I found my first classmates reaction to “nexting” slightly different to the reaction that I had. Sportsman brings up the point of how outside of this class we have no idea who each other are. We have given a slight introduction to ourselves at the beginning but we have never shared any personal information. We’ve responded to each other’s ideas on the classwork but we’ve never even seen each other. They relate the Alberti and Emmon’s ideas about expressing emotions to a step that our groups should be taking with our midterm project. They say, “Having not met in person, I feel we are basically strangers.” And “…outside of class we have no relationship and are complete strangers.” I agree with their point that expressing emotions in a way that relates to class may be a successful step our group should make.
The second groupmate, “President Makalele”, that gave their reaction on “nexting” with response to previous classmates posts. They recognize the patterns that people in this class are following and relate this to class vocabulary. I think this is an important thing to do because it shows them thinking about the concepts as a whole and not by section. “The first blog posts contained for example, instances of nexting but nobody knew that they were doing it.” says President Makalele. They talk about how the readings we’ve had were important and relate with the idea of recognizing a comfort level before you disclose personal emotions. “Once the level of self-disclosure has been established you must identify your feelings and interpret them according to the established comfort level in the relationship.”
The ideas of both of my groupmates relate to what we have been learning in class.
I agree with both ideas and think that they are going to help us in class. Sports08’s ideas about emotions being important are how I feel in the fact that we should express how strongly or weakly we fell about an idea. I also agree with President Makalele’s ideas about how through our style of class it is important to recognize a comfort level before disclosing emotions. I think it’s smart to recognize what amount the person your talking to is going to disclose before you decide yourself.
August 7, 2008 at 3:11 am
Hmmm, very interesting! How can one know how much another is going to disclose, and then use that as a basis for what you yourself will disclose? Sounds like mindreading to me, or predicting the future, or some other kind of telepathic magic?!
The fact of our relative anonymity to each other is a big factor in the way this class can go. I’ve actually been experimenting with combinations of in-class and online (blog/public and within the University/private) teaching for some time. It seems to me to be going very well this time. (Opinions welcome.) For instance, in enabling us to see the patterns of our regular, structured ways of communicating.