In July I spent the weekend at the Latitude Festival in
Suffolk. It was the first time I had been to a music festival as opposed
to concerts and also the first time I had been camping in a long time.
I blogged about the weekend http://bit.ly/1fuC8tl and very much enjoyed
it.
We arrived on the Thursday night and so started to explore
on the Friday. We set off from our small campsite, through a bigger
campsite, through the 'village' of shops and facilities and headed towards the
arenas.
Then I was struck by the thought 'wow, this is a much bigger
place than I expected' and 'I have no idea what to expect or where to find
anything' and then realised that I had had this feeling before, in fact very
recently.
It was the same sort of feeling as starting a MOOC……
My next thought was ok, what sort of filtering system do I
have to put in place in order to make sense of this?
This has been my immediate response to participating in MOOCs and I thought that although it wasn't exactly the same situation, there might be some common strategies that could be used?
This has been my immediate response to participating in MOOCs and I thought that although it wasn't exactly the same situation, there might be some common strategies that could be used?
The similarities were that:
I was in an environment that was massive, there were
thousands of people and I didn't know anyone (apart from the person I was
with). Thousands of participants and no way of knowing how many or who they
were.
I was in an environment that I had signed up to, entered
(either physically or virtually) but didn't know what it consisted of – I
didn't know the lie of the land. I could see that the people were in the
environment and interacting but didn't have an overview of the whole place.
I could see that the people involved had a purpose, they were
individuals or groups and they were there to see/ hear someone or something. There
was an itinerary – i.e. it was possible to find a list of performers (lectures)
and there was a list of tents / arenas (rooms) in which you could enter to see
the performance.
Most
importantly, there was a lot happening,
too many events for one individual to see or participate in them all – it was
necessary to dip in and dip out of events and 'go with the flow'.
So that
is what we did at the music festival – we picked a couple of performances each
day that we wanted to see and then just wandered around and stopped to see or
listen to whatever was happening – sometimes we followed the crowd to the
popular arenas, sometimes we chose a less busy place in order to interact more
and sometimes we went back to the campsite to get away from it all.
Obviously there were differences, one is mainly a physical
environment and was entertainment (the music festival) – there were no learning
outcomes that I was trying to achieve.
I could
actually see (hear and touch) the other participants, I knew they existed and we
were all in the same place. It was real but I was surprised by the similarities
in the experience.
Last
weekend we went to the Twenty20 cricket match at Chester le Street,
Durham. It was a great day – England v
Australia and England won – women's match in the morning and men's in the
afternoon.
Again
there were a large number of people participating in an event but this time it
didn't have any of those moocish overwhelming feelings nor music festival
feelings.
I think
this is because everyone had a seat – there was a defined space where each
individual was placed – there was no choice and no decision to make about where
you would place yourself.
There
was only one performance at a time, one match, everyone was watching and
listening to the same thing at the same time.
There was a start and finish time and it was a performance with rules
that those playing and those watching knew about and adhered to. You
could interact with other participants but only the other members of the
audience not the players although I suppose by cheering (especially the barmy
army) you could influence the performance.
I don't
know whether to feel 'moocish' is good or bad – I don't think it matters as
long as you recognise it when it overwhelms you.