For several years now I have wanted to try using Voxer as a book study platform. Around Christmas 2021, we wrapped up a 10-week book study that Google Certified Coaches could join. Our topic was the new book called The Edtech Coaching Primer by Dr. Ashley McBride. I enjoyed the book and am glad to have had this experience, and as I am compelled to do after most book studies, I have reflected upon some challenges and opportunities with this platform. (Initial musings? Read here.)
Some basic, and unofficial statistics:
- About 55 people are listed as members of our book study channel
- At the midweek point (~week 4-5), there were approximately 20 people who had posted more than once. Click here for my mid-way musing blog about Voxer as a book study platform.
- By weeks 9 and 10, there were just over a dozen people who had read most of the posts with about seven or eight of those people commenting and engaged in the discussion
- After about week seven, hardly any participants used Voxer‘s voice note feature; the posts are almost exclusively typed.
- For the few voice posts that were posted, they were listen to by less than a quarter of the folks who read the typed posts
In my experience with many different book studies on many different platforms, I would say that although these statistics are on the low side, the statistics aren’t far from normal. Virtual book studies in particular tend to wane in participation, especially if the participants haven’t met in person or at least virtually in person.
Some benefits to Voxer as a book study platform:
- The asynchronous nature is great for a global group; Frances in the UK did not have to stay up late or get up early to participate like she would have if we were meeting in a Google meet!
- The asynchronous feature also allows you to go back and check out weeks that you missed. In contrast, had this been a purely synchronous Google Meet study, if you missed the meeting you’re out of luck.
- Voxer allows you to add images and links
Some drawbacks to Voxer as a book study platform:
- If you fall behind, it is very difficult to get back into the conversation. If someone has a comment about chapter 5 that I want to respond to but the study is now on chapter 7, there is no way to connect my comment to the earlier chapter 5 ideas – instead they get lost in the new content. This prevents ideas from sprouting and growing organically like they might in say, a Twitter chat, where a single post can spawn a whole important conversation thread….Voxer needs a “thread” feature!
- For some reason, in this particular book study, most participants did not take time to listen to the audio comments. Perhaps because it’s also more difficult to respond to a comment that was posted in audio form? I am interested to hear other theories about this!
- Perhaps our participant list was too large to be effective as a Voxer book study? I think it’s possible that a smaller group who already knew each other at least somewhat in real life might have had better sustained participation?
- If you missed several days or even a week or two, it was difficult to get very far back in the timeline; I believe in the free version that I had there is also a limit of how far back I could go?
- It’s possible that some people were turned off as new users of Voxer – those accidental blank posts because your thumb is in the wrong place on the screen – and you can’t delete or edit because you have the free version! For most of us as coaches, I believe that that would cause us to just giggle and identify those blunders as of the learning curve of a new technology. For others, the blunders might have been a turn off – literally!
In the end, I’m so thankful to my comrades who stayed connected and continued to post and comment. As a result, I gained lots of insights into coaching experiences around the globe. So obviously, Voxer wasn’t a total bust, but it was less user-friendly than I hoped it would be for our book study.
Check out other book study musings: Padlet book study; Flipgird book study; “book-like” study; in person book study
What I learned today... 