“What constitutes participation?” posed Adrian Miles in his first tutorial of semester one. There are five possible answers to this question that can be categorised as being either “hard” or “easy.” That is, what are the hardest things to do to participate effectively and what are the easiest things to do.

Firstly, the easiest thing that can be done is to find external material through other subjects, peers or other forms of media etc that can be related back to Integrated Media and discussed within blog entries. Being able to source your own relevant material and relate it back to the subject is more likely to assist me in grasping the ideas expressed in lectures than say, the material used by Seth. Additionally, completing the required readings for this subject as well as utilising various programs such as Twitter, Vimeo etc are easy tasks that can assist with my overall participation in the subject. Alternatively, researching any material that was not understood in the weekly lectures is a difficult task as well as learning how to use new programmes that relate specifically to coding. Often I find myself becoming impatient with programs that I am unfamiliar with and require one on one lessons as to how to use them. Moreover, going through online videos to teach myself how to use certain programs can become monotonous and I find I get easily distracted. Participating creatively and taking risks could also be difficult in regards to the video entries as I’m often intimidated by editing software and find my ideas cliched. However, by completing the readings, speaking with peers, sourcing external information, collaborating and sharing ideas in class time, I have no doubt that this will make the biggest difference to my learning if done well.