Balancing cyberspace w/ physical space

Hiya,

Diane wrote:
Cyberspace training seems perfectly reasonable in a strict knowledge transfer environment, but when your objectives are geared toward behavioral change, I'm thinking that more direct contact and realtime experiential sessions might be more valuable.

I think that online interactions can be great for both knowledge transfer but also for practicing verbal communication skills... perhaps more so that in-person interactions because the person typically has more time in which to think about and develop their response.

• In online interactions via interactive chat and e-mail, it's possible to think and rephrase something prior to sending it... that gives the person more of an opportunity to put the specific verbal/communication skills they are learning into practice. It give them the time to think thru and tweak what they want to say incorporating the various strategies they've learned.
• It's possible to for a coach to use private messages during interactive chats to give the student pointers about how to approach the sitation or alternatively, coaches could read e-mail and give pointers about specifics of the style or content of the communication prior to sending it.
• On-line Discussion (support) groups could also be used to include group process into the learning experience and give the participants the opportunity to practice their skills or to give advice to others about strategies that might work. Given that on-line discussion groups cover many topics, and that expressing oneself regarding potentially emotionally charged topics requires the use of multiple communication skills, it can be a great place to hone one's verbal communication skills.

In summary, I do believe that the net can be used to learn and practice communication skills that will generalize to one's inperson interactions.

Hope this helps, :)
Betty

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