Blog # 3 McLuhans Tetrad - Wiki Assignment
While watching McLuhan’s Wake, I tried to listen to the ideas presented and understand how they can be applied today. By the end of the movie, I was somewhat skeptical about the value of McLuhan’s tetrad so many years later. It wasn’t until I began to apply the questions to my assigned technology that I began to see how universal his theory is. Once I understood the parameters, I could see how McLuhan’s Laws of Media can be applied to any piece of technology.
Many, if not all of the groups broke along the lines of one member being the primary person on one question. Our group decided this almost immediately. Once all the answers were posted, we would comment on each answer and work out any disagreements. When completed, each answer should represent the thoughts from all group members. As the assignment stated, each group should form a consensus or describe the issues that made a consensus impossible. As I listened to each group present, I didn’t hear many differing opinions. I saw no evidence of disagreement, my own group included.
As I though about this I found myself examining the way we broke down the questions. Personally, I found it was easier to define each segment before moving to the next. Once you have determined what is extended, it becomes easier to define what is obsolete. Each segment builds on the foundation laid before. If you had to only answer one segment, such as what is retrieved, it becomes much harder to formulate a good answer to the question. This could explain why there was so much agreement. Once the question has been answered by one individual, it is easier to agree if you don’t already have your own point of view.
After this realization, I thought of how the assignment may have differed if it was a traditional group assignment. In a face to face meeting, ideas are introduced to the group dialog and varying opinions are introduced immediately. The group then works out the difference or agrees to disagree. In my own experience though, the outcome is still usually the same. One person usually throws out an answer and then everyone else comments on it. This scenario is not much different than what we did online. I then struggled to determine if the issue was with the wiki itself, the assignment, or the individual group members.
The wiki (Hawaiian for quick) allows “all students to contribute to a space that is immediately and automatically updated” (Bold, 2006). It is hard to find fault with a technology that allows members of the group to make their thoughts immediately available. The assignment could be completed equally as well in an online collaboration or a standard group task with everyone meeting face to face. The only issue I found with the assignment was the time constraint of one week. Given additional time, I think varying opinions would have eventually surfaced. Finally, I looked at my group and the process we followed. We determined how we wanted to answer each question. We each did our portion and commented on other answers and had a complete assignment in the end. I still hadn’t pinpointed what was wrong.
In conclusion, I realized there was nothing wrong with the technology or the assignment. In addition, nothing was actually “wrong” with the groups either. Had we tackled the assignment from a different angle, where we each answered every question and then merged the answers to a true collaborative answer, more disagreement may have been visible. In the end the answers were supposed to be a consensus. Our presentations showed just that.
References
Bold, Mary. (Spring 2006). Use of Wikis in graduate course work. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 17, p5(10). Retrieved September 25, 2006 from Expanded Academic ASAP via Thomson Gale:
Many, if not all of the groups broke along the lines of one member being the primary person on one question. Our group decided this almost immediately. Once all the answers were posted, we would comment on each answer and work out any disagreements. When completed, each answer should represent the thoughts from all group members. As the assignment stated, each group should form a consensus or describe the issues that made a consensus impossible. As I listened to each group present, I didn’t hear many differing opinions. I saw no evidence of disagreement, my own group included.
As I though about this I found myself examining the way we broke down the questions. Personally, I found it was easier to define each segment before moving to the next. Once you have determined what is extended, it becomes easier to define what is obsolete. Each segment builds on the foundation laid before. If you had to only answer one segment, such as what is retrieved, it becomes much harder to formulate a good answer to the question. This could explain why there was so much agreement. Once the question has been answered by one individual, it is easier to agree if you don’t already have your own point of view.
After this realization, I thought of how the assignment may have differed if it was a traditional group assignment. In a face to face meeting, ideas are introduced to the group dialog and varying opinions are introduced immediately. The group then works out the difference or agrees to disagree. In my own experience though, the outcome is still usually the same. One person usually throws out an answer and then everyone else comments on it. This scenario is not much different than what we did online. I then struggled to determine if the issue was with the wiki itself, the assignment, or the individual group members.
The wiki (Hawaiian for quick) allows “all students to contribute to a space that is immediately and automatically updated” (Bold, 2006). It is hard to find fault with a technology that allows members of the group to make their thoughts immediately available. The assignment could be completed equally as well in an online collaboration or a standard group task with everyone meeting face to face. The only issue I found with the assignment was the time constraint of one week. Given additional time, I think varying opinions would have eventually surfaced. Finally, I looked at my group and the process we followed. We determined how we wanted to answer each question. We each did our portion and commented on other answers and had a complete assignment in the end. I still hadn’t pinpointed what was wrong.
In conclusion, I realized there was nothing wrong with the technology or the assignment. In addition, nothing was actually “wrong” with the groups either. Had we tackled the assignment from a different angle, where we each answered every question and then merged the answers to a true collaborative answer, more disagreement may have been visible. In the end the answers were supposed to be a consensus. Our presentations showed just that.
References
Bold, Mary. (Spring 2006). Use of Wikis in graduate course work. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 17, p5(10). Retrieved September 25, 2006 from Expanded Academic ASAP via Thomson Gale:
posted by mcavallaro at 3:36 PM
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