I met with Dr. Gibbons to talk about some approaches to my question. He suggested some readings for me to peruse. I narrowed down my question a bit after some of my reading. I need to finalize a question, but I'm feeling more confident in the direction.
Our experience in class with the online forum revealed some interesting things. Our assignment was to read some articles on forums and then to use the forum created by Alberto to discuss the relative merits and problems with forums as a learning tool. It seemed to me that many people who decried the value of online forums actually neglected to participate in the forum in the manner in which it was meant to be used to promote learning. Rather they participated as if it were simply a place to complain about the place that was offered as a way for them to complain about what they were complaining about. In other words, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Successful use of a forum for instruction probably warrants a little extra motivational effort on the part of the instructor. It appeared they didn't like forums because it required them to interact with others and express their ideas coherently and be willing to engage in a discussion and, basically, it wasn't worth their time
My internship with Rain this semester is a position in user experience design. I'm trying to hone up my skills and knowledge in the area. One of my favorite quotes so far is the following from Whitney Hess' article on the 10 Most Common Misconceptions about User Experience Design: Josh Porter ... says, “The biggest misconception is that [companies] have a choice to invest in their user’s experience. To survive, they don’t.” An interesting way of looking at user experience was diagrammed by Peter Morville showing the seven key elements of user oriented design. He calls it the user experience honeycomb. Any design should be aiming at these things:
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