OLLI Live

For logistical reasons, when I had the option of attending a particular Osher class live or by Zoom, I defaulted to the screen because it preceded another course that was only available electronically.  Now that short course concluded I had a choice again.  Since the instructor was a premier lecturer and expert I thought it better to attend in person, even though it meant leaving my house a little earlier and driving about twenty minutes each way, in addition to filling out forms for safety when I arrived on site.  Major disappointment to say the least.  Basically a talking head with slides.  While assigned the largest lecture room in the building, probably less than twenty seats were occupied, compared to about twice that by the weekly Zoom count.  The class reminded me a bit of a C-SPAN class taught at a college where the kids pay while I watch for free, though without graduation credit.  To my great disappointment there were no questions other than me going up to the professor at the end.  At least at an Endocrine Society mass lecture, where people sit far enough from the podium to have to watch on screens strategically distributed in a cavernous ballroom, microphones are distributed and time allotted for audience queries and responses.  This lecture I could have watch just as well on my laptop.

As pandemic dangers wane, some choices will need to be made.  Isolation forced us to use visual electronics for medical care, learning, some recreation, and conducting business.  We've actually had some of that for a long time, whether it might be better to see a sports or cultural event live or to watch the broadcast.  Or sitting in a big lecture hall or small classroom.  A concert sounds more authentic live.  A football game I'm less sure, as the cameras can focus on the most important action, though much can be said about being among thousands of your community members surrounding you rooting for the same team as you.  It makes you part of that community, something a TV screen cannot.

For school, live has emerged as better, as the interaction seems as essential to learning as seeing the content of what needs to be learned.  Indeed, we've always done homework or studied for exams solo but exchanged the spectrum of perspectives live.  Medical care also has its pluses and minuses remotely.  Exams, patient reactions do better live.  But we've always supplemented that with telephone.  The screen becomes more of a replacement than a supplement.  It allows tapping into experts from afar, something our Talmudic sages looked askance at, but very useful for those with frustrating conditions that require unique levels of expertise.  Most conditions don't.

Still, it was helpful to learn what our electronics can and cannot do.  They do not seem to be able to expand conversation.  We probably learned that pre-pandemic from our social media or the earliest days of AOL chat rooms.  They can make global experts available irrespective of geography, as we learned early in the pandemic when venerable agencies sponsored free lectures with levels of expertise not previously accessible to most of us.  But for ordinary interactions, the verdict on electronic participation seems more mixed.  It is fine, even preferable, for my talking head class, as it has been for watching lectures pre-recorded for C-SPAN.  This is how I will attend the rest of that course.