Early thoughts on the social computing class

The social computing class I'm teaching this fall is finishing up its third week. The class is small, but the students are engaged and thinking. I'm a little surprised (but not altogether displeased) at the rather healthy skepticism I'm seeing in the student writing so far concerning the whole Library 2.0 meme. Is it really new, is it really inclusive, is it all about the tech, those kinds of things. I'm using Casey and Sevastinuk's Library 2.0 text and the final project will be to plan an implementation of some aspect of social computing in a library setting, so we'll see how opinions are shaped as we move through the course.

I posted this comment in the instructor's blog:

...One thing that concerns me at this point is how many students are waiting til the weekend to post anything into the blogs and discussion sections. Ideally, we will have a strong dialog going on; if everyone waits to post, it's hard to have a conversation. Remember that responding to your fellow students' observations is as important as making your own. We'll see how it goes, but think about getting at least some of your thoughts in earlier in the week....

On the other hand, the students are doing a great job with the blogs, and the commentary is good. One of the differences between face to face classes, especially ones that meet face to face once a week, and online classes is that the online classes really are, or can be, 24x7. I've always thought there is more potential for interaction and personalization in the online deliveries, even though they are asynchronous. That's a strong argument in favor of them. I'll probably need to give more thought to structuring the activites to encourage more participation during the week.

Thoughts?

Bruce