Final post from Orlando – on the effect of conferences
If you’d asked me halfway through EISTA how well it was going, I would have said not very well. I would have been quite sceptical about whether the university’s money had been well spent in sending me halfway round the world. This was only partly because of the lack of internet access in my room, and the other technical issues. It wasn’t the world’s best facilitated conference or the world’s best attended. And I spent a lot of time sleeping. But I think in the end that the value was cumulative, in enabling me to recharge my intellectual batteries and giving me a variety of new directions for my research.
Under normal circumstances, the value of conferences lies in the new directions you get from papers you hear, and new contacts you make through networking (and occasionally the warm glow of satisfaction from having one of your own well received). My scepticism about this one derives from the fact that I didn’t hear a great number of riveting presentations (some of the presenters didn’t even turn up), and I didn’t get to network with a great number of people. (Apart from my own colleagues – and there’s something seriously strange about travelling several thousand miles to do that.)
So the question arises what value did I get from the conference. There are three areas where think it had a great effect, none of which were so apparent at the time. The first was that there were in fact a few good papers – Steve Joordans on peer assessment, which was for me the stand out paper of the whole conference, Annette Jonsson on the influence of gender on forum participation, and Maria Traum on language and PowerPoint. I recognised Joordans as powerful at the time. The other two were interesting but their value crept up on me later, as I began over the next few days to weave together all the various strands of thinking that the conference had brought to light. The second was that conversations with colleagues and with new friends helped in the process of reworking and critiquing my own work and my approach to it.
I was able to concentrate on the uses and application of activity theory to my own work for the first time in – I can’t remember how long. I had quite a few moments of conference downtime, during which I read papers and re-examined my theoretical approach. The conference was busy but I confess I did not attend everything. I used to feel guilty if I missed a single session at a conference. Now I realise that I need my own pace at which to absorb new material, and if that involves an afternoon out so be it. I confess that the reason I missed the morning plenaries was that I was still asleep. 7.30 a.m. is simply not a civilised starting time. And being required then to sit silent in your seat for two hours and attempt to absorb the wisdom of three successive keynotes (every morning) is, in my case, a recipe for disaster.
So what was the effect? Well, it ruined my presentation. Or advanced it, depending on how you see it. The presentation was a work in progress, analysing with activity theory how moderators moderate. I had a relatively good understanding of activity theory and enough good evidence from the forums I analysed to build a picture of how moderating worked under quite demanding conditions, and how it could possibly be made more effective. During the conference I revisited some of the more complex elements of activity theory (actually they’re all complex, I’ve decided, it’s just that some are more complex than others…), and realised that I could make it work better, and provide a more pointed analysis of moderating work and better strategies for improving it. This seems to be growing in importance as more work takes place online, and as facilities like OpenLearn and SocialLearn begin to gain traction. So all in all it was a valuable time in which a lot of strands came together very fruitfully and outlined clearly how my research can develop. Trouble is I have a progress report to write by the end of August…