences not improve classes? Interactivity, engagement, discussion and more that normal conference goers can attest to the effectiveness of should be able to help the effectiveness of the classroom.

Then there are the digital versions that only have digital attendance. There is a great example of the potential for distance learning.

Prototyping

Conferences offer a wonderful opportunity to test ways to improve education, because they are classes of a sort. The same goes for any event where information is disseminated. Rather than trying to work with the 12 - 15 week classes, why not test with the couple day and couple week events that take place online and in person? See what works, and then you can add that to the value of the event.

Social/Emergent Education

If you think of a class like an event in interconnected social networks, there are a couple problems beyond the assessment. These are things like getting the right information to the right people and other social network management issues. Once the assessment issue is taken care of we will need to tackle the problem of properly making a portfolio/profile/bio.

How many people can design emergent behavior? Not many, but that's a part of the equation to be handled. Designing emergent gameplay isn't easy, but it is well worth the effort to foster. I think there is a lot to learn from designing for emergent gameplay in the way education is improved.

Then we need to keep in mind the pros and . Keeping the data management manageable will be a big part of making this stuff work, both on the user and provider ends of things.

Have fun, spread the word and tell me what you think,
Igen Oukan

Event Education

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