How many people did you first meet online? Many students and teachers can say that they almost never met in person. For online trainers and tutors, this reality is their new normal; their contact with physical people is now limited to their personal sphere, unrelated to their work.
The effects of these practices in the workplace and in education are just beginning to be measured. How many teachers know students with dual personalities, self-conscious in person, voluble and participatory online? We knew the practices of distance education, its qualities, flaws, and effects, but not as a primary teaching model. New data from its large-scale use are challenging us. Other data, even more disturbing, concern our relationship with networks that are becoming the primary sites of our social existence.
Recently, a student activities manager at a university explained to me that, because the presence of students at the university has become random, the spaces are mostly deserted. It is easier for students to connect and meet online.
As a matter of tolerance, many people are quicker to take offense and and express it online. In person, we don't dare to inveigh or provoke for fear of social reaction, whereas online the consequences for the sender are minimal and the effects for the receiver can be quite disturbing. There is still a lot of education to be done at this level.
We are becoming less physically present but more present in our online relationships, live or recorded. On a professional and educational level, online meetings are a blessing: so many interesting people can be reached. Their availability may be fragmented, but they can be reached, which was much more difficult before. Online meetings, conferences, webinars, discussions are changing education. Everyone is becoming experimenter and new ways of being are developing. Better? Hateful? We are only certain that they will be different and adapted to our new realities, to our new agreements.
Denys Lamontagne - [email protected]
Illustration: DepositPhotos - AudreyPopov
