The shape of online meetings

Live videoconferencing has become an integral part of international virtual learning and working with professionals, educators and students using online meetings to enhance their collaboration from different parts of the world. This paper explores the visualization of a set of different online meetings produced by the FlashMeeting' videoconferencing system. Our polar area visualization analysis reveals interesting patterns in participant dominance in online meetings: seminars, interviews, moderated project meetings, peer-to-peer meetings, web-casts and video lectures. Visualizing patterns in the use of foreground and background communication channels is a promising way to help us to start to explore individual user roles in different communities and in different meeting types

The practice of web conferencing: where are we now?

The use of web conferencing tools to support learning and teaching and facilitate interaction and collaboration is common in many higher education environments as is the replacement of face-to-face meetings with virtual collaboration tools. This paper reports on Phase 3 of a trial of web conferencing conducted at a regional Australian university and further explores the use of web conferencing to support and enhance learning and teaching. Preliminary findings from Phases 1 and 2 of the trial have been reported on in a previous paper. The action research method which framed the initial trial has again been applied to Phase 3. In Phase 1, collaborative mathematical problem-solving in an undergraduate course was carried out using web conferencing and tablet PCs. In addition, students in postgraduate Education courses were linked across the globe to participate in interactive and collaborative web conference activity. In Phase 2, a university-wide trial across disciplines was conducted. Phase 3 represents an analysis of feedback received from teachers who were involved in Phases 1 and 2 and who have had some time to reflect on the impact web conferencing has had on their teaching practice. From this, and their own experience, the authors make further observations regarding the use of web conferencing to support learning and teaching and raise a number of questions and issues to guide future research

Examining the role of smart TVs and VR HMDs in synchronous at-a-distance media consumption

This article examines synchronous at-a-distance media consumption from two perspectives: How it can be facilitated using existing consumer displays (through TVs combined with smartphones), and imminently available consumer displays (through virtual reality (VR) HMDs combined with RGBD sensing). First, we discuss results from an initial evaluation of a synchronous shared at-a-distance smart TV system, CastAway. Through week-long in-home deployments with five couples, we gain formative insights into the adoption and usage of at-a-distance media consumption and how couples communicated during said consumption. We then examine how the imminent availability and potential adoption of consumer VR HMDs could affect preferences toward how synchronous at-a-distance media consumption is conducted, in a laboratory study of 12 pairs, by enhancing media immersion and supporting embodied telepresence for communication. Finally, we discuss the implications these studies have for the near-future of consumer synchronous at-a-distance media consumption. When combined, these studies begin to explore a design space regarding the varying ways in which at-a-distance media consumption can be supported and experienced (through music, TV content, augmenting existing TV content for immersion, and immersive VR content), what factors might influence usage and adoption and the implications for supporting communication and telepresence during media consumption

Activating Boxmind: an evaluation of a web‐based video lecture with synchronized activities

The aim of this study was to evaluate the use of synchronous computer‐mediated communication activities in a video e‐lecture. Previous research has reported that learning is facilitated when communication activities are added to a video lecture. Twelve postgraduate students participated in the study and they viewed a video e‐lecture on the perspective‐taking theory of communication. The lecture consisted of a video image of the lecturer, an audio track, slides, the transcript and a number of communication activities. They were given a pre‐test a week before the lecture and a post‐test a week after. They were also asked to rate the helpfulness of various aspects of the lecture. Students’ post‐test scores were statistically significantly higher than their pre‐test scores. They found the audio track, transcript, slides and activities helpful. The most helpful aspects were the communication activities. The implications of these findings are discussed

Is there a net generation coming to university?

This paper reports the first phase of an ESRC funded research project to investigate first year students' use of technology in relation to the idea of young people born after 1983 forming a distinct age cohort described variously as the Net generation or Digital Natives. The research took place in five English universities in the spring of 2008. The research found a far more complex picture than that suggested by the rhetoric with student use of new technologies varying between different universities and courses. Some of the more discussed new technologies such as blogs, wikis and virtual worlds were shown to be less used by students than might have been expected. The Net generation appears if anything to be a collection of minorities with a small number of technophobic students and larger numbers of others making use of new technologies but in ways that did not fully correspond with many of the expectations built into the Net generation and Digital Natives theses

Computer-mediated knowledge communication

New communication technologies enable an array of new working and learning scenarios in which knowledge is being communicated. This article deals with the question to what extent these technologies can impede or facilitate knowledge communication. First, the various computer-based communication technologies will be classified. Second, effects of the medium on knowledge communication will be discussed based on results of studies of the current special priority program "Net-based Knowledge Communication in Groups". Third and last, computer-based possibilities to facilitate computer-mediated knowledge communication will be reviewNeue Kommunikationstechnologien ermöglichen eine Reihe neuer Arbeits- und Lernszenarien in denen Wissen kommuniziert wird. Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich damit, inwiefern diese Technologien Wissenskommunikation einschränken oder fördern können. Dazu werden in einem ersten Schritt die verschiedenen computerbasierten Kommunikationstechnologien untergliedert. In einem zweiten Schritt werden Wirkungen des Mediums auf die Wissenskommunikation diskutiert. Dazu werden u. a. die Ergebnisse von Studien des aktuellen Forschungsschwerpunkts "Netzbasierte Wissenskommunikation in Gruppen" berichtet. In einem dritten und letzten Schritt werden computerbasierte Möglichkeiten zusammengefasst, computervermittelte Wissenskommunikation zu förd

Are digital natives a myth or reality?: Students’ use of technologies for learning

This paper outlines the findings of a study investigating the extent and nature of use of digital technologies by undergraduate students in Social Work and Engineering, in two British universities. The study involved a questionnaire survey of students (n=160) followed by in-depth interviews with students (n=8) and lecturers and support staff (n=8) in both institutions. Firstly, the findings suggest that students use a limited range of technologies for both learning and socialisation. For learning, mainly established ICTs are used- institutional VLE, Google and Wikipedia and mobile phones. Students make limited, recreational use of social technologies such as media sharing tools and social networking sites. Secondly, the findings point to a low level of use of and familiarity with collaborative knowledge creation tools, virtual worlds, personal web publishing, and other emergent social technologies. Thirdly, the study did not find evidence to support the claims regarding students adopting radically different patterns of knowledge creation and sharing suggested by some previous studies. The study shows that students’ attitudes to learning appear to be influenced by the approaches adopted by their lecturers. Far from demanding lecturers change their practice, students appear to conform to fairly traditional pedagogies, albeit with minor uses of technology tools that deliver content. Despite both groups clearly using a rather limited range of technologies for learning, the results point to some age differences, with younger, engineering students making somewhat more active, albeit limited, use of tools than the older ones. The outcomes suggest that although the calls for radical transformations in educational approaches may be legitimate it would be misleading to ground the arguments for such change solely in students’ shifting expectations and patterns of learning and technology use

Exploring the virtual classroom: What students need to know (and teachers should consider)

Technological improvements in many countries have meant that institutions offering distance education programmes now have more options available to them to communicate and interact with their students, and increasingly, attention is being turned to the potential of Web2 technologies to facilitate synchronous interaction. This study explores the affordances and limitations of an online virtual classroom, Adobe Connect Pro, when used in the learning programmes of two groups of undergraduate and postgraduate education students. Results indicate that while both groups gained value from using the classroom, they also found it a completely new environment, and one to which many had trouble transferring the interaction and communication skills developed in other contexts. The reasons for this related to three specific areas of knowledge – technical, procedural and operational, that were identified as being critical to student performance in this environment. The study suggests that educators and course designers need to embed strategies into their online offerings to enable students to develop these, if they are to gain substantial benefit from the availability of virtual classrooms. Additionally, the study identified that when making design decisions about online learning environments, it is very much a matter of horses for courses when selecting tools for specific purposes. While the virtual classroom proved useful for developing social connection and a sense of community, it may not be so beneficial for supporting deeper learning