The class on Video conferencing was amazing and truly showed an example of how video conferencing and collaboration could be used effectively to provide a rich experience for all of those involved. The course concept that could be analyzed is trust. This includes mutual accountability.
What didn't go well could be trust concerning people being on time and where they say they will be. This was demonstrated when we tapped into the Olson's room and they were not present. This could be a problem if there was supposed to be a meeting concerning a dire issue that needed to be collaborated to figure out. Since it is so costly to set the system up and get people in the room vs face to face, this type of trust and mutual accountability could be costly toward collaborating.
There are also many vulnerabilities that could take place. In many instances the cameras didn't show the whole class and we could not see everyone who was in the rooms on the other end so there could be a breach of trust when "spies" are in the room listening in on the conversation. The other person would be taking advantage of the non face to face aspects.
Trust wasn't an issue since there was a grounding aspect as Jeremy knew the individuals involved and we read material and saw the Facebook accounts which allowed us to know that the people we video conferenced with were who they said they were. We have an emotional relationship in a sense with Jeremy since he is the professor so we trust him and he trusts the people we video conferenced with. Because of this we believed everything they were saying. We also could see and hear them clearly which gave a greater sense of them being there and allowed us to see their movements and cues. We trusted their capabilities also since they showed examples of what we were doing in the background as well and spoke directly about information we read. In this case grounding allowed us to trust the other video conferencers. In ths case the ideas of trust requires touch is disproved.
The only time something did not go well was when there was a lag in the system. this caused a major delay. Another time things did not go well is when the Olson's were not in their office.
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You were right about how helpful it was to have Professor Birnholtz there to offer trust to all parties by facilitating discussion.
ReplyDeleteThis relates to what we learned about reputation systems, as Professor Birnholtz essentially vouched for each party's trustworthiness when we were connected. This jump started impression formation and pointed things in the right direction, making everyone feel more comfortable even though we were, to a certain degree, strangers (ignoring the fact that we had read work by the Olsons, of course).
Just as if he were selling us a new car, Professor Birnholtz certified that the other people in the video conference were highly rated.
A lot of people talked about presence awareness, but I think that is awesome that you discussed accountability and trust. For our class, because we knew Birnholtz , who know the Olsen's and other parties of the video conference, trust wouldn't be an issue. However, I can't say that the same would hold true for strangers. This brings me to this question; how can I expect people to act accordingly in a video conference? A lot would depend on impression management and formation as well as any reputation that the person has (depending on the background or name that person holds). Nice post.
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