01: A Roomful of Strangers

A Roomful of Strangers – Pepperdine OMAET program introduction

A little bit after 5 P.M. on Thursday, July 26, 2001 a number of strangers wandered into a nondescript conference room at Pepperdine University’s Culver City facility. Two tables sat along two walls, one holding soft drinks, a pile of papers on the other, a world map on one wall with colored thumbtacks marking widely separated spots on the map. Instructions were on the wall to place a thumbtack on a spot on the map where you called home. Thus we began to go from strangers to fellow educational explorers.

I had enrolled in Pepperdine University’s online Masters of Educational Technology degree program and we were going to spent the next four days getting to know each other and the fundamentals of the program. After our time together we would continue our classes and assignments completely online. The activities of the next four days were designed to help us create natural small groups that would be essential once we were spread across the globe.