information overload – Beyond Physical Spaces

The End of the Beginning

I won’t lie. It is a great relief that the summer courses have ended. The compressed nature of such courses makes taking two courses less than ideal and not everyone has the luxury of taking a break or just taking one course. My leave from work ends in May next year and in order for me to finish in time, I had to take the maximum courses offered in summer. That is why I didn’t agree with the disclaimer that our instructor Dean put up in response to some of the gripes the students have about the course on two counts but firstly the disclaimer:

“This is a graduate-level course on social media. As such, it is very software-intensive and some students have found that the course content and structure (use of blogs, tweets and navigating Vista) and the sheer number of social tools that are examined during the term causes considerable information overload. If you are unfamiliar with social media or are planning to take other courses while taking LIBR559M, please speak to the instructor first to determine your suitability for the class.”

Firstly, as I have mentioned, not everyone has the luxury of taking one course.

Secondly, knowledge of social media tools is important for information professionals and therefore, I think this is an important class. However, some people may not be comfortable due to the lack of familiarity but that is precisely why they would be taking the course in the first place – to learn and discover. To have a disclaimer that discourages those who are unfamiliar with social media is not productive and undermines the learning value this course has to offer.

I am a frequent user of social media prior to this course, except Twitter, but I still found this course valuable to me. I was delighted to discover plenty of new tools that can be used. It has been a springboard for me to think about social media related plans that libraries can adopt, all in all, I would still take this class again, given a choice, if only for the tools that it had allowed me to discover.

If this class is offered again, these are the things that I imagine would make it better (but this is of course only my opinion)

1) A wiki of social media tools (not definitions) that students are expected to go out and discover and when they discover new ones, they can add to it. This also makes it clear the amount of tool exploration they are required to do and they can better plan their time.

2) Assignments shouldn’t be a treasure hunt: it should be clear to quell anxieties of missed work and again, it allows students to plan their time around the assignment due dates/ expectations more efficiently.

3) I understand that the blog and forum have their uses but it was never clear to me what topics go on the forum and what goes on the blog and given that both forum and blog postings are requirements, then there is a potential that one may become redundant. I acknowledge that the forums are better for discussions and the blog is better for open topics and reflections so maybe what can be done is to have a specific discussion question or two for the forum for students to post in related to the module topic and leave the blog for open reflections, discoveries that are not tied to the module. This will give students the flexibility to explore areas of interest even more, from marketing to tools like (in my case), digital storytelling. The fact is that there are so many social media tools available and different ones will appeal to different people, giving students the luxury to explore whatever they want and helping them to discover what they find works best for themselves at the end of the day.

To be absolutely fair, the course probably does some of this but if it did, it wasn’t clear to me. This course has a lot of value to information professionals and I would like to see it offered again to a warmer reception. It has been an interesting journey for me, sometimes frustrating, sometimes delightful but one thing for certain is that I did take away good knowledge from it.

When plugging-out gives you connection withdrawal syndrome

Over the weekend, I took a short break and hopped over to Vancouver Island to visit friends, took long walks and enjoyed the natural scenery – it was fresh air and a welcomed change from staring at the computer from morning to night. Unfortunately, I was suffering from a connection withdrawal syndrome. Every few hours or so, I would wonder about the tweets and blog posts I missed, the forum posting requirements that I have yet to fulfill… it hindered my ability to enjoy my time on the island to my fullest capacity.

I am not always like that. I don’t have a smart phone, my ipad is wi-fi only and I am perfectly capable of going on a long vacation and leaving the world behind. In short, I enjoy being plugged-out. It is important because there is simply too much going on and to try to follow every single online update would be to fry your own mental circuits. Enough is enough – the world goes on without you and you are no lesser for missing one update. In fact, being away allows me to listen to my own thoughts. When I am online, I am bombarded with everyone’s thoughts and after a while, I am not sure which ones belong to me and which ones came from the great big cyberverse.

So why did I feel such anxiety over the weekend? Was it because all of a sudden my online activities were graded and the opportunity cost of not being active online suddenly becomes greater? Or was it because I spent an excessive amount of time online in the three days before that I had gotten used to being plugged-in and removing it felt like something was ripped from me? I personally thought it was the former and that is very much centered around the word “opportunity cost”. It stems from the fear of missing some quintessential update which is in turn linked to how you are perceived. In an online class, it translates to “participation” which has a grade. In the online social universe, it would be missing someone’s updates that would have made you a better friend had you wished them “happy birthday” or “congratulations” or a word of sympathy for some misfortune. Part of it sounds silly (trust me – I know) but I have been at the lashing end before, being told that I was a lesser friend for not “expressing” my care and concern over the social universe. In retrospect, it’s hilarious but it was not funny when it was happening and it certainly shows that social media has redefined our expectations in relationships, especially if both parties are wired. I certainly do not think making token remarks on friends’ updates makes you a better friend so I do not see why not doing it makes you a lesser one.

That said, circling back to the first point. There are two worlds, the physical and the online one – they are not substitutes for one another and people are learning to live with both. The online world should not come at the expense of the physical world and if taking a break causes you to have withdrawal symptoms, then it probably is a signal that you need to get more fresh air. A sunny day may not be there tomorrow but the computer most likely will.