Hello! My name is Sharon Karsten. I’m thrilled to be part of the TRU Open Learning community, and excited to teach CMNS 2171: Interpersonal Communication.
Okay… my favourite vacation spot. While I travel a bit for conferences and meetings, I’m not a big vacationer. I live in what I consider to be one of the greatest spots on earth – Denman Island. It’s a small but radical place, a 10-minute ferry ride off Vancouver Island. I love it here because I can try out ideas around sustainability. Here I’m learning to grow food, live in community, etc.
One of the last books I read… okay well it’s not exactly a novel… ‘Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements’ by John D.H. Downing. True to its title, this book presents radical ideas around media and democratization – unpacking histories of media use within resistance movements. Although the book was written a while ago (2001), its ideas appear as super-relevant in an age where journalists are coming under sustained attack.
What have I learned about online teaching/learning?… I guess I consider myself a student of online learning pedagogies. The question I keep asking is – how can we come closer to an engaged experience? You know the feeling – when a group is sitting together, mulling over an idea from a bunch of different angles, and then suddenly the light is turned on, and everyone leaves the room changed. How can we best integrate the tools of dynamic interaction, video and audio to enable people to authentically interact with one another, and with ideas, over time and space, leading to better learning outcomes?
I look forward to continuing this exploration with TRU Open Learning.
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