Postgraduate Continuing Medical Education via Videoconferencing at the K.U.Leuven in Belgium: An Evaluation of Pentalfa

In: A.J. Kallenberg and M.J.J.M. van de Ven (Eds), 2002, The New Educational Benefits of ICT in Higher Education: Proceedings. Rotterdam: Erasmus Plus BV, OECR ISBN 90-9016127-9Traditionally medical specialists attended seminars organized by clinical university departments of the K.U.Leuven Medical Faculty. However due to increasing travel and traffic problems the Pentalfa project was initiated in an effort to replace face-to-face seminars. We applied ISDN-videoconferencing technology to interconnect the video and sound signals of the different sites in real time. In all sites the session could be followed on two screens. On one screen, either the speaker/moderator or person involved in dialogue at a remote site could be seen or whatever else was being sent via videoconference. On the second one, which was linked to a multimedia computer, digitized images are projected. A voting system was used to interconnect all sites and allowed the participation in the various voting opportunities, which occurred during each session. For each session, a topic within a specific discipline was chosen and treated in a multidisciplinary way. The Pentalfa project was initially planned for a period of 3 years. During each academic year, 2 to 3 periods of 8-9 sessions each were organized (total of 74 session). A questionnaire, completed with open questions, was given to all participants (over three years 13 489 participants). 28.2 % of the questionnaires were returned. We reached 64.6 % male and 35.4% female participants with the program. The percentage female participants was higher at the central than at the guest sites. The mean age of the participants was 37.7 years. Male participants were older than female. At the central location the mean age was lower than at the guest locations. The percentage female participants decreased in the older age groups. Timesaving was an important goal for starting up the project. Nearly 90% of the public at the guest sites said they saved time by attending the session. The averaged time saving per participant in these guest locations increased from 99 min in the first year to 145 min in the third year. This emphasizes the growing mobility problems of our society. Globally, participants were satisfied with the pedagogical approach used in Pentalfa. More than 55 % of the participants found the Pentalfa session easier than classical seminars. Participants at the guest sites and older participants had a more positive appreciation than the average. In the evaluation we found that satisfaction about the technology was very high. The very excellent appreciation of the quality of the image, even in the absence of a lecturer, indicates that the concept of using 3 ISDN (6 lines) connections is sufficient for long-distance education The global cost per participant at the guest locations was 44.5 euro/h broadcasting and their virtual saving was 64 euro/h. More than 85 % of the participants at the guest sites stated that they would no longer go to Leuven (the central location) for these sessions if they were to be organized in a traditional face-to-face manner, mostly due to time and/or traffic. In order to come to a sufficient result for long-distance education via videoconferences from the participants, a lot of efforts are required. Once all those problems are resolved, this medium seems to be very suitable as an alternative for the increasing mobility- and accompanying time problems The experience obtained with Pentalfa, will be used for other aspects of the medical service such as “second opinion” or “Telemedicine”

Videoconference in education at U.PORTO

The University of Porto (U.PORTO), through is New Technologies in Education (NTE) office has available since March 2005 a Videoconference Studio. This equipment is closely related do the dissemination of the videoconference technologies at U.PORTO. Only in the years of 2007 and 2008 this equipment has registered an increase of about 300% on his usage.Several efforts were developed by the NTE team that contributed to this high usage. We highlight especially the fluidity on the service, the multifunctional usage, the acquisition and the development of knowledge in this field and the internationalization of this service. Various educations scenarios were implemented during these past years using the videoconference infrastructure. We highlight the pedagogical scenarios that became long structured pedagogical projects with more than a year long. We had the example of a curricular unit from a Master degree between our Faculty of Economics and ISEG (Lisbon). In this case we had about twenty students in our Videoconference room during two semesters and the teacher was in Lisbon. Another example was a Doctoral curricular unit that happen between our Faculty of Sciences, IST (Lisbon) and Carnegie Mellon University (USA). In this case we had a teacher and about five students in Lisbon, one class of about five students in the USA and one student in our Videoconference Studio.Recently it was implemented a new telepresence room (Douro HD Room) in last July 2009 and we will join this year a portable videoconference system that will offer a complete and different set of options in the videoconference field to all the academic community. With different characteristics between them, these three equipments from U.PORTO will allow an optimization in the videoconference service offer in all the University.This segmentation on the types of videoconference contents that these equipments can give can also boost the usage of these infrastructures in the University but can also boost the pedagogical use of the videoconference technologies in all the academic community. In the past years several activities supported by the NTE team were developed in collaboration with several international institutions and even with the integration in international organizations with high experience with videoconference. This integration permitted to increase the knowledge in this field. This internationalization component was very important to the high intensity in the usage of the videoconference infrastructure in the U.PORTO.We can say that with this offer and this experience it's possible to create even more opportunities of usage, especially in the Videoconference Studio of U.PORTO (due to the multifunctional characteristics) on the usage to diverse, structured and constant pedagogical scenarios that can last several years

The OER FLOW and social media

This presentation introduces some strategies for producing, sharing and reusing OER through the OER Flow and social media. The aim of this investigation is to identify how colearners can apply the OER Flow and social media to make the production and adaptation processes of OER more explicit for anyone in the community to contribute. This work analyses, therefore, the interactions of “COLEARN” – an open community of research in collaborative learning technologies – who created and remixed diverse open media components for producing an open book about OER using the OER flow and Social Media. The outcomes show that educators and colearners can move from a passive position to a more active and informed network role when they are able to co-authoring OER

Toward a Nevada Digital Collaborative

In mid-2008, a statewide committee was formed to engage in a comprehensive, Nevada statewide digital planning process. This group consisted of broad membership from the range of Nevada cultural heritage institutions, and was focused on creating a five year digital plan for the state, with an emphasis on collaboration amongst various cultural heritage institutions, increased digitization, and adoption of a digital preservation strategy. This article describes the initial work of the parent committee and two subsequent working groups, funded by the Library Technology and Services Act and aided by outside consultants. Early steps included a comprehensive planning survey and various meetings to understand the capabilities and desires of both primary stakeholders and the community at large. While several challenges not necessarily unique to Nevada arose over the first couple of years, a clear path forward for additional progress has been charted