Video Conferencing Guidelines
Introduction and rationale section
1. Eight Issues to Manage
Characteristics
of the communication technology
There are contrasts in the technological resources provided within the
different learning environments studied during our field work. ATM Cellstack
technology allows high quality video and stereo audio signals, on a par with
'TV broadcast' standards of information flow and synchronisation. This is
the network that supports video-conferencing across Scottish higher education
institutions, and reflects the standard that increasingly serves that sector
throughout the UK. It is not (yet) inclusive of all the further education
colleges participating in the University of the Highlands and Islands programme,
nor of all 'distributed classrooms' across institutions in the rest of the
UK. Here the norm is Integrated Services Digital Network with a number indicating
the equivalent phone lines in use - often ISDN-6 or, for remote outreach sites,
ISDN-2. Image and sound synchronisation is less good, particularly for the
latter, with marked delays which impede natural communication flow. For further
information about v-c network resources the JANET Videoconferencing Advisory Service website
is recommended. It should be noted that the overall situation is changing
as we write.
Equipment in the video-conferenced classroom includes some or all of: video cameras, at least one at fixed wide-angle and another allowing focus and zoom control; microphones (desk top for meeting suites and, usually, rostrum, radio, hand-hold or lapel for lecture theatre use); speakers; a small preview monitor with (usually) two large monitors or wall-mounted projection screens. Other common equipment might be a video player/recorder, a data sharing PC with a high-speed network connection and a visualiser (document camera) allowing overhead slides, images and objects to be transmitted via the video-link. A touchscreen 'equipment controller' co-ordinates all of the available components.
Most teaching takes place between 'suites' rather than lecture theatres - again the Scottish case is presently different but not unique. Some suites are designed as classrooms, others as meeting rooms with cameras and monitors arrayed to resource a (resizable) table with microphones located round it and presentation equipment and control panel at centre or far end. Descriptions of some institutional sites and layouts can be found at the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council's TALiSMAN site.
2.
Stated purpose of the technology
It is sensible to distinguish between two predominant communication modes
- though they overlap for many of the contexts studied.
Transmission of information
Lectures – core course provision or 'star visit' - where different
theatres on the same campus need simultaneous delivery of content; where remote
campus theatres or outreach centre classes need to receive lectures simultaneously
with a main campus class; where specific lecture content is common across
courses over two or more institutions; where the same course is taken by student
classes at two or more institutions.
Exchange of information
Seminars - guest speaker or tutor led, student centred, group orientated;
tutorials - one/one or group; (less frequently) workshops or
collaborative group sessions; course or project meetings.
These and other educational events are resourced by video-conferencing technology within undergraduate and postgraduate courses, continuing professional development and elective courses, as the only way that an educational need could be met for the people concerned, or because other possible provision strategies threatened quality.
Conferencing works best as a solution to educational need, rather than as innovation for its own sake, providing 'subject expert' input to sites where this is lacking, giving 'roundness' to core course provision - ideally, exchanging expertise and special subject focus across institutions. Practically, where timetabling is not the problem but distance is, the technology reduces or negates the need for travel, allowing simultaneous event experience to distributed student groups. For (over)committed teaching staff and for students who are prevented for personal, domestic or professional reasons from daily (or even weekly) attendance at a chosen course of study, this can be the only solution that allows common 'presence' where there is pedagogical need for it.
3.Stated
principles of use
The vision is of a technology that is transparent to its users,
giving 'face-to-face interaction at a distance' and requiring considerable
financial investment which needs to be justified in terms of pedagogical and
practical benefit. Principles of use vary according to the context of use
and whether transmission or exchange of information is seen as the dominant
educational need. Basically however the stated intention is to provide the
same standards of pedagogical quality as are assumed to obtain for face-to-face
classroom environments.
The technology - at least, that available for teacher or student manipulation - is quite simple to use. The difficulty lies in the communication principles that are afforded or constrained by it. There is a need for more 'orchestration and organisation' than is required in more standard situations, for the management of local and remote sites, the need to connect to and collaborate with remote tutors, the need to invoke and maintain group activity at appropriate levels among peoples who, other than the immediate moment, may have little common engagement.
Where possible, use should be made of tutors or facilitators at remote sites to provide practical and pedagogical support to those students who are not in the physical presence of the lecturer. It is possible to 'back up' the event by video-recording delivery and archiving this with the relevant course material. Resource materials should be made available to all groups in advance of, simultaneously with or subsequent to the event, as deemed appropriate by the course convenor.
4.
Character of the communication
How do teachers and learners actually experience communication in a video-conferenced
classroom? Much is seen to depend upon whether they are in the 'real life'
class or at a distance from it, what resources are available to serve delivery
and interaction and, predominately, what the event is for so far as
the agents are concerned.
At first impression, video conferencing appears to provide a substitute for regular classroom interaction, appealing as an educational medium as it promises face-to-face experiences for teaching at a distance. The aim is for the technology to be transparent so that interaction takes place as it would if the individuals were in the same room. Although the level and quality of the available technology is acknowledged as critical, the major influence for this achievement seems to be user familiarity and ease.
Video conferencing is seen by some as lying between audio and face to face meetings, with text-based conferencing as an example of the 'deprived' end of the 'educational communication technology' continuum. Yet it is important to question an assumption that 'more is better' in the context of channels for classroom interaction. Rather, we might ask under which circumstances (topic, content, level, task, location of staff and students, resource availability etc) which channels are critical, and why – and then how these can be provided or matched so far as possible by viable alternatives. In other words, context factors are the determinants of technology and media choice.
Even broad assumptions about the advantages of 'co-presence' (face-to-face engagement, in the sense of group members physically meeting at the same time same in the same location) need to be tempered by an awareness that there may be disadvantage, a sense of 'warping' or 'thwarting', afforded by (perceived) partial co-presence where signals should be there to read but somehow aren't.
In the lecture context, and to perhaps a greater extent in group learning situations, feedback is an issue. Collaboration or co-operation depend, obviously, upon communication. Successful communication – coordination of process and content - depends on feedback. This is difficult to achieve in a video-conferencing situation, perhaps the more so because it feels as though the signals should be available, yet somehow one is not sure how to give or receive them – there is a barrier perceived, because rather than despite of the visibility allowed. Just a few communication pitfalls for educational practice in the video-conferenced environment are known to be:
- backchannelling – grunts, nods, facial expressions, body stance and gestural info to suggest that communication is 'on track'… is absence better than distortion (perceived distortion, fear of misintepretation)?
- overlaps – anticipating and completing sentences, clashes with two speakers trying to get the floor, two or more folk speaking at once because the floor is 'open' yet the 'pre-speech' signals cannot register across the whole community… what are the rules for good manners here? Are we using and abusing them, as we do with those we have learnt for face to face situations?
- explicit handovers… turntaking… these should be easier for a teacher to manage, but experience suggests that the tensions often obtaining for student presentations, where task learning goals include the manners of debate and discussion, might be exacerbated here.
Whatever the circumstance, it seems that participation in the video-conferenced learning environment requires more 'concentration effort' for all concerned, to contribute, to interact, to learn, to develop…
Objective measures (eg task performance/outcome scores, or communicative process logs) often provide conflicting evidence to that given by subjective measures (eg attitudes, perceptions of progress and process, feelings). This in itself needs study – however, as stated elsewhere, our project work did not focus on learning gain but on staff and student impressions of the conferenced learning environment and the communication strategies it afforded or constrained.
Presentation resources and skills, presence, feedback, group management, participation, spontaneity, interactivity - these are the key issues of concern for lecturers, tutors and students. They apply in any classroom situation but, until familiarity renders these invisible, in the video conferenced environment they are framed, and mediated, by the technological resources themselves.
Much depends upon the kinds of learning interaction that video conferencing is intended to support within any given teaching context. Even within contexts, there is often more than one agenda of objectives for any given event. So it doesn't always, or even often, make sense to focus on just one aspect of the event in process, eg turntaking, easy interaction, participant response… For example, on 'spontaneity', is it always a sign of 'good' communication that people can, and do, interrupt discourse?
Main focus of use - transmission
A major, but not exclusive use of the technology within higher education is
for lectures. Although similar skills and strategies of good teaching practice
apply to those already developed in face-to-face classrooms, the technology
necessitates changes in strategies for presenting information, interacting
with the class, perceiving, interpreting and responding to feedback. Problems
faced range across these elements and are by no means uniform over teaching
groups. Some lecturers feel that they could 'sense' general student response
to their teaching, and whether there are individuals in difficulty in either
the immediate or remote classrooms. These may see their major difficulty lying
in how best to respond in turn, using unfamiliar tools.
For others, the lack of perceptible feedback is itself the main source of concern and impediment to performance.
Some students, across the variety of courses, might not see the technology as preventing interaction, questioning, commenting on or discussing lecture content, but rather see this as a natural and manageable part of class activity, regardless of the physical presence or absence of the lecturer in their classroom.
For others this is not the case at all and there are seen to be serious barriers to communication imposed by the technology between the student groups. This is especially so between the class which contains the lecturer and the remote sites, but also within the main campus classroom. Interruptions, for example, are sometimes seen as desirable and sometimes as potentially ill-mannered or ill-advised. More often, they are seen as impossible or at best difficult to achieve.
The option of later interaction, via phone or email or at a tutorial visit by the lecturer to remote teaching sites, if provided, will be taken up by some and not others. This is not always determined by which course, which teacher etc. but depends often upon student perceptions of what is appropriate, or useful behaviour.
There is a need, among lecturers and students, for a common understanding of 'good delivery practice' in the video-conferenced lecture and for a shared model of the opportunities that that environment affords for interaction. This will, obviously, vary from course to course depending upon level, lecturer preferences, numbers involved etc. but from this, we feel, appropriate customs of behaviour can develop. Critically important is that this understanding and shared development should extend over a range of individual performance, rather than seek to impose standards. Also, that it should take account of the availability, and accessibility, of immediate resources – technical and human – that might presently support such development.
Main focus of use - interaction
When the educational purpose of the video-conference is a course meeting (tutorial
group or seminar discussion for example), a considerable burden is seen to
rest upon the lecturer or tutor to ensure that all participants are given
an opportunity to interact usefully at appropriate points.
The social skills that people have developed for effective cueing of contributions to a discussion predominantly rely on paralinguistic (non-verbal) signals, such as gesture, body stance and intonation. Without full visibility of others much of the informal feedback available to both lecturer and students in a face-to-face session, eg facial expressions indicating interest, confusion or boredom, body orientation and stance, are not available and therefore the lecturer cannot easily amend, extend or truncate content or/and orchestrate activities in an effective fashion. ISDN signals can distort the tonal patterns used, for example in turn taking. Even the more formal signals used to indicate that a speaker wishes to participate are lost if the lecturer cannot see all class members.
The ability to switch on a mute button, stopping the audio signal from being transmitted from a site, allows participants to withdraw from a meeting. This withdrawal can be used effectively in the case of a group in one site constructing a collective contribution to the discussion, or it can be a less positive response, often used to voice frustration with proceedings that are not then used to achieve a more constructive outcome.
It can also support 'VC lurkers' – students who sit out of camera range and who do not speak, becoming effectively invisible. If the purpose of the event requires interaction and real participation, then structuring interaction and orchestrating feedback are required lecturer activities – but otherwise, it might be posited that not only can lurkers learn, their presence as an 'unseen audience' can draw out more from those who are prepared to be more active.
Meeting physically before continuing a working relationship across a dispersed group makes sense if the group members are strangers to each other for exactly the reason that we need to 'read' each other's body language in order to know key things about each other that only that language can say. Status and personality factors that matter for group relationships and management are minutely signalled in body orientation and stance, facial expression, gesture and 'small sounds' – sighs, gasps, grunts…
Individual members of any group will have individual paralinguistic characteristics. When lecturers say they know their students, this sort of information is included in that knowledge and it is easier to judge feedback, even from a distant group. What one lecturer will see as 'blobs' another sees as people because she knows them. It is apparently easier to compensate for low quality paralinguistic signal transmission if you are 'tuning in' to a group you already know.
Time is an issue in video-conferenced classroom in a different way than for face-to-face gatherings. More needs to be taken to solicit and to acknowledge information and responses round a distributed classroom, Pauses are longer as people wait to see whether silence means 'no answer' or whether the mike is still muted, also as they try to judge whether it is appropriate for their group to take the floor. As the time booked for a session draws to an end, the potential breaking of the link imposes closure in a way and to an extent not experienced in f-f sessions – it is the system that appears to make the rules, not the distributed group or its leader.
5.
Self-perceptions
Self consciousness is a feature of most 'public' communication
experience and both teachers and learners will be well aware of this outside
of any video-conferencing situation. There are generally perceived to be 'extra
layers' imposed by virtue of being able to see yourself, and not being able
to see all of your audience – for some, this extends to a feeling that none
of them were 'properly' visible.
Students and staff are alike in that some will hate the experience, others actively enjoy it and, with time, most will temper their more extreme first impressions and arrived at a neutral position. Realising that others will be feeling similarly exposed can be a step toward relaxing, if only in order to put them at their ease.
Whilst students are able to avoid exposure, by silence or by seating themselves 'off camera', lecturers are not. Selfconsciousness with the technology gets in the way of teaching. Many lecturers, as experienced teachers, either conquer their 'stage-fright' when informing, managing or facilitating their learners, or subvert it to the cause of pedagogy. Yet successful strategies which have been honed into habits of teaching jar against the need for deliberate modification imposed by the new environment.
One issue which flags when predominantly using the techology for lecture delivery is that of 'constraint'. A perceived need to keep still or risk being lost to the distant classrooms' view, though sometimes exaggerated, is of real concern to those whose preference is to move around the podium and make full use of gesture when addressing different segments of the (present) auditorium.
Solutions to issues under this heading – self consciousness, awareness of self in relation to others, concern for the wellbeing (and well-doing?) of others, emerge with familiarity, and with practice. Generic advice can be useful but only when people have submitted it to trial and error in their own field of practice. A strategy which can work very well for one person – moderating voice for example – can fail horribly for another. The main thing about communication engagement for teaching, applying very much to teaching online, is also surely true for learning in collaboration with others in the learning group – 'you have to put yourself in there'. This necessarily increases feelings of vulnerability, exposure and stress.
If a person tends toward selfconsciousness, then video-conferencing is likely to increase this state.
For students, shyness about interacting combines with uncertainty about how to do so. Seeing how others perform helps, as does talking about how it feels to perform. It seems necessary to match observed performance against personal experience to recognise possibly applicable strategies for one's own case. Also, feeling at ease and comfortable in any public situation takes practice – practice as an agent and actor as well as observer and 'passive participant'…
Orchestration of tasks and roles for a meaningful, and enjoyable opening activity provides a way of letting everyone find their own feet in the environment, though success may depend on the extent to which participants feel themselves to be in a 'safe' group. This is likely to be facilitated by group members having met each other first at a face to face gathering, if this is possible to arrange.
Subsequently, a space for cross site acknowledgement and conversation at the start of the session, while folk are coming in and settling down, might be better than a more structured but less natural 'meeting and greeting' session once all are present and before the course begins. The former might be less easy to engage with, or even rather chaotic under the standard 'sound-activates-vision' defaults, but the latter risks artificiality and/or might delay or subvert the intended class programme.
Some will, and some will not, participate at first – some who don't never will, or only very occasionally, while others find their feet and feature more strongly as participants as the course continues. Students learn from each other about what works – and what doesn't - for the group and for their own individual needs. If several attempts at participation from remote site students fail because the technology is not transparent, or because the main campus group is too self-involved, or because the task engagement itself is not seen as relevant, then increasingly fewer attempts will be made in future.
As always within interactive learning environments, care about individual self-esteem will accompany, if not over-ride, concern for learning. There may not be a permanent record of an embarrassing encounter (though there may, of course) but the situation of 'put-down' will be perceived as a very public one, with others involved than the immediate (and hopefully supportive) peer group.
6.
Learning and teaching relationships
Taking 'teaching' in the sense of creating environments within which
students can learn effectively, as well as focusing subject content and experience
appropriately for the course level and its learning aims, means that appropriate
and developmental learning and teaching relationships will be context-dependent.
Lectures are 'events' which invoke expectations of performance, of information transmission for shared understanding, of teachers talking and students listening. Particularly if a 'guest speaker' is involved, a sense of occasion and a consequent degree of formality may be desirable. Space and resources for interaction, though, should be provided at suitable times during or/and for a period after the event.
Also important is the 'personal touch' but this needs careful handling to avoid an appearance of TV presentation! Good technological resources can enhance rather than impede the visual information flow and the lecturer should be seen to be as aware of the students, present or distant, as they are of her or him. Greeting each site by name at the start; occasionally checking that meaning is 'getting across' and shifting the camera view to the different sites during the session; letting the student groups see each other at such times; making a habit of switching the camera to allow classroom view(s) at the close of the lecture, so that students can see others leaving, perhaps wave, perhaps even talk (there could be common ground to discuss in the few minutes before the link goes down)… In other words, it seems best to make the most of the interactivity afforded by the technology, without violating the 'customs' of the event. Rather, new and apposite customs need space to develop.
Given the difficulties that (fairly dramatic) changes in the learning and teaching environment impose upon practititoners – staff and students – it is probably best to develop new customs in partnership with students, rather than imposing change upon them. Students interviewed showed, in the main, considerable understanding of the plight of their teachers and, indeed, shared many of the same concerns.
It is often suggested that lecturers should occasionally switch delivery sites, and if this is possible it is good idea. Getting to know different student groups and, importantly, understanding the circumstances under which they are (hopefully) learning during lectures should arm the lecturer for better development of practice within the new environment. Students, too, can benefit from putting the 'presence' as well as the face to the name of their teacher. It also seems appropriate that all groups should be afforded the opportunity of being 'lead site'. Students privileged by being part of the main campus community, can see what it is like to take the receiving role. (It should be noted, though, that presence of the lecturer is not always seen as an advantage, so 'privilege' is itself arguable.)
More particularly, perhaps, for first-year classrooms, there are issues of classroom control and what might be thought of as 'social obligation'. Lecturers and students are concerned about behaviour in the remote classroom where, without a 'minder' students may not feel the need to turn up on time, or stay all through the session, or avoid talking with neighbours. Yet student group variables, lecturer style variables and even topic variables may account for behavioural differences to a greater extent than whether a lecturer is present in the room. Variables relating to the quality of the technology, obviously, will be important here – and a case can be made sfor the video-conferenced presence being more engaging than the physical one!
For course meetings, whatever their purpose, an informal atmosphere seems to promote good working relationships. This might be more the case for video-conferenced than face to face class meetings, due to a need to balance the organisational formalities imposed by the distribution of groups, and constraints and affordances of the technological resources that link them.
Relationships between groups across sites, and within groups on site, are discussed in the section below on 'Getting things done' in the conferenced classroom situation. The purpose of the learning engagement might define roles and relationships but may not foster them. Critical elements relate to there being shared ground, shared objects of study and shared or agreed learning goals across the distributed community. Also important to foster or, if necessary develop, is a mixture of trust and empathy that extends from the peer student group to include the lecturer, tutors and support staff. This might be difficult to manage without a mutual realisation equity with which all concerned are comfortable.
In all this, differences need to be acknowledged and respected. For example, while student group relationships across site are seen as desirable , to the extent that teachers express concern if they feel these were not developing, care might be needed to preserve good group relationships within site - particularly on remote sites where the immediate learning group is likely to have problems and priorities in common with each other.
Custom and commonsense both have a role in determining the extent to which 'remote' lecturers can be accessible to their students. As other sections of this resource suggest, and as our extending educational theme section will develop, learning support is a paramount concern for all 'conferenced' learning environments. Time, resource and skill investment by individual lecturers is a non-trivial issue. Differences in kind, quality and indeed quantity apply.
Students vary in their feeling of 'classroom relationship' with others on their course, whether or not separated from them by distance. Opportunities for relationships to develop but these should be offered and fostered, rather than imposed - except where course learning tasks require interaction.
Face-to-face meetings (eg field trips or 'away days') are welcomed by students, when it is possible to provide them. Otherwise there is the possibility of casual encounter with the additional 'communication space' provided by email resources – and these also can be appreciated, though not always taken up.
Outside of formal course requirement for interaction outwith the video-conferenced engagements, it seems best to provide or point to resources for interpersonal relationship between staff and students, and between students themselves, whilst leaving the manner, frequency and purpose of such relationship open to the students to define for themselves. This position, of course, raises exactly the resource implications for staff flagged above.
7. Getting things done
Our strong feeling is that good guidelines for good practice
are better offered when the practitioner concerned has some experience of
the conferencing technologies at issue, in a real classroom situation. Individual
teachers and learners, within their own contexts of need, can best develop
strategies which they in turn can share with others. In this section we pass
on some of the advice developed and questions raised by experience in various
teaching and learning contexts.
Preparation
Handouts, organisers, reading lists and any relevant course material which
is supplementary to the session should be made available in downloadable,
printable form in advance of the session, to all sites.
Planning and creating lesson content and deciding which elements should be delivered in advance of the session, and how, obviously makes sense and is (almost always!) what any lecturer will do, for whatever teaching venue. The degree of preparation recommended for video-conferenced classrooms, however, brings problems even for technological adepts. It is difficult to make radical or even minor changes to content and task in response to student feedback or classroom circumstance when all had to be digitised the day before. This leads to a feeling of constraint or, as one lecturer put it, 'imprisonment in the lesson plan'.
Being aware of the possible problem is at least a step to solving it. Having the confidence to waive lesson structure, the foresight to carry extra resources or the facility to access them quickly, the ability to meet a suddenly made commitment to provide further notes, resources, etc is, after all, the sign of a good practitioner in the face to face classroom. No one suggested, surely, that videoconferencing made teaching itself easier? Yet, beyond all this, the need to acquire the new skills necessary to realise (justify?) such confidence is not trivial, and should be supported by provision of technical and training resources, and the time to make best use of them.
Performing
'Being yourself' seems the best strategy of all – allowing the individual
person you are to be seen and heard and to interact with the classroom, sharing
difficulty as well as understanding with the students. Quite possibly the
hardest strategy to implement however!
Reasonable advice to 'look at the camera, not the screen' risks artificial behaviour and the further advice to 'treat the camera as a student' may not quite do the trick. The camera and the screen need positioning such that both can be within 'gaze range' or the lecturer risks missing the effect of rhetoric upon audience. Feedback, acknowledged as essential to good teaching, becomes even harder to receive and interpret.
Once comfortable with the equipment and the resources it provides for best facilitating the intended teaching strategies, learning tasks and content, lecturers can adjust their ways to best benefit from the new environment or, where necessary and possible, adjust the environment itself.
At least, the lecturer should be seen. Use both visual channels if these are available. That is, let the lecturer's/speaker's/presenter's image be carried by the video link with a networked computer link carrying the 'overhead' information – images, graphs, content outline or emphasis, video-clips, etc in digitised format. If two vision channels are not available, then there should be a reasonable distribution of view between lecturer and overheads, video-clips, demonstrations etc. Also, it is sensible to make this material available to the delivery sites in advance of the session, through the network via email attachment, web address or file transfer protocol so that it can be accessed by the remote system machine for display at the time of transmission if the network link breaks.
This is less wasteful than sending paper versions, discs, video tapes etc via the 'physical' means, copying for each site or possibly even each student. It need not be printed down for general circulation, but subsequently it should remain available for access, from servers at main or/and local sites.
Managing
Staff development guidelines for 'good lecturing' suggest breaks in transmission
to check students' understanding, or to relax their concentration effort for
a spell by introducing a different, brief, activity. Whether this is indeed
good practice will depend on context - who is speaking, to whom, about what,
why and, importantly, how well. In a video-conferenced lecture this is, if
anything, even more true. Yet there are differences specific to that environment.
Quality itself is a two-pronged thing. It could be that the better the image
and the clearer the information flow, the more passive the learner?
Students also need to see in a video-conferencing environment. To them that is, after all, a main point of being there. Seeing the lecturer, seeing the materials, but also seeing each other, knowing that their input is received and understood. Students, like lecturers, need feedback.
Face to face meeting of students and teachers together at one place at the start of the course is generally recommended even for video-conferencing groups, and information from our field work confirms that this is sensible, if it can be managed.
Some students see advantage in being in the same room as the delivering teacher, and others find the distant mode suits them better – particularly when the image of the lecturer is good and the presentation of material is simultaneous with, rather instead of, the image of the lecturer at the distant site. Where possible (eg in 'overspill' situations, though probably less often for 'outreach' sites) students should have an opportunity to experience both delivery and reception classroom modes.
In large classes the presence of a tutor/facilitator at the remotes sites has been found to benefit the student learning experience, perhaps more so for first year classes. These people can answer, and ask, questions, provide materials and generally monitor the remote classroom. There are issues about the level of this support, whether its direction should be practical or pedagogical, whether the role should be 'minder' or 'facilitator' or, indeed, combinations of all. Experience in other institutions suggests that much depends on the nature of the class and the interactive role of the lecturer, visibility between the two classrooms etc. etc. Some reports which suggest that a student group can provide for itself - with agreement beforehand as to tasks and roles.
Depending upon purpose, such obvious aspects of management as arrangement of chairs, tables, working resources, etc take on a different dimension in a video-conferenced classroom. Informality or/and task demands can be signalled and facilitated but attention must be paid to cameras, screens and, most importantly, microphones dependent upon who are the agents, the actors, the audience(s)…
Group work should be possible, and interesting developments seem to be suggested by the very fact of the 'distributed classroom', yet these may not be easy to orchestrate. This is very much a familiarity issue – both with group work itself, and with the technologies involved. For example, some felt that it was not appropriate to have 'break-out' sessions, because of waste of the 'line-time' (this of course depends upon whether or not line costs are levied – they are not in some sectors). On the other hand it seems that groups opt-out on their own volition during meetings, so perhaps this could be 'legalised' and made a feature of?
Technology matters
Are students, as a body, more at ease with the technology than their teachers?
Several things apply here – not least that in many cases they are at liberty
to be so, as they have to do a lot less with it! Otherwise, though, not necessarily
so. The learner groups that we might be intending to attract, and support,
with 'the new technologies' may well be less technologically resourced in
their home, work and school environments than those students more familiar
to those in the traditional HE campus.
Even if the learner profile, equipment and support needs can be identified and specified, there will still be problems for teaching design and implementation. Inevitably, an initial needs analysis made on the strength of academic and learner opinion of what may, or may not, be desirable does not provide the facilities that a year's experience identify as essential. Mistakes, and corrections, can be very expensive.
Voice-activated systems are very probably the most efficient way of dealing with the sorts of communication needs that apply for tutorials, seminar meetings, debates even. They are less so for lectures, where the control of who speaks to who when, and who can see who when, needs to be carefully orchestrated. Investment in high level static mikes that allow control options and therefore greater flexibility of use would seem worthwhile – flexibility being a valued attribute of any teaching and learning resource.
Likewise, there is a way of achieving lecturer control of the camera views, but this is apparently not intuitive to handle and is also complicated to set up for individual sessions. Nevertheless, the facility does need to be provided, in a way that teachers can manage while teaching without the need to interrupt the rhetorical flow.
Cameras that track the speaker, without losing those who bend down to pick up their chalk (!) also need to be considered as good investment for the flexible classroom – whilst retaining the fixed cameras that allow for wide view, focus and directional zoom…
The above assumes that there will be an opportunity to design, purchase and implement a new conferencing environment – a more likely scenario is that use must be made of resources already in place with a (not inappropriate) reliance on the creativity of staff and students, the strengths of their communicative needs and urges and, to as much an extent as possible, the adaptability of the immediate resources.
In both scenarios, the main and most important element to bring into the 'start-up' situation is training – by which we mean purpose driven, relevant and enjoyable familiarisation, practice and play.
8.
Continuity with curricula
The cases studied under this technology heading cover a broad
range of educational provision: first year lectures, CPD course meetings,
tutorials, and seminars.
Generally the video-conferenced events within the courses we studied were core components of the programmes they served, with support resources and course activities in place to complement or extend learning content provided and learning activities engaged during the event.
Whilst, as indicated in earlier sections, there are issues for discussion and development relating to learning support and class management which are specific to video-conferencing as an educational resource, the question of continuity is less of concern. The fundamental function of the v-c events within their courses was recognised and acknowledged by students and staff, with the ability of the technology to support that function more of an issue than the function itself.
Summary comments
When it comes to extending teaching and learning expertise and
coping strategies to utilise new tools and technologies, skills develop with
experience. It is true that some engage with the experience and others prevent
such gain by keeping the technology at arm's length. Yet it is unlikely that
a solution which has another human agent making 'switch decisions' will work
for even the most rampant technophobes amongst us.
Better, surely, that the technology is robust and manageable, and that lecturers and students have well supported opportunities to become comfortable with it in safe and friendly circumstances. Such familiarisation sessions work best in the company of subject peers and support staff who are themselves at ease with the equipment and with the practice of educational development – and who know when to hand over!
Video-conferencing in education has been an an issue of considerable interest across all sectors over recent years. Pockets of practice have provided valuable experience, well disseminated through international and national conferences, journals and on-line organisations. Human factors research, focused more on workplace, corporate and social communication than specifically educational uses, has provided evidence from laboratory experiement and field study which marks concerns for future study in educational settings. There is not yet an extensive literature to underpin our 'grounded' video conferencing guidelines to the same extent as we were able to lean on for the text based conferencing resource. Much of this document, therefore, has depended upon practice experience, across the international higher education sector and from our own research, teaching and learning.
We are confident that the necessary research effort is now being made, with different strands of different disciplines pulling together to engage in work which will be rooted in, and itself inform, both theory and practice.
Video conferencing case studies from the LNCS fieldwork
Case One
Masters course in foreign policy and analysis
Case Two
Undergraduate course in rural development
Case Three
Accrediting prior learning for continuing professional development
Case Four
Elective module in cultural studies
Case Five
Physics and environmental sciences
Case Six
First year lectures in the Faculty of Arts
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Text of this section by Erica McAteer
(c)Erica McAteer, Charles Crook, Andy Tolmie, Hamish Macleod, Kerry Musselbrook, David Barrowcliff, 1st May 2000
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