Re: [Air-l] Korean students
Dear AoIR members Regarding the Korean students, I feel sorry that you started to recognize them as spammers. As a matter of fact, I asked them to post in order to gain some experience about an internationally-running scholarly mailing list on the Internet. Although I have taught them the way in which email should be written when sending to the mailing list, I have also noticed that they did not communicate with you properly. Since students do not have a high level of language skills in English, they hardly shared their ideas, information, and/or thoughts with international audience. But please understand that they are undergraduate kids and this is a valuable learning process. Further, I think that they will be a good component of online AoIR community in the future. Arguably, native English speakers tend to dominate the majority of conversations being made on the list. Asian people who are mostly lurking have also a right to speak out their words. Once students are afraid of dropping email just because their English is not good enough, they might never express themselves. Lastly, spring semester in Korea is approaching to the end and my students will thank all of you for helping finish their assignments. However, it should be noted that my sincere apology goes to those who had wasted their time in reading some awkward emails of my students. Best wishes, Han..
Perhaps we should have a more general discussion about appropriate pedagogical uses of the listserv. My initial reaction is that assigning undergraduates of any linguistic background to post en masse to share their thoughts is inappropriate, as is instructing them to request help in finishing their assignments. Since this sort of thing doesn't happen all that much, I suspect that lots of people agree, but perhaps someone wants to deconstruct my status-ism. Julie -- Julie E. Cohen Professor of Law Georgetown University Law Center 600 New Jersey Ave., NW Washington, DC 20001 V 202-662-9871 F 202-662-9410 jec@law.georgetown.edu http://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/jec/ Han Woo PARK (Dr) wrote:
Dear AoIR members
Regarding the Korean students, I feel sorry that you started to recognize them as spammers. As a matter of fact, I asked them to post in order to gain some experience about an internationally-running scholarly mailing list on the Internet. Although I have taught them the way in which email should be written when sending to the mailing list, I have also noticed that they did not communicate with you properly. Since students do not have a high level of language skills in English, they hardly shared their ideas, information, and/or thoughts with international audience.
But please understand that they are undergraduate kids and this is a valuable learning process. Further, I think that they will be a good component of online AoIR community in the future. Arguably, native English speakers tend to dominate the majority of conversations being made on the list. Asian people who are mostly lurking have also a right to speak out their words. Once students are afraid of dropping email just because their English is not good enough, they might never express themselves.
Lastly, spring semester in Korea is approaching to the end and my students will thank all of you for helping finish their assignments. However, it should be noted that my sincere apology goes to those who had wasted their time in reading some awkward emails of my students.
Best wishes,
Han..
Actually, I disagree; the problem was that the students didn't seem to be aware of the list discussion. There are lists that would welcome students of course - I can suggest some - for general talk and welcoming. - Alan On Tue, 13 Jun 2006, Julie Cohen wrote:
Perhaps we should have a more general discussion about appropriate pedagogical uses of the listserv. My initial reaction is that assigning undergraduates of any linguistic background to post en masse to share their thoughts is inappropriate, as is instructing them to request help in finishing their assignments. Since this sort of thing doesn't happen all that much, I suspect that lots of people agree, but perhaps someone wants to deconstruct my status-ism.
Julie
-- Julie E. Cohen Professor of Law Georgetown University Law Center 600 New Jersey Ave., NW Washington, DC 20001 V 202-662-9871 F 202-662-9410 jec@law.georgetown.edu http://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/jec/
Han Woo PARK (Dr) wrote:
Dear AoIR members
Regarding the Korean students, I feel sorry that you started to recognize them as spammers. As a matter of fact, I asked them to post in order to gain some experience about an internationally-running scholarly mailing list on the Internet. Although I have taught them the way in which email should be written when sending to the mailing list, I have also noticed that they did not communicate with you properly. Since students do not have a high level of language skills in English, they hardly shared their ideas, information, and/or thoughts with international audience.
But please understand that they are undergraduate kids and this is a valuable learning process. Further, I think that they will be a good component of online AoIR community in the future. Arguably, native English speakers tend to dominate the majority of conversations being made on the list. Asian people who are mostly lurking have also a right to speak out their words. Once students are afraid of dropping email just because their English is not good enough, they might never express themselves.
Lastly, spring semester in Korea is approaching to the end and my students will thank all of you for helping finish their assignments. However, it should be noted that my sincere apology goes to those who had wasted their time in reading some awkward emails of my students.
Best wishes,
Han..
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Hi Han, Thanks for clearing this up. I actually had an intuition that you were a part of this work, and I think its a sensible idea. (And I learned a little about the many new ICT developments in Korea) I think a lot of this the wearisome discussion could have been avoided with a little dose of social networks and cultural capital. That is to say, people who introduce themselves on academic lists often state where they are coming from and why they are posting. If you repeat this exercise, why not get students to learn how to make an introduction, such as "I'm working with Dr. X" or "I'm an undergraduate at X university studying Internet and society"? It serves your initial purpose and enables the students to work on the more subtle cultural mechanisms used by the reader to evaluate who this message is coming from and why it is relevant. I'm posting this publicly to open up a discussion...how do we teach undergraduates the soft skills of distribution lists? What are the soft skills of distribution lists? Take care, BERNiE Bernie Hogan PhD Student NetLab, Knowledge Media Design Institute University of Toronto I received a message from Han Woo PARK (Dr) at approximately 6/13/06 12:41 PM. Above is my reply.
Dear AoIR members
Regarding the Korean students, I feel sorry that you started to recognize them as spammers. As a matter of fact, I asked them to post in order to gain some experience about an internationally-running scholarly mailing list on the Internet. Although I have taught them the way in which email should be written when sending to the mailing list, I have also noticed that they did not communicate with you properly. Since students do not have a high level of language skills in English, they hardly shared their ideas, information, and/or thoughts with international audience.
But please understand that they are undergraduate kids and this is a valuable learning process. Further, I think that they will be a good component of online AoIR community in the future. Arguably, native English speakers tend to dominate the majority of conversations being made on the list. Asian people who are mostly lurking have also a right to speak out their words. Once students are afraid of dropping email just because their English is not good enough, they might never express themselves.
Lastly, spring semester in Korea is approaching to the end and my students will thank all of you for helping finish their assignments. However, it should be noted that my sincere apology goes to those who had wasted their time in reading some awkward emails of my students.
Best wishes,
Han..
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Hi, Han, Should have known it was you ;). I think an earlier poster mentioned that it was not uncommon in the bad old days of the web to assign students to contribute to online discussions in order to better understand the dynamic. Of course, each listserv has its own culture, and its own norms, that has evolved over time. That's why it is essential that new members "lurk" long enough to have a good understanding of the culture. Assigning students to *lurk* on AIR-L seems entirely appropriate. Assigning them to *post* on AIR-L, whether undergrads or grads, native speakers or not, seems ill-advised. One of the reasons AIR-L has lasted so long without some of the turmoil found on other lists is that it manages to have a fairly low volume of material, and it tends to be reasonably relevant. The average list member has *never* posted a message to the list. There are about 1600 people on AIR-L, and so posting really is pretty limited. So, and this is a personal position, not speaking for the Association, my thought is that such exercises may not be such a good idea. Best, Alex -- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais // Social Architect // http://alex.halavais.net //
So, and this is a personal position, not speaking for the Association, my thought is that such exercises may not be such a good idea.
Classrooms (even in cyberspace) are normally bound by boundaries like learning and teaching objectives, required readings, time frames, etc. This list isn't. Jarek
From: "Alex Halavais" <halavais@gmail.com> Reply-To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org, alex@halavais.net To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] Korean students Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 13:53:33 -0400
Hi, Han,
Should have known it was you ;).
I think an earlier poster mentioned that it was not uncommon in the bad old days of the web to assign students to contribute to online discussions in order to better understand the dynamic. Of course, each listserv has its own culture, and its own norms, that has evolved over time. That's why it is essential that new members "lurk" long enough to have a good understanding of the culture.
Assigning students to *lurk* on AIR-L seems entirely appropriate. Assigning them to *post* on AIR-L, whether undergrads or grads, native speakers or not, seems ill-advised. One of the reasons AIR-L has lasted so long without some of the turmoil found on other lists is that it manages to have a fairly low volume of material, and it tends to be reasonably relevant. The average list member has *never* posted a message to the list. There are about 1600 people on AIR-L, and so posting really is pretty limited.
So, and this is a personal position, not speaking for the Association, my thought is that such exercises may not be such a good idea.
Best,
Alex
-- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais // Social Architect // http://alex.halavais.net // _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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participants (6)
-
Alan Sondheim -
Alex Halavais -
Bernie Hogan -
Han Woo PARK (Dr) -
J. J. -
Julie Cohen