Negotiating design in video conferencing
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| Year of publication | 2006 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | This discussion works with ongoing research in socially negotiated literacy practices in video conferencing. The participants include Erasmus European exchange students in an Advanced Communication module at the University of Wales Aberystwyth and participating students in the Faculties of Law and Social Studies at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. The students are connected by video conference twice to three times per semester to take part in discussions and presentations of team-based project work, for which prior exchange of project information takes place through student team-written web-sites. Through earlier research into literacy practices in video conferencing and how people adapt to the medium in terms of appropriate communication skills, we have found that socially negotiated aspects of design form a significant part of being able to communicate effectively in a video conference. In pursuing this research we have begun to work with a subject web-site to include student suggestions on critical aspects of how they would like to design video conferences to work with the contextual communicative needs of their self managed project work [http://users.aber.ac.uk/jpm/el21010/videoconf.html]. The outcome of this stage of our work suggests that students feel constrained by institutional recommendations of formal video conferencing environments and they are very enthusiastic when they are allowed to negotiate the design of conferences. We will encourage participants to discuss their own experiences and thoughts of design in video conferencing to share and exchange ideas and suggestions that can lead to a wider forum for the pedagogical aspect of designing video conferences to encourage greater social negotiation. This will also inform a wider practical perspective on the establishment of critical theory in socially negotiable literacy practices in video conferencing. |