Development and the Internet > Rotisserie Feedback

I have very much enjoyed it and hope for more. I needed more time per section, for various reasons, not just because I hoped to spend most time on it at weekends (when it was all over). Fortunately some holiday time overlapped

Initially the Rotisserie posts seemed confusing. With hindsight I feel they narrowed my approach. I prioritised responding to the Rotisserie instead of studying the materials in depth.  Also I had initial troubles navigating. I only found the responses I’d been directed to. I missed some good stuff, that in other circumstances I would have read and possibly replied to.

I felt a responsibility to read carefully and consider responses to items sent to me – even if in the end I did not have time to reply, or even if I didn’t have a particular interest in the post.

I did appreciate it when others bothered to reply to me.

I took more time than for usual discussions.

I found the format interesting. I like the idea of directed questions with a publication date and staged follow up. I think I would rather be presented with all the published answers and choose for myself which ones I take further. I would have preferred a week for initial reading before the Rotisserie started (with notice of the question) The following week could have had the question publication date, and the several stages for response, and allowed more time for the background reading.

Thanks for running this one.

How did your rotisserie discussions differ from other online discussions you've had?

I do not have much experience with networking. When I participated in the web board, I was answering a question. With H20, there is a systematic, action and reflection process. There is a feedback and a reminder where as on the board, there was no one to remind me on my assignments.

Were your posts and the posts of others substantively different that they would have been using other discussion tools?

Of course most of our posts differed substantively. However, I am not quite sure whether or not my friends were using other discussion tools. It was evident that many of the participants had very good exposure with the Internet. Some had real projects, and shared with us actual, or experientialists. The volunteer from Uganda and that one in Yoruba, are excellent projects.

Did you participate more or less in the discussions due to the nature of the Rotisserie discussions?

This is a challenging question. The nature of a rotisserie can convey a multiple or can be taken to mean i) Policy, ii) Commerce or entrepreneurial, iii) Learning, and iv) Technical arena. Me personally, I was impressed with what went on in my mind. I studied/read projects that my group presented. If I was in my office, I could have never dreamed of what was going on. I had a very busy schedule and there isn't an Internet in the office.  

Did you take more or less time writing your answers than you would have on a typical discussion board?

On a discussion board, it takes less time to write an answer. I was already writing comments on some projects on the development gateway. That was a mental piece of exercise. I even met friends and did communicate in the course of doing the BOLD H20 discussions.

The main difference is the structure of the BOLD series and its operations lead by the management team's expertise. In addition the resources and the references are unique. Absolutely, the posts are well thought and and directs the development of the project. This was a special participation for me and I took more time to think and answer.
Any one who particates may as well become an expert on our topic.
THANK YOU. I look forward to realizing the benefits.

I am really impressed with the idea behind the Rotisserie. It is a great way to accomodate busy people already overloaded with lots of information.

... the assignments are short and easy to fit in a busy schedule, and on the other hand if you want to stay in the rotisserie, you can't lag: you More...

The system is very good for encouraging intelligent commentary, but it does not stimulate community development as much as typical discussion boards. The content of the responses is better than usual. This may be due to the subject matter of the course more than the working of the rotisserie.

The felling of being in a conversation is not as present in this system. I liked the assignment aspect of the rounds. It was a good incentive to stay involved. i would be very interested in seeing the system used to discuss events occurring each day. i think it would be interesting to use the assignments and ratings to work through a more isolated problem that all participants are intimately aware of.

For structured projects I think H2O is a very useful addition to the current set of online interaction solutions.

..is what I said too.

I found the discussion tool used in this BOLD series excellent as a busy self employed person, the email prompts were greatly appreciated, the posting and thread reading/analysis was similar to others I've used in this and other forums, but my participation was greater this series than those previously 'attended', mainly because of the email prompts and less than I intended due to work commitments (overload actually) as we were at a quarterly reporting point for businesses here in Australia during the series.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr

I hope you don't mind the vernacular in my title. But I've seen so many training-discussions peter out here in Old Europe, so it was nice to be egged on, and to be able to read so many interesting posts.

The initial documentation was very well done. I was fascinated by the "hole in the wall" project. I wish our local ICT-in-teaching specialists could/would access it. I sent them the link for the course - let's hope!

Cheers

Claude

Claude,
Glad you enjoyed this.

Hi,

I enroled in this online program when it was midway through its course. Hence I never got a chance to fully participate in the online discussions.

Overall, I find More...

The Rotisserie discussions were great.  I enjoyed participating in them.  I would have liked more time to really digest and think about each area before being rushed to respond.  Since I have participated in other discussion forums, I really didn't find this one much different.  But I did like the fact that we were assigned a specific question to respond to.  This made me feel more a part of the discussion rather than just responding to everything.  I still found the discussion responses to be disconnected, however, like many of the discussion threads that I have seen.  In this discussion thread for example, only a few people really discussed or engaged in someone else's discussion.  People would end up establishing their own agendas and not really engaging the other respondent's idea or thought.  I found this rather disappointing.  

Some people are also still very judgmental, so instead of attempting to converse with another, they would make judgmental statements, such as, " I find this vague," etc.  The reason that we are taking these online courses is to first learn new information and then to be challenged by the course through our thinking and responses to questions posed to us.

I would have spent the same amount of time (and more) for any discussion forum.  I would have preferred to have had 2 weeks for each module to really learn and absorb the information well.  I conscientiously spent a  considerable number of hours reading the materials, taking notes and thinking about the questions.  Sometimes, because of my schedule, I would not have enough time to thoroughly think about questions and to respond.  In these instances, I felt rushed to answer with the time limit imposed on us.  In some modules, I did not get an opportunity to respond and had to move on to the next module.  For example, I had a very busy week during the module on Policy.  I felt shortchanged, because I wasn't able to get to the module until the weekend, and the deadline had passed for my posting.  Further, I had to move on to the next module, in order to stay on track with the course.  Having two weeks for each module with the  timed questions paced evenly and reasonably over the two weeks would be great.  Course developers forget to take into consideration, that many of us taking this course are working professionals on regular jobs and also trying to read the vast amount of material you give us to cover in a very short time period.  A full time student could handle this very easily, but those of us who have very rigorous work schedules had to make great sacrifices to keep up.

I liked a lot of the questions posed to us for discussion and wanted to really have enough time to conceptualize my theoretical analysis of the scenario or the model. Some questions, however, were pretty broad and vague, such as the first policy question.

All in all, this was a great online course.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt good about the fact that this time around I was able to participate in the discussions.  In past courses, my time constraints did not allow me much time for participation after spending hours reading the materials and visiting the assigned links.

I do hope that these courses continue because I am learning much and my knowledge and expertise in intellectual property and Internet issues and development is growing tremendously.  Thank you for providing us with these opportunities.

I agree with the comments in the above post. This post caused me to think once more about the qualities of our online discussions.  I again want to say that More...

For the most part, I  quite enjoyed using the Rotisserie for this class. I felt that, as was likely intended, it did indeed cause me to participate more frequently than I might otherwise have done.
It legitmized my participation when the class was considering topics upon which I might have ordinarily felt too 'un-expert' to comment.

But I do have a few comments—some about the Rotisserie, some about the Course—which I've made below and, in some cases, on the Webboard:

1. It would be nice to get more than one response upon which to comment  OR the possibility to select one response from several responses. I've received several posts where I am just not sure how to respond (either post is  off-topic or unclear); this has been frustrating on occasion.

2.  I admit that I am not personally inclined to critique posts, especially in an ansynchronous internat'l forum.

In such a situation the constraints of the Rotisserie means that one can't ask quickly for clarification on the post. I don't feel very comfortable giving criticism or issuing a *quite contrary* opinion to a post in an environment where there are large possibilities for my misunderstanding the author's intent. In some ways this is optimal yet in other ways, it is not.

So I think that real debate over contentious subjects would probably be more likely to occur in a synchronous chat, where clarification and questioning can occur.

3. I  didn't check Webboard until quite late. I missed some of the content (chat times, etc) that was placed there. I had assumed that Webboard had equivalent (though less discursive) content than H20. As I found out, this was not true.

4. I am a bit frustrated by the layout of the discussion threads and wish that there was an easier way to see all comments for a thread.

Also the thread headers often are quite compressed (only a few words) and then go for several lines, with the entire thread thus spanning several scrolls and go quite severely right across my screen.

5. It would be nice to have all the materials available ASAP and to be able to start the reading and responses as soon as the topic is announced—except where this wouldn't be a good idea instructionally.

6. I also yesterday wanted to add clarifying comments (in answer to questions from my responder) on the thread for my response but found that I couldn't. This was a bit of a bummer.

7. I found that, for myself, in the context of having a week to read and to reply, I didn't do many (okay, almost none) of the Assignments. The pull of the Rotisserie caused me to allocate my limited time to that medium when push came to ...pull/shove. ; - )

8. It would be nice to have an ending online chat for the course.

All in all, however,  I can see using the Rotisserie for other projects that I might design and have already suggested that colleagues take a look at it.

Thank you so much for your helpful suggestions.  

We actually included chat in the first years of our online programs.  There are some limitations, however; the different time zones make More...

To respond to some of your points:

1.  I liked having an assigned question.  This made me feel like an integral part of the course, rather than most distance learning More...

i am afraid i joined the discussion far too late. so i can not make a contribution that would be appropriate. from what i see it looks quite good. good interface and easy to use. sorry i can not say another more at this time.

I like the concept, but it assumes you'll 'want' to respond to what you are being requested to respond to.
I think a simple what you like and don't like survey upfront BEFORE the start of the rotisserie would help the 'system' understand who should get what types of questions and so forth.

So, rather than helping me respond like I wanted to it made me feel like I was waisting my time responding to others that I didn't wish to, thus taking away from finding those that I would have engaged further with.

Being part of this community,  i think the participants should respond to what is requested by the project leader. The system clearly identifies the procedures for active involvement and the More...

I am new here. I'll post more responses later.

Thank you very much for your acknowledgement that I am new here. When I read (this) reminder on my Inbox I felt uneasy because, I knew my assignments were sent More...

In fact I was impressed with the whole rotisserie format. At the beginning I have to acknowledge that it took me some time to get acquainted with the system. But overall, the experience was great on several levels. It was engaging in the way the different participants were linked to each other, which created a strong platform for reflexion. It was not like if you were just writing posts, but it provided enough room to think in proper ways about the issues and the way participants were able to disseminate their points among each other. In terms of learning, the accent was also highlighted by positioning a technological touch that enabled cross-thinking and mostly this trans-cultural framework that in ways gave us a glimpse about the universal context under which issues of development and human progress should be taken with pro-active and participatory measures.

Please explain how you see the technology enabling cross thinking.

What was original here is the fact that we did not receive all the posts of all the participants, what is usually borring. Beeing asked to answer or react to a particular aspect of the debate was a wise strategy and I think this approach should be better developed. I think that this aspect of the thing made me more participate to the discussion because I had to concentrate myself on one aspect instead of having to read a lot of writings. In fact, I did not take more time writing. But the fact that I had to react to precise questions made me give the essential of all that I could give in a more elaborated way.

I would like now to make a proposal. Should the series undertake a further step in which maybe we will concentrate on particular and precise aspect of ICTs in developing countries. For instance, we should discuss how to elaborate relevant projects using ICTS for development, etc..

Please describe your experience with the Rotisserie during this BOLD series.  How did your rotisserie discussions differ from other online discussions you've had?
Because I was assigned topics and posts to respond to I commented on and paid attention to posts that I might otherwise have ignored. This did not stop me from also commenting on posts that I was interested in but not assigned to. Perhaps because the system increases exposure to others viewpoints the responses are less argumentative, and more inquisitive. There seemed to be fewer dogmatic discussions and more respect for different views. This sometimes caused some posts to lack critical focus, but this seemed to be self correcting so that as the series progressed there was less empty laudatory rhetoric and more focused ‘problem solving’.
However the system has a problem, how does one respond to an incomprehensible post, or a completely off topic or off the wall post.
Were your posts and the posts of others substantively different that they would have been using other discussion tools?  
The posts of most participants were considerably longer.
Did you participate more or less in the discussions due to the nature of the Rotisserie discussions?  
More
Did you take more or less time writing your answers than you would have on a typical discussion board?
More.
Additional Comments
The question is how to ensure that everyone is on the same page so that meaningful discussion can take place. While the readings undoubtedly helped in this series in which participants were self selected and motivated it is not clear that this approach would work with other groups. Perhaps computer assessed comprehension tests of reading would assist this in more conventional education settings.

What was the consequence of rating other peoples' posts?

The option to mark as best post per project is not very useful since one can really only determine this after one has made all the posts. Also some cultures are uncomfortable with anything as self congratulatory.

Rotisserie confused me initially. Even now I am not sure if I understand the small details of how it works. I was surprised that one of the discussions was closed by the time I could answer.
Involved more time and longer posts than normal -- which is good.
But this also means that the discussions were more formal -- which may not be good always.

I suppose if you were in the classes this would be less of an issue. I would like to know how the number of points that could be awarded was More...