Page 220 - Štemberger Tina, Čotar Konrad Sonja, Rutar Sonja, Žakelj Amalija. Ur. 2022. Oblikovanje inovativnih učnih okolij. Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem
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n Tabak and Damir Kukić
– as if the friend became a new person in a new situation. The same hap-
pened to other two students, who were surprised by reading a conference
paper by another student about his knowledge about digital libraries. This
suggests that not only a network should be treated as dynamic but also its
nodes, since the nodes are changed in different situations and different con-
texts, transforming the strong ties into weak ties and vice versa. It also poses a
question whether creativity is result of network configuration of ‘smart peo-
ple or smart contexts’ or both, that is ‘people in situation/context’ (Barab and
Plucker 2002)?
The online conference enabled significantly more situations for creative
moments than it would be possible in a traditional classroom setting. How-
ever, it was not enough to merely employ the Web 2.0 media in the course
to burst students’ creativity. The level of creativity was highly depended
of the ways how the media was used. While the conference application in
both cases provided a space for creativity because it was used as interactive
medium, in the case of University of Zenica, the glossary was used rather as
a medium for one-way communication, preventing the interactivity, which
could enable further circulation and open the space for multiple contextu-
alisation. While the glossary itself was a collaborative work, each student
worked only on her or his entry. There was no obligation to even read other
entries. Despite some student reported a fruitful interaction with other stu-
dents’ entries, the most of entries were never visited by other students. Our
proposition is that if the way of using the glossary was such that encour-
ages more interactivity, there could be more opportunity for contextualisa-
tion as more situations (and thus more persons-in-situations) could provide
more weak ties. These weak ties in the case of conference presentations cre-
ated uncertainty, which was a major trigger for the circulation of information
practices and thus for distributed creativity. Based on this experience from
the first semester, the next semester some things have been changed to
improve the students’ experience. One thing that students had issues with
was too wide area of discussion in too little class. Students were allowed to
pick a topic on five wide areas of the themes related to new media. In the
second semester, the students agreed to chose only one areas, which made
discussions more focused. However, a single topic did not match all students’
interests, so debate lose a bit on students’ motivation.
Conclusions
This text provided a comparative analysis of the implementation of the
teaching methodologies that uses the online academic conference as an
220
– as if the friend became a new person in a new situation. The same hap-
pened to other two students, who were surprised by reading a conference
paper by another student about his knowledge about digital libraries. This
suggests that not only a network should be treated as dynamic but also its
nodes, since the nodes are changed in different situations and different con-
texts, transforming the strong ties into weak ties and vice versa. It also poses a
question whether creativity is result of network configuration of ‘smart peo-
ple or smart contexts’ or both, that is ‘people in situation/context’ (Barab and
Plucker 2002)?
The online conference enabled significantly more situations for creative
moments than it would be possible in a traditional classroom setting. How-
ever, it was not enough to merely employ the Web 2.0 media in the course
to burst students’ creativity. The level of creativity was highly depended
of the ways how the media was used. While the conference application in
both cases provided a space for creativity because it was used as interactive
medium, in the case of University of Zenica, the glossary was used rather as
a medium for one-way communication, preventing the interactivity, which
could enable further circulation and open the space for multiple contextu-
alisation. While the glossary itself was a collaborative work, each student
worked only on her or his entry. There was no obligation to even read other
entries. Despite some student reported a fruitful interaction with other stu-
dents’ entries, the most of entries were never visited by other students. Our
proposition is that if the way of using the glossary was such that encour-
ages more interactivity, there could be more opportunity for contextualisa-
tion as more situations (and thus more persons-in-situations) could provide
more weak ties. These weak ties in the case of conference presentations cre-
ated uncertainty, which was a major trigger for the circulation of information
practices and thus for distributed creativity. Based on this experience from
the first semester, the next semester some things have been changed to
improve the students’ experience. One thing that students had issues with
was too wide area of discussion in too little class. Students were allowed to
pick a topic on five wide areas of the themes related to new media. In the
second semester, the students agreed to chose only one areas, which made
discussions more focused. However, a single topic did not match all students’
interests, so debate lose a bit on students’ motivation.
Conclusions
This text provided a comparative analysis of the implementation of the
teaching methodologies that uses the online academic conference as an
220
