4.5 An overview of problems and solutions You may come up against problems in online conferences that cause you frustration or annoyance, and make you less likely to participate. In the following subsections we discuss ways to handle the challenges of: not knowing what to say; feeling you are saying too much; not everyone participating; there being too much to do; nobody saying anything.
Make your conference work You can make a big difference to the effectiveness of any conference, and to your tutor group conference in particular. We are going to discuss in turn the four main ways that you can help a conference work well: get involved; help people to get to know you; construct clear messages; take some responsibility. To get the most out of conferencing on your course, get involved
3.3 Real time chat Online chat is a means of having a quick written conversation with one or more people who are online at the same time. Compared with email, there's less of a time lag in waiting for a response. Messages are likely to be more spontaneous, and it can be anarchic when several people reply at once.
3.2 Email Email involves sending an electronic message from your private mailbox to one or more named individuals. You can do this from any computer, whether you're at home or elsewhere. While it's quick and easy to send an email, don't expect an immediate reply. Although some people have constant access to their email, many others log in occasionally. Email is often a convenient way to contact your tutor, so be sure to add their address to your electronic address book! 3.1 Introduction One of the most useful and rewarding things you can do with your computer is use it to communicate with your tutor, other students, and course staff. If you like exchanging ideas and information, sharing support with other students, asking questions and getting feedback from your tutor, then online communication can add a whole new dimension to your learning: “Email from another student really kept me going 2.4 See what you can do on the web The web is immense, made up of information held on computers across the world. You can find out things about any subject or topic you care to name, however obscure it might be. The section entitled Searching later in this unit provides advice and tips on searching the web and finding what you want. 2.1 Introduction There is a range of quick tips in this section to help you get the most out of your computer when you start using it for study. 1.1 Communicating information With a heading like this one, you may be wondering if this unit has suddenly turned into a travel brochure. If it had, would you carry on reading if there were no pictures of the places you could visit? I certainly wouldn't. I hesitate to use the old saying about ‘one picture saves a thousand words’, but if I didn't mention it you would be thinking it. Pictures or diagrams can be very evocative and thought-provoking, but they can also communicate a lot of information very quickly. Introduction This unit will look at how pictures and diagrams can be used to represent information and ideas. In mathematics, science and technology (MST) subjects, we can often summarise how ideas or processes are connected much more neatly in a diagram than in words, or we can show how something looks and works by drawing a picture of it. This means that, as a learner, you need to be comfortable with pictures and diagrams. You need to learn how to read them – how to extract information from the 5.1.8 Media Studies
Watson, J. and Hill, A. (eds) (1984) A Dictionary of Communication and Media Studies, London, Arnold. 1.3 Developing your essay-writing ability To develop your skill in writing essays you need to address two basic questions. What does a good essay look like? How do you set about producing one? We will look at the first of these questions in this chapter and the second in the next. 1.4 Conclusion The aim of this unit has been to try to draw together work on numbers and text, and to try to be helpful to those who, like me, find numbers and statistics rather unapproachable. Evidence is used in social science to convince us of the value of a claim, and is a crucial element in our evaluation of theoretical perspectives. 1.2.7 Summary What we must do to understand numbers as they are used as evidence in social science is to practise and so become familiar with them, and to understand the conventions which determine how they are used. Sets of numerical data can be presented in many ways, as tables, bar charts, pie charts or line graphs. These are just different ways of trying to represent or make a picture of numbers. Which is used is largely a matter of which best shows 1.2.6 Stage 4: Extracting the information When you are absolutely sure that you know what the diagram or table is all about, start to look for patterns, for discrepancies, for peaks and troughs, for anything unusual. Diagrams and tables are highly patterned information, and they often tell a relatively simple story underneath. Don't get bogged down in the relationship between individual numbers, but look to see whether one relationship is like another, or whether one set of numbers stands out significantly from the rest. Learning outcomes After studying this unit you should be able to: identify that social scientists can collect evidence to support their claims and theories in different ways; give examples of quantitative and qualitative evidence; recognise a variety of methods for obtaining evidence; understand the ways in which evidence can be presented; how to read it actively and with purpose. Introduction Social scientists collect evidence to support their claims and theories in different ways. Such evidence is crucial to the practice of social science and to the production of social scientific knowledge. You may be aware of the idea of active reading, which is about reading with the aim of understanding and grasping something: a definition, an argument, a piece of evidence. What that suggests is that active reading is about reading and thinking at the same time. In References 4.1 Understanding the relationship between data and space A map on its own is meaningless. Try showing one to a person from a culture which does not include mapmaking as we know it. A map is neither a picture nor a story – unless we know how to ‘read’ it. You have already developed ‘reading skills’ which will help in reading maps. For example, noting the title and the sources are common to all the uses of evidence in the social sciences. Critical awareness is vital in recognising how mapmaking involves selection, distortion and generalisat 3.2 Maps and the circuit of knowledge The circuit of knowledge starts with a question or questions. For example, look at Figure 1 and Map 3, A and B. Figure 1 shows how the circuit of knowledge can be used to investigate a question, using Map 3, A and B, as e 3.1 Maps as history Maps represent knowledge of the time and space within which they are compiled and produced. In this way they form part of the historic record. An old map is a picture, albeit selective, of the past and forms a baseline for studying change. The first edition of the Irish Ordnance Survey (see Map 2 below) provides a picture of the lands
Key point
Activity 3
