Elective Module in Cultural Studies
The Level 2 Culture and Heritage course Gaelic Scholars and Voyagers was a new elective course which had just been introduced. The course dealt with the Gaelic culture, the Norse influence, and the spread of Christianity. Although a prerequisite for participation on the course was a fluency with the Gaelic language or the completion of a Level 1 Gaelic language course, there were overseas students participating on the course. One of the students interviewed was from Norway, and another was Canadian.
Characteristics
of the communication technology
The communication technology deployed in support of this course
was ISDN 2 video conferencing. The lecturer was by himself at a remote site,
with a group of eight students together with two tutors in a classroom at
the College.
Stated
purpose of the conferencing
The use of the video conference technology allowed the students
on the campus on Skye to have the benefit, otherwise impossible, of input
from a historian based on Benbecula.
Stated
principles of use
Viewed superficially, the lecture meeting appeared to be a
largely one-way communication, with little use being made of the potential
for interaction.
Attendance at the class meetings
was regularly high and accounts from both the students and the tutors indicated
that the students felt significantly privileged to be able to participate.
The lecturer was clearly a teacher of considerable presence, who conveyed
a genuine fascination with his subject which appeared contagious. 
Character
of the communication
The essence here then is that the video conference is being
used to enhance the student experience through the form of the guest lecturer
participation, rather than the video link being deployed to substitute for
other more conventional forms of “lecture from the front”. Thus
the students are motivated by variety of opportunity in a way which may be
very different from the situation of remote participation in a conventional
lecture programme which is really “happening” at a distance.
Part of the “holding power”
of the guest lecturer in this setting may also be in the authority which comes
from their expertise. The essence of the video-mediated guest lecture is the
uniqueness of the lecturer’s knowledge, and the steps which have been
taken to make that knowledge available to the class. The reasons for the use
of the video link, and perhaps more importantly the students’ perceptions
of, and beliefs about, those reasons, will be crucially important in determining
their response.
Beyond the particular instance
of access to the lecturer, students were aware that the technology had increased
their flexibility of opportunity within the curriculum and timetable. The
opportunity to participate in this particular course, because of the use of
the video-conference medium, had meant that the particular cohort of students
to whom we talked had been given a wider range of choices than would otherwise
have been possible.
Students also talked about the particular issues and problems for a university
attempting to serve the distributed region of the Highlands and Islands of
Scotland. They appeared to take some personal pride in the fact that their
institution was deploying new technologies in the service of the Highland
community.
Self
Perceptions
Participants respond to the experience of seeing themselves
on the screen during the video conference in different ways. Some degree of
self consciousness was evident, experienced where the technology was used
to facilitate meetings between students across the various campuses of the
University rather than in its use to allow remote attendance at a lecture.
One student observed that, as non-native Gaelic speakers, some already felt
self conscious while attempting to communicate through the medium of Gaelic,
and that the video conference technology added to that stress.
One of the tutors commented jokingly
that her view of her appearance on the screen was not altogether unsettling.
The technology of the video conference very literally holds up a mirror for the participant. It may be useful to offer this as a metaphor for one of the effects of conferencing technologies more widely, as projective media in which the participants are compelled to reflect on aspects of themselves made manifest, and indeed amplified, through the technology. This is an aspect of the experience about which participants may need to be warned, and with which they may need particular support which would not be needed in more conventional classroom settings. Participation may offer particularly rich insights into personal learning and development, but may also be a source of potent threat to self esteem.
The experience
of participating in the class meeting via video conference clearly has different
characteristics from that of a face to face meeting.
Learning
and teaching relationships
Some students feel inclined to emphasise the similarity between
the lecture as delivered by video conference and one in which the class was
directly present with the lecturer.
While the format of the class meeting
seems very similar to a conventional lecture, with the lecturer presenting
information and the members of the class receiving the information and taking
notes, the experience of the participants seems not to have been of passivity
but of involvement and “presence”. The lecturer seems to have had
a talent for conveying to the students that he was aware of their presence,
and potentially responsive to their needs.
There remained some question as
to whether the interaction by video link could afford the same degree of interpersonal
relationships between teacher and student as would develop through conventional
class meetings. Comments suggested that this was held to be a qualitative
difference in the video conference setting, rather than merely a matter of
the amount of contact between teacher and student.
There was also a certain feeling
that the issue of interactivity could be overplayed, and that the important
thing was that the lecturer should convey openness and preparedness to engage
with the students, rather than the time of the class meeting being spent in
dialogue for the sake of it.
Getting
things done
The lecturer succeeded in conveying accessibility and approachability
to the students. They were aware that he could be contacted by electronic
mail or by telephone after the lecture if any wanted to ask questions or seek
clarification.
The business of questioning during
the video conference session appeared to work relatively well. In the situations
which were being described and discussed here, there were members of the teaching
staff present with the students who were being lectured from the remote site,
and they were able to offer some added direction to the negotiation of turn
taking in question and answer sessions.
There is a feeling being expressed here that the distance between the various parties involved in the conference necessitated the introduction of more control, order and planning, and that additional thought directed towards the management of interactions paid off in ways which were unrelated to the nature of the video conference per se. This is analogous to many other areas in which the introduction of some technological element into the teaching and learning setting causes all the participants to reflect on what is going on in ways which contribute to an overall enhancement of the learning experience.
There were clearly some students
who took different approaches to questioning the lecturer.
Continuity
with curricula
At one level, the medium of communication was quite independent
of the curricular content being delivered through the medium. Another dimension
to the appeal of the video conference opportunity for the students however,
speculated upon by one of the tutors, was that it provided some additional
element of novelty and excitement. There was something romantic about a course
on Gaelic Scholars and Voyagers being delivered, over the ether, from an island
further out in the Atlantic.
Evaluation
Within this context of generally positive attitudes, there
was clear ambivalence. One student confessed that the knowledge that this
particular elective would involve the use of videoconferencing might have
dissuaded them from taking it. It was anticipated that the use of the technology
would have resulted in far more difficulties than had, in fact, been encountered.
That the technology worked at all seemed to be regarded as something of a
triumph.
The students seemed to be prepared
to forgive a great deal of the technology simply because that technology enabled
them to participate in the course, and to enjoy the benefit of input from
such a charismatic teacher.
It is interesting to speculate
that, from the perspective of the students, their developing impression of
the video conference technology as being appropriate for this particular application
(the remote delivery of lectures by an expert guest) might also be associated
with a scepticism about its application in contexts which were necessarily
more interactive.
Students were not equally accepting
of, and patient with, what they saw as the lack of knowledge and experience
of the staff. Where technical problems arose, the students seemed to be less
likely to see these as intrinsic difficulties with the technology per se,
but as inadequacies of organisation, planning or knowledge on the part of
the teaching staff. This is perhaps the other side of the students’ enthusiasm
for the technology which enabled them to participate in what they saw to be
a rich learning experience. When things went wrong which prevented them having
access to the lecture, they inevitably felt frustrated, and the target of
this frustration might easily be the teaching staff round about them.
For their part, the tutors seems
to be well aware of their vulnerability with respect to the technology, and
were trying their very best to come to terms with it.
The use of technology in the teaching and learning setting introduced issues for the teaching staff which extended beyond simple matters of usability, technical comprehension and staff development and training. There were now issues of planning and timetabling which were compounded by the need to synchronise a number of different threads; access to a particular room and facilities, the time of the students and teachers, and the time and availability of technical support. Considering both ends of a two-way video link, quite a number of people might require to co-ordinate together. Teaching staff hoped that they would eventually become independent of the technical support staff for the routine business of conducting a class via the video link, but there was a general feeling that things were becoming more complicated and thus, inevitably, more difficult to manage.
In the accounts of some, the technology
clearly got in the way.
It is clear from comments of this sort that one is looking at a setting of currently evolving practice, with an ongoing interaction between the constraints and affordances of the medium and the aims and insights of the teaching staff.
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Text of this section by Hamish Macleod
(c)Erica McAteer, Charles Crook, Andy Tolmie, Hamish Macleod, Kerry Musselbrook, David Barrowcliff, 1st May 2000
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