Well…that was quite the experience!
After witnessing a good number of
webinars and presenting one myself over the last few weeks, I have to say that
it is indeed an art! There are so many ways in which you can lose control in a
webinar – technology issues, vociferous chat – that you really have to think
meticulously about how to best shape the instructional experience for your
audience. From my own personal webinar experience, there were so many issues
with coordination, audio problems, and unanswered chat questions that it felt
overwhelming. It made me really appreciate a good webinar when I saw one, and
my classmates displayed some excellent examples of a good webinar!
One thing that I learned is that even
if you have technical issues or some mistake is made in a webinar, that does
not necessarily define your audience’s experience with your webinar (as was the
case for Anna and Kate’s presentation). I was pretty set in my assumption that
people are more judgmental in an online forum and would be less forgiving of
mistakes. Maybe it was because our class members are more sympathetic with each
other, but I did not really find that to be the case. If presenters made an
effort to be transparent about their difficulties and constantly communicated
their efforts to fix issues, webinar participants tended to be forgiving and
kept in good humor.
In terms of the instructional value
of webinars, I am still on the fence as to their potential. They are great for
introducing learners to new topics and asking critical questions, but they are
also limited in their interactivity. You can be creative with the chat or the
audio/video features, but I have not seen any examples where you would be able
to hold an in-depth, interactive lesson on a consistent basis. Maybe that is
not the point of the webinar, but I really wonder how we can push the
boundaries of this medium so that we create more meaningful learning
experiences. It’s a question I’ve wrestling with the entire semester: how can
we think beyond these concepts of information literacy and transfer to create
more helpful and innovative instructional design strategies? Maybe it’s yet
another case of reinventing the wheel. Or maybe we have an opportunity as
librarians to think of new possibilities in instruction that previous
generations have never been able to do before. In any case, I am hopeful that we as a class will think of new ways to shape, iterate, and assess the library teaching experiences that impact people's lives.
Your point about the utility of webinars made me think of MOOCs. Although I've discovered that online learning isn't really for me, I know that some people feel that they get a lot out of MOOCs and find them as engaging and interactive as face-to-face learning. I know MOOCs are much longer than a half-hour or hour seminar, but perhaps they have some aspects that can be implemented in webinars as well.
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