Emerson Online Studies
About the Technology of Online Classes & Chat Classrooms
Class Times: 5:30-7:30 PM
All Times are Pacific (U.S. West Coast) Time
You are invited to visit a current class session as our guest.
Emerson Online Studies reaches around the world for good through the power of the Internet.
We use Internet Relay Chat (IRC) to create a virtual classroom for class sessions. It's easy to use, inexpensive, and rich with features that make studying online worthwhile. Below is a discussion of IRC, or Chat, and links to websites where you may download inexpensive software to install on your computer. This software will allow you to join the classes and is upgraded at no cost to you from time to time. It's a bargain at around $20 - 25 for a lifetime of use.
Email - We use email to exchange assignments, affirmative prayer requests and requests for treatment, to ask questions, and simply to stay in touch.
( www.mirc.com/ for PC; or www.ircle.com/ for Mac)
IRC - Internet Relay Chat - allows users to set up a channel, also called a chat room, for having discussions online, in real-time, with only those who have been invited and logged in. Our classrooms are secret to all but those who are enrolled in Emerson Online Studies. Teachers can use IRC to extend the walls of the classroom to a virtual space where students and teachers from all over the world can discuss their studies, spiritual practices, answer questions, or work in cooperative practice groups in real time on a regular basis--just as students have always done! It really is a wonderful way to study and practice for those without a local New Thought center or church or for those whose schedule or obligations won't allow local study.
Instructions and addresses for the chat sessions are sent directly to students when they have registered and sent payment by mail or PayPal. Once a student registers and pays for a class, whether by mailing a check or by PayPal, please email a request for Chat instructions to be sent.
Payments and donations are accepted through PayPal, check and money order. Click the seal to the left to verify the way to make a donation or to pay your tuition.
Registration Form (PDF File)
Contact Information
Emerson Online Studies
Dr.
Susanne Freeborn, Director
Telephone: 360-671-5959 Fax: 360-671-8578
Mailing Address:
1645 Pebble Beach Trail
Bellingham, WA 98226
Questions to: Dr.Susanne
Benefits of Chat (Definition: synchronous computer-mediated communication):
Online students come to us from a wide variety of prior practice and experience. We work to teach the subject matter and encourage practices appropriate for each individual student. Some students are more advanced than others and my expectation is that students do their best where they are in their own personal life, and we suggest that they not compare themselves to their classmates. In this way our classes avoid being mere intellectual exercises unrelated to students lives and provide instruction, in addition to support for regular spiritual practice, and a sense of community with the other online students.
1) Students who are normally silent or shy during discussion sometimes say they feel more confident to express their ideas and opinions in writing during chat sessions, than they feel speaking face to face with groups of people.
2) Students can finish a comment/post without being interrupted, a benefit also present in asynchronous forums. However, there are benefits to empowering students by giving them the certainty that their comments in a real-time discussion cannot be cut off, interrupted, or silenced in manipulative or authoritarian ways.
3) No comment is lost. All posts are present in their entirety, so that even when the text scrolls quickly, all comments are complete and accessible to all readers.
4) The cognitive exercise is at once both exhilarating and strenuous: students must form their thoughts in a dialogic context, but then express them in written form, thus providing them with instantaneous impetus to be understood in a written format, without relying on non-verbal crutches.
5) Chat limits the power of one user to "hold forth" at length. (This is a GOOD thing--it highlights the difference between "lecturing" and "discussing").
6) Deaf students get to "hear" and participate fully in the entire discussion experience.
7) One-on-one or small-group forum Chat during peer review of collaborative projects aids students in formulating and articulating their ideas, and logging features on many programs allow students to retain a printed record of all comments and suggestions made during the session. This facilitates a free flow of ideas and a sense of security that one can review later any difficult concepts.
8) On another practical note, discussions can be logged and saved/printed, for future reference. This allows the instructor to accurately review and assess student participation in real time discussion.
9) Chat demonstrates, in real time, the importance of audience and the need to develop the ability to form clear, coherent sentences in all verbal interactions. The challenge of "translating" conversational English into a written form creates a constant flow of problem-solving situations that students can work on both as collaborators, and as individuals.
