Virtual Collaboration

Why weren't my punchcards working? I have this new-fangled doo-hickey and it won't accept my punch cards. The little button on the side pops out this tray that only accepts a disk-like object--not my punchcard I thought, this new tricked-out model would be able to handle all the work that I would complete over the next few years and my work form the past, but lo, that is not the case.

Though, the punch card line is an exaggeration, the difficulties posed by distance learning were beginning to irk me. The lack of a physical communal space for collaboration was somewhat of an issue to overcome. In some ways, I think entering the discourse of the virtual space is just as hard as any new environment. It took time for our project to get rolling in the virtual environment. The years that have built my educational experience have accustomed me to the "brick-and-mortar" environment and have not acclimated me to digital spaces as a center for learning and collaboration.

This environmental discord and disconnection of a physical interaction with other students created a greater amount of inertia to overcome in the collaboration and learning process. Feedback was not instantaneous, causing a slow down in development of the required PowerPoint project and making the transition from slide-to-slide weak at best. However weak the transitions felt, becoming adapted to these new learning spaces would stream-line collaboration in digital spaces.