Why are graduate students acting like 7th graders? My web conference reflection

The webcast that I chose to go to was very short (on March 20, 2011), however, I learned a great deal. It felt like I had just entered my seventh grade classroom after the bell had rung and students were running around everywhere. Dr Abernathy became frustrated with the lack of respect that she was receiving from the group of students so she cut the videoconference off after fifteen minutes. One of the things I learned was that you can have too many people in a web conference. There were close to one hundred students accepted into the conference. All of the students were talking at the same time and it was very difficult to follow the text strands and impossible for audio. Therefore, if I were to hold a web conference with my students I would limit the number of students excepted into a web conference to around forty people. I feel that this would be a reasonable number of people to have online in the discussions. The second thing I learned was that there should be some etiquette taught about what to expect and how to act during a web conference. Do not assume that adults can be polite. Either while the students are waiting to go into the web conference or as part of the class, students should have to read about the expectations and understand the rules before they attend. The third thing I realized was that all students procrastinate and it does not matter if the students are in graduate school or in middle school. If students are going to be required to choose a web conference (or any assignment), they will pick either the beginning ones or the last ones to attend. I would assign different sections different due dates to complete their conference. If I were dealing with a large groups of people I would try to have multiple dates to attend where the sessions are not overloaded or I would not make the conferences mandatory. I feel the people who had legitimate questions would attend the web conference so they could receive help in understand the assignments. The people who were rude and just wanting to get their credit for their conference would not attend or would quickly leave after the conference got started. I was astonished at the number of people who were asking how they would get credit for the web conference instead of listening when Dr. Abernathy asked for the floor. Several people were having issues with posting their action research plans on their blogs. These people truly needed assistance. Therefore, the final thing I learned is that people can be rude and need reminders of how to act (or need strict guidelines) no matter what level of school they are attending whether it be graduate level or seventh grade.