Hi all, can OST be transferred into a virtual environment without loosing some of its characteristics? It depends of course on what you believe are the key components of OST. I think the realtime discussions when they happen in the climate created by the four principles and the one law is an essential part of OST. I also know from many of the research reports I have read about online communication, that the written communication in a forum will work for some people but not for others. One example, this morning when I read these mails I had to discuss them with my husband at the breakfast table to get a grip of what I thought about them. Many people are auditive learners and they get their ideas while they listen and talk. Others will do fine with written words.
I know that OST works fine in the online environment. My colleague Richard Schultz and I have used Blackboard Elluminate to create a system for online OST real time meetings and most people find that it is almost as meeting in person, which they actually do. The lack of body language which is most important in any conversation, makes it more difficult to collaborate but if you at least can hear the voice of the other person, it helps because the voice shows so much of how your words are interpreted.That is a problem when writing, especially when you, like I do now, write in a foreign language. When we created the OST system for online collaboration, we divided the meetings into smaller sessions, no more than 3 hours maximum. People come to the first meeting and create the agenda together and they can then use the law of two feet and move in and out of sessions as they need to. We think the short sessions will make it possible for most people to attend and still have time to do the other work they need to at that day. We have also created a forum and storage place where reports are stored and discussions can continue in written form in between the meetings. Prioritizing can easily be made after all the reports are there and then I always, in both in-person and online OST meetings, invite people to create a new agenda for the action planning instead of converging etc. They converge the reports in their heads while reading and reflecting. And we have an introduction course for people not familiar with discussions in online environment and they are not so few as one might think. You can take a look at what we have done at www.collaborativeways.com. I think that the OST version in written format you mention could be OST-Online which Gaby Ender created some years ago. It is still a real time meeting version and from my experience the combination of real time meetings and writing in forums in between could be what works best. Blessings Eiwor ----- Original Message ----- From: Anna Christine Christensen To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, May 13, 2013 3:27 PM Subject: [OSList] Online OST in written form - is it possible? Someone has asked me whether it is possible to do OST solely on the web over a prolonged period of time (say 3 months) with people coming in and adding their thoughts now and again as their time permits? His challenge is a wide variety of stakeholders who will not be able to meet - not even hold a "normal" web-OST, because they won't be able to be present at the same time. It is not a huge group and therefore unlikely that someone would happen to be online all the time, so it would have to be a written OST. Has anyone tried that? - A written, online OST running over a couple of months? I remember hearing about a programme designed to do OST on the web - what is that called and would it work for a "written" OST? Or does anyone have other ideas and experiences as to how to get a conversation / change process going OST-style under the mentioned circumstances? All the very best, Anna Christine Christensen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ OSList mailing list To post send emails to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] To subscribe or manage your subscription click below: http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org
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