…and the lucky shrimp goes straight through to the Sheller…

That was what he said… really!

These were my brother’s words when I was eavesdropping on his conversation with his classmates.

My brother is working toward an MBA from the University of Florida via an on-line program. He was utilizing a couple of programs to have a group session with his classmates, who happen to live in different parts of the country. His emphatic declaration that it would be that shrimp’s lucky fate to end up getting to the Sheller first that highlighted the fact that it is easy to forget about all the technology that is being utilized and focus on the task at hand – shelling that lucky shrimp.

The group session occurred on a Sunday afternoon. They were using Elluminate and Scype to show each other parts of their assignment and talk as if they were in the same room. My brother was working with his classmates on a distribution problem and he was emphatic that his analysis of the problem was correct. He was vehemently defending his argument because one of his cohorts did not understand why some shrimp were ‘luckier’ than others.

I had been curious about how his classes worked with the technology the school had given them, as well as, how the lectures worked and felt. He told me that the navigation of the technology was easier than he had expected. I must qualify this with a comment that he is VERY tech savvy. I asked him what it was like taking classes online. He said that it was different to view an online lecture and then do the homework before meeting with his classmates to discuss the answers and then return a finished product to his instructor. He indicated that it wasn’t any more difficult than a normal class, just different.

I was also interested in how he felt about developing working relationships with his classmates. He said that he is not as close has he has been with other classmate settings. This is consistent with what we discussed in class with Dmitri about how 1:1 contact is always likely to be the best form of communication. That being said, it would seem that being able to hear the emphasis in my brother’s voice impacted the other participants. This would not have been possible in a setting such as just text base communication such as IM. It is also possible that seeing the calculations in tandem with the vocal inflection was the persuasive mitigating factor.

For me, it was the fact that the shrimp was going to be scampi sooner. (P.S. I was hungry)