Surfing Electronic Waves: The Application of Videoconference Technology in Tertiary Teaching

Central Queensland University

Keywords: Videoconference; tertiary teaching, online, technology, universities, pedagogy, teaching and learning,

Article style and source: Peer reviewed. Original ultiBASE publication.

Contents

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Section One: three contextual pressures
  • Economic pressures
  • Technological pressures
  • Equity pressures
• Section Two: a specific university context
• Section Three: teaching and learning with videoconferences
  • Videoconference technology
  • The teaching model
• Conclusion: surfer pedagogy and technological ways forward
• Afterword
• References

Abstract

The context within which university educators now design and deliver their courses has changed dramatically in the past decade. This requires them to identify and respond to a diverse range of pressures in pedagogically effective, culturally inclusive and technologically relevant ways. This paper reviews the adoption and adaption of videoconference technology to deliver a first year education unit to students located on multiple campuses throughout Queensland. It provides an overview of the factors shaping the design choices made by the teaching team and provides detailed recommendations concerning those features which can lead to successful use of videoconference technology for tertiary teaching.

Introduction

In 1988 my work as an educator at Central Queensland University, Australia was dramatically different from what it is now. In 1988 I spent the first half of my week in one city and the second half in another. This constant travelling between two sites which are 120 kilometres apart seemed, at the time, to be the only way in which I could meet the needs of the students I was responsible for: to serve them I needed to be with them.

In 1998, ten years later, my academic life was significantly different. I had five times as many students to teach and these students were located throughout Australia and a range of other countries with particular concentrations in four Central Queensland cities: Rockhampton, Bundaberg, Gladstone and Mackay. With the exception of the Rockhampton cohort, my contact with these students was no longer via the traditional face-to-face model of education. Nor did it take place through distance or off campus education. Instead, I connected with many of my students with the use of videoconference technology.

I am not the only academic who has had to re-define her approach to education in the past decade. Nor has this change been without some tension and anxiety. The dramatic shift in the form of educational delivery that I have experienced reflects equally dramatic shifts in the purposes and practices of education generally and university education specifically over the past ten years. In this paper I wish to explore some of the contextual pressures which have shaped, and which continue to shape, the practices of university teaching staff and the ways in which videoconference technology can be adopted to respond to these pressures. This introduction is therefore followed by three main sections: in the first I will discuss briefly the changing context of university education and detail some of the key pressures currently negotiated by academic staff; in the second, I will explore the ways in which these pressures have been negotiated by academics within the Faculty of Education and Creative Arts at Central Queensland University (CQU); and in the third and final section, I will outline some of the ways in which videoconference technology can be used in university teaching. Throughout the paper I will be drawing on my own use of videoconference technology within the Faculty of Education and Creative Arts at CQU. top

Section One: three contextual pressures

University educators are currently under pressure to respond to several (often competing) sets of pressures in the design and implementation of educational programs. These pressures relate to contemporary economic, technological and equity agendas and responding to any or all of these in a meaningful way is no simple matter. Indeed, it is quite easy for an individual to attend to only one, or perhaps two, of these contexts which can, in turn, lead to educational practices which are ultimately rejected either by key university staff (administrators or technology support staff, for example) or rejected by students.

An ability to identify the ‘qualities’ valued within the full range of contexts currently working to shape tertiary education maximises an educator’s chances of crafting a particular innovation that is acceptable to the widest possible number of people. In this section of the paper, therefore, I will identify what I believe to be some of the ‘qualities’ valued within contemporary economic, technological and equity debates and highlight, briefly, the challenges each one poses for university educators. top

Economic pressures

Changing economic conditions associated with the emergence of a ‘global economy’ have contributed to a challenging financial context for universities in Australia and throughout the world. In Australia, there is now an expectation that universities will generate substantial revenue over and above government funding. In addition to this, the penalties for failure to meet enrolment targets or high levels of student attrition are increasingly severe with universities being required to return part of their government funding if they fail to meet or maintain the student loads they negotiate with the Department of Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA). This in turn generates a keenly felt belief that universities must compete actively for students and develop niche marketing opportunities that tap into ‘client’ demands at various geographical locations. Related moves by various universities to establish multiple campuses within and external to Australia demonstrate the imperative for administrators to identify and ‘capture’ new local and international markets. Most highly prized within this economic rationalist context are notions of ‘efficiency’ and ‘cost effectiveness’ along with a flexible staffing profile.

In this environment university educators are clearly challenged to become more ‘efficient’ in their work. In many cases efficiency is equated with an ability to teach more students with the same (or less) financial output. This situation is further complicated by increasing pressures upon academics to be efficient, not just as teachers, but as researchers, administrators, and participants in professional communities. At the same time as they are being asked to teach efficiently, therefore, staff are also being challenged to demonstrate their economic worth to the institution across a wide range of areas. To take one example, academics are widely expected to demonstrate a particular form of research productivity, with the DETYA allocation of university research funds being increasingly tied to such criteria as the ability of university staff to attract external competitive research funds. top

Technological pressures

Within this economic climate educational technologies are increasingly promoted as important or key elements for institutions wishing to meet the challenge of educating in the latter years of the twentieth century . Technological solutions are regularly offered for just about every educational problem and one common (though largely unacknowledged) assumption is that the presence of a particular technology is enough to generate a ‘quality’ educational program which will be somehow more ‘efficient’. This is often the result of a belief that some technological ‘thing’ such as a computer, or a video camera for example, is inherently a ‘learning technology’ .

In a slight variation on this theme, university academics are increasingly expected to provide students with opportunities to use/understand/manage new communication and information technologies because of a widespread acknowledgement that we are living in an increasingly technologised world within which individuals require a new range of technological/information literacies. Academics come under pressure to demonstrate that they are at the ‘cutting edge’ of technology, and are expected to teach these new competencies to their students. The risks here are clear: academics can find themselves in the position of ‘performing’ within a particular technological space with minimal understanding of how the technology intersects with or impacts upon pedagogy. In other words, corporate and social valorisation of technology can lead to the unproblematic adoption of this technology by educators in universities which, whilst contributing to the technological image of a department/faculty/university, does not necessarily do anything to help in the actual teaching it purports to support. top

Equity pressures

While educators are increasingly aware of technological and economic imperatives, many struggle to resolve what often appears as a tension between these and the equity based agendas which many academics have become more aware of in the past ten years. Studies of educational innovation can attend to issues associated with the economic efficiency of a particular form of delivery whilst failing to consider the extent to which an innovation enables educators to respond to increasing diversity in terms of the ages, cultural backgrounds, prior education and levels of achievement of the student base . Similarly, issues of access and equity are easily obscured in the rush to ‘technologise’ a curriculum. For example, it has become common for academics to assume that students have equal and equitable access to computers and electronic networks when analysis the of student population show that this is not the case .

In a quest to reconcile equity agendas with increasingly strong technological agendas, academics can get caught up in a variation of the famous chicken and the egg debate: people reviewing student access to computers within a course which has computer access as a prerequisite for enrolment may be delighted to find that 95% of those enrolled do, indeed, have reliable computer access. What is harder to determine, however, is the extent to which those without this access simply self-select themselves out of the field either by pursuing higher education that does not make these technological demands or by withdrawing altogether. Just as biologists generally agree that the egg proceeded the chicken, so, too, do commentators on equity in higher education commonly argue that pre-requisites determine the character of any student population.

Understandings of equity, social justice and disadvantage, then, form the third key pressure by which educators are currently challenged. Educators of today face the challenge of responding to an increasing diversity in terms of where students are located (in a multi-campus context), their mode of attendance (on-campus, off-campus or in multi-mode combinations), as well as significant differences in terms of student age, educational background, race, socio-economic status, gender and life experience.

Juggling these complex and often competing agendas can be stressful for staff (and the students they teach) and it is always possible that physical and human resources will be invested in ‘innovations’ that are ultimately unsuccessful. By having them in the forefront of one’s mind when designing a course, however, many of the pitfalls associated with re-designing subjects in ways that respond to technological options can be avoided. In the next section of this paper I will explore the ways in which these pressures have been successfully negotiated by staff in the Faculty of Education and Creative Arts and will detail the teaching model that has resulted. I will begin with a brief over view of the specific CQU context. top

Section Two: a specific university context

Central Queensland University (CQU) is a multi-campus institution that takes pride in the fact that almost 50% of its 15,000 students study (or have studied) through some form of distance education. The largest campus is located in the city of Rockhampton and there are key campuses offering full degree programs in four other cities situated between 100 and 400 kilometers away from this central campus: in Bundaberg, Gladstone, Emerald and Mackay (for details see map of campuses).

Bearing in mind that the majority of the university’s staff are still located at the main campus in Rockhampton, this distribution of students across geographically distant sites brings the challenges outlined above into sharp relief. Specifically, it asks educators to provide all students, regardless of where they are located, with equal and equitable access to discipline knowledge. Accordingly, those of us with subjects offered across multiple campuses have been encouraged to explore innovative ways of meeting the needs of these students. This brings me to the issue of videoconferencing.

As mentioned earlier I work in the Faculty of Education and Creative Arts at CQU and have been faced with the challenge of a widely disbursed student body since 1995. Specifically, the teaching team I was part of needed to find a way to deliver a first year discipline unit called Communication, Culture and Difference (CCD) to students located in Rockhampton, Gladstone, Bundaberg and Mackay. In responding to this I was unable to fall back on traditional models of distance education as a result of a Faculty commitment to ensuring that education students (future teachers) are trained for the majority of their degree via some form of ‘face-to-face’ delivery. Other options such as the distribution of video tapes of lectures given in Rockhampton to ‘other campuses’ had long been the subject of some discontent among students in other faculties. And there was simply not enough money to employ specialist staff at each of the three new campuses. This combination of factors provides an important reminder that academics do not work in a vacuum and that the choices they make about the best way to teach a program are generally mediated by other ‘external’ factors over which they have no control.

In the context that I have described here, newly installed videoconferencing technology at CQU, whilst mysterious in that I had never worked with it before, seemed very appealing to me. For others at the same university videoconferencing was never considered as a workable means for teaching across campuses. Early attempts to ‘recruit’ staff to make use of the technology met with several common responses. Some staff felt that adding in a new and unfamiliar technology to their classrooms would simply increase their already high levels of stress. Others argued that the technology was ‘incompatible’ with their preferred teaching style and some within this group objected to the suggestion that in order to be ‘good’ users of the technology they would need to rethink the way they taught. Whilst conscious that this form of technology would more than likely require particular forms of pedagogy, I perhaps had something of an advantage over my colleagues in other faculties because of the subject matter that I was dealing with. CCD is a subject within which students identify the values and belief systems of their cultural context via an examination of a range of popular culture texts—movies, advertisements, picture books, music and so on. In their analysis of these texts students focus particularly on the ways in which various cultural contexts value or devalue some social or physical characteristics whilst devaluing others. They are encouraged to pay particular attention to the way in which our culture responds to differences in terms of race, ethnicity, physical ability, economic status, religion, sexuality and gender.

Because of this emphasis on textual analysis and cultural values CCD leant itself to an interactive, informal teaching style that incorporates lots of visual aids—videos, magazines and so on. Because of this my early hunch was that the content of the unit would be compatible with the characteristics of videoconference technology. In the following section I will describe the technology I worked with and discuss the ways in which a different—and more positive understanding of the technology—shaped the way it was incorporated into a particular educational program. top

Section Three: teaching and learning with videoconferences

Videoconference technology

Firstly, then, videoconferencing technology makes possible the real-time transmission of video and audio material between two or more sites: thus students in Bundaberg and a lecturer in Rockhampton, for example, are connected via telecommunication lines in a manner that allows them to see, hear and interact with one another in a relatively immediate fashion. While there is some time delay in the transmission of sound and some fracturing of picture quality, the greatest advantage of videoconferencing equipment is its ability to bring people separated by distance into a shared, virtual space within which synchronous communication can occur . In ideal videoconference circumstances, all parties can have input into the exchange and are able to see and hear the input of others.

Videoconference technology allows for the transmission not just of ‘live’ images, but also of videos and other resources. It also accommodates the transmission of ‘paper’ images (similar to traditional overhead transparencies) via a document camera. These can be projected in full colour and images of other objects such as books, photos, toys can also be transmitted via the document camera.

Mitchell et al. note that "[t]wo-way video and audio is associated generally with the purpose of creating at a distance the same scope for visual and aural interactions as might be expected if all participants were present in the classroom". Such an association would seem to have tremendous appeal to educators struggling with the need to educate across distance and to multiple sites. Yet academics have generally been extremely reluctant to incorporate it in any extensive way into their educational programs . This reluctance is often linked to the stressful nature of adapting to a technology which involves video cameras (how many of us really enjoy seeing ourselves on camera, particular during a lecture early on Monday morning??), students who are within view but out of reach, and relatively unpredictable connections. A picture of a ‘typical’ videoconference classroom (without the students) helps to illustrate the environment within which educators must work.

Photo One: A purpose designed Videoconference Classroom in Rockhampton illustrating two connected campuses used by the teaching team to discuss course delivery issues, 2000

The most significant barrier to the uptake of videoconference technology, however, appears to be a lack of information concerning the ways in which it can operate within an educational program. Such research as has been carried out on the adoption and adaptation of videoconference technology identifies three crucial points for educators:

• Students are most comfortable with the technology when it has an interactive format and sessions are kept relatively short
• The technology is more readily accepted by students and staff when it is treated as one component of a multi-mode approach to delivery
• Teaching with videoconference technology is least stressful to staff when it is integrated with new teaching methodologies and accompanied by appropriate professional development

Whilst moving to capitalise on the potential of videoconference technology, then, the teaching team for CCD worked to develop a teaching model which was economically sustainable, sensitive to issues of student equity and appropriate for the particular technologies involved. We drew on the literature that did exist, and were also seeking to make a contribution to understandings of the potential of videoconferencing for university teachers. The resultant model is outlined below. Before we move to explore this model one other point is important to note. Much of the existing literature on videoconferencing focuses on the technology’s usefulness for small group instruction or meetings (particularly in business contexts). In the case I am exploring in this paper we began with student groups that ranged in size from 20 to 60 students. These numbers continued to grow and the model outlined below was developed with the possibility for regular increases in class size in mind. top

The teaching model

Accepting the key points made by researchers looking at the successful use of videoconference technology (and mindful of the additional challenge of dealing with relatiely large numbers of students) the teaching team for CCD took as their starting point the need to make videoconference sessions interactive. This meant that we needed to allow for staff-student conversation; question and answer sessions and significant input by students into each sessions.

It was clear that this would require a departure from traditional lecturing models and a range of opportunities for students to engage with the content of the unit. They therefore designed a model with five key components:

The Teaching Model

Each part of the teaching model interrelated with the other: thus, the folio fed into the interactive seminar which in turn, shaped how students responded to the folio. The web site was a less integral but nevertheless useful resource available to students. I will move now to provide some more detail concerning the processes and content of each of the key dimensions of this model.

The interactive seminar

From 1995-1998 students at each of the four campuses named previously have received a one hour session—known as an interactive seminar—with the lecturer for CCD who is based in Rockhampton. The decision to name the session as an interactive seminar rather than a lecture was a deliberate one. Whilst I recognised that the sessions involving anywhere between 20 and 120 students (and even more in recent years) were not going to be as flexible or as interactive as the kind of small group discussion most commonly associated with seminars, I was keen to signal to students in a language they were at least somewhat familiar with that these sessions would not be didactic in nature. These interactive seminars were delivered via videoconference to Mackay, Bundaberg and Gladstone where students were located in large lecture or tutorial rooms whilst their lecturer was projected onto either a small or large TV screen. A photo of the early sessions is provided below:

Photo Two: Videoconferencing between Rockhampton and Bundaberg in 1995

Each interactive seminar was delivered to one site at a time: we did not engage in multi-site connections. This was another deliberate choice. The cost of having one academic prepare and then deliver the same material four times appears, initially, excessive. However, it is cheaper by far than having four academics on four campuses preparing and delivering the same material. The obvious benefit of these individualised sessions was that students had ‘ownership’ of the lecturer during each session. As I will discuss below, a fundamental principle underpinning the interactive seminar was that the lecturer would negotiate specific content of each seminar with the students at the start of seminar. This sense that all participants have some control over the way a videoconference session functions is important in all videoconferencing experiences but particularly so in the case I am describing here where each site had very large student numbers (ranging from 20 to 120 students per site during the years being discussed). A multi-site link up with, for example, 120 students in one site and 60 (or 40 or 20) in another would make it virtually impossible for a lecturer to attend to the specific needs of each site. Interaction would be severely limited and the potential for real-time live discussion that video-conferencing offers would be lost.

As I have identified earlier students cope best with videoconference technology when they are given opportunities to engage in interaction with their lecturer . It is for this reason that we rejected the format and style of the traditional notion of lecture in favor of less formal, interactive seminars. At the start of each semester we explained the teaching model to students and emphasised the interactive nature of their sessions and the importance of students familiarising themselves with each week’s subject matter prior to the seminar. Whilst it would be inaccurate to claim that all or even most of the students came to these sessions with the ‘formal’ preparation completed, it is nevertheless possible to note that they did come to the session with an expectation of some form of interaction.

Interaction took many forms throughout the semester. At the simplest level students were given the opportunity to respond to questions posed by the lecturer: these questions were designed to be as non-threatening as possible at the start of semester so that students have their first experience of 'talking back' with relatively simple subject matter. In other instances, students were encouraged to discuss a particular issue in groups or in pairs and then given a reasonable amount of time to formulate a shared response to that issue. After the discussion one (or more) members of the group had the opportunity to feedback their findings to the lecturer. This kind of activity took up significant amounts of time but was invaluable in terms of the comfort levels that it helped to develop (for both students and staff!)

Students were also provided with choices about the particular focus of each session. While the lecturer would identify the main topic, such as genre, the students would be given various options concerning how they would explore that issue: for example, through a video text or through group discussion. The strategy was so successful that a session on the same topic would often look quite different during various seminars on the same day. This is a very important point: the use of videoconference technology allows the lecturer to respond to the specific needs of students located at a particular site and reduces the risk of homogenising the student population and assuming that all students have the same needs. This was also consistent with the issues we were exploring throughout the subject, and the emphasis we placed on recognising and valuing the heterogeneity of our culture.

Because of the rather dynamic or fluid nature of the videoconference sessions, they could not be said to function as traditional ‘lectures’ and certainly did not involve the regular ‘transmission’ of pre-determined content. While each week had a set theme, in one class this may have involved discussion around only one of the core concepts whereas in another class it may have turned into a discussion of previous concepts. For the interactive seminars to work effectively within the overall teaching model, then, students needed access to 'content' prior to each session: in the delivery of CCD this content was packaged in a student folio and supported by a web page and a course video. top

Supporting resources

At the start of each semester students purchased a folio prepared by the teaching team which contained the official 'content' of the week, a range of skill development activities, supplementary readings and space for students to record issues and questions. By reading the material contained in the folio prior to each session, students gained a sense of the week's objectives and were able to explore with growing confidence various issues associated with those objectives. Without the folio, the interactive seminars would have involved the traditional transmission of knowledge, and lecturers would therefore have been more constrained in terms of what could or could not be done in any session. This material was supported by a web site that contained frequently asked questions and useful tips for each topic.

Similarly, the video resource provided to the students contained visual and verbal explorations of key concepts for each week. This resource made the most of its visual nature of this particular teaching technology, encouraging students to explore the ways in which key communication concepts could be understood in relation to video texts. Taken together these resources provided the students with a comprehensive exploration of the discipline areas of communication and allowed us to make the most of the videoconference sessions.

Following on from the interactive seminars, students participated in tutorials at their local site. During these tutorials students reflected on the key issues and content of the week and formulated questions for feedback to the lecturer. After the tutorial and before the next interactive session, students prepared for the session by reading material contained within the student folio and watching a video associated with the week's key concepts. At the next interactive session, designated students from each tutorial would function as a panel with primary responsibility for interaction with the lecturer. This meant that all tutorial members learnt skills associated with group work, representation of the needs of others, as well as technical skills associated with the operation of the videoconference technology. On many occasions, student panelists also took the opportunity to fax or email queries to the lecturer prior to each session, or to make suggestions about the ways in which a particular session could be organised, or a videoconference room could be arranged. These student-initiated interactions demonstrated the extent to which students were encouraged to adopt responsibility for their own learning.

As a final point within this section, it is useful to note that students drew on all of the aspects of this teaching model in preparing their assignments for assessment. Over the course of a 12 week semester students completed two pieces of assessment: a short answer test and a longer piece of textual analysis of a text they selected themselves. Whilst the resource materials and the video provided the key concepts and analytical framework that students were asked to work with and the tutorials provided small groups within which students could practice their analytical skills, the interactive seminars became sites in which students were able to ask questions directly of their lecturer and receive immediate and ‘customised’ feedback. This provided the students with ‘incentives’ for interaction as they were able to use the seminar sessions as a place to get feedback on their own individual work. It also helped to connect, and ensure consistency among and between, the various elements of the model. top

Evaluating the model

I argued at the start of this paper that educators must now find creative ways to meet economic, technological and equity agendas. It is therefore important to note that the model provides a technologically informed and economically efficient response to changing educational circumstances. It allows educators to meet the demands of economic rationalism by teaching to more sites through the use of technology but is driven by pedagogical rather than technological imperatives. It therefore provides students with an opportunity to experience pedagogically driven adoptions and adaptations of educational technology.

Equally important is the way in which the model can be seen as consistent with equity agendas. Specifically, it allows educators to respond to the diversity of the student population. The individual or heterogeneous nature of the student group is accommodated through semi-structured but student driven sessions. In addition to this, the model breaks down the centre/margin distinction that has characterised relationships between the Rockhampton/non-Rockhampton campuses and improves student motivation.

It is possible to argue, therefore, that the implementation of this model has demonstrated the ability of educators to combine equity, economic, technological and global imperatives within the design and delivery of an educational program in ways that are acceptable to and accepted by the student population. This last point is important: all the design principles in the world will be of little use if students ultimately reject the format of the particular unit. The unit and teaching model, however, have been evaluated regularly in both formative and summative ways since inception. In 1996 students were surveyed on an ongoing basis about the teaching model, the resources, the interactive seminars and the videoconference technology itself. During this evaluation students identified interaction; the folio notes, the informal style of seminars, and the resources as key factors contributing to their enjoyment of the unit. 25% strongly agreed and 68% agreed that the model incorporated learning approaches appropriate for tertiary students; and 18% agreed and 64% strongly agreed that the unit was providing access to important knowledge about the discipline area.

In subsequent evaluations students have consistently indicated their preference for and appreciation of interaction during the seminars and the informal, responsive style of the seminars themselves; the provision of the folio; and the opportunities they are given to manage and pace their own learning. It is also significant to note that during a comprehensive analysis of a survey of students, 93% identified that there was nothing about the model they would seek to change. top

Summarising the design principles

To summarise, then, there are ten key principles that have allowed for the successful implementation of videoconference technology within the teacher education program at CQU.

1. The technology is used for educational sessions that are interactive rather than didactic; and resource based rather than lecture based.
2. The sessions are individualised rather than generic and designed to respond to the students’ existing knowledge and interests.
3. Activities within the interactive seminar are designed to ensure that the material is relevant to the students’ own contexts.
4. Students are given immediate feedback on their contributions.
5. Differences among learners are acknowledged with each session (and the resources overall) providing a range of learning opportunities for students.
6. The videoconferencing technology is one part of an overall teaching strategy.
7. Staff and students are trained in the use of the technology and encouraged to engage with it in interactive fashion.
8. Students are given structured opportunities to ‘practise’ their interaction.
9. The capacities and limitations of the technology are acknowledged and responded to. For example:

• overheads are printed in a horizontal/landscape format, in a large, bold font (18/20 point) with wide margins
• pens used for writing on document camera papers are thick tipped—similar to medium density permanent markers used on transparencies/projectors.
• rapid movement of images of people are kept to a minimum.
• lecturers attempt to dress in colours that do not ‘flair’ on the TV screen: solid colours work best for this.
• all participants minimise movement/noise around microphones—a carelessly tapping pen can drive people at the other site insane
• aufficient time is allowed after a question to accommodate time delays and avoid people speaking over each other

1. The teaching staff adopt a flexible approach to teaching which rests on their ability to ‘surf’ the prevailing conditions.

I shall return to this final point in the conclusion of the paper. Before finishing, however, I wish to add some words of caution into what has been, to this point, a rather celebratory view of videoconference technology. top

Words of caution

Whilst it is tempting to portray videoconferencing as an educational ‘way of the future’ the world is exposed to quite enough technological celebration and there are some important cautionary notes that must be sounded. Firstly, working with videoconference technology is, at least initially, hard work. To follow the principles outlined above may sound a simple matter, but moving away from traditional lecture formats into interactive styles; adjusting to time delays between speech and response; and coping with interruptions is difficult. Interviews conducted with staff making use of videoconference technology for the first (several) times show that they all, without exception, identify the time delay, fuzziness of vision and uncertainty about whether or not they can be heard as sources of stress. Similarly difficult for the majority of ‘new users’ is a reduction in the amount of non-verbal feedback they are able to access from the students: current image resolution makes it difficult to identify such subtleties as lip movement, smiles, or even, in some cases, nods and hand gestures.

Second, videoconference technology is unpredictable. Academics making use of it will find themselves ‘at the mercy’ of all kinds of variables such as phone lines, blown bulbs, faulty microphones and missing cables: things which have only minimal effect in traditional classrooms. In other words, lecturers are dependent upon the availability of technical staff to a much higher degree than is generally the case. Whilst certainly traditional classes could be disrupted by the failure of an OHP or a computer outlet, these disruptions generally left the teacher-student connection in tact. This cannot be guaranteed with current videoconference technology. Indeed, relying on a videoconference to deliver 50 minutes of trouble free communication between two distant sites is the educational equivalent of trusting blindly in Santa to buy all the kids’ Christmas toys: it’s a nice idea but has it ever really happened??

This brings me to my final point: the kind of attitude required for successful and sustainable employment of videoconference technology. top

Conclusion: surfer pedagogy and technological ways forward

Videoconferencing technology can be considered stable only to the extent that instability is the norm . Successful (or long term) employment of videoconference technology requires educators to adapt to the unpredictable. The particular skill I am referring to here is an educational equivalent of surfing. Good surfers spend years getting to know their environment and pay careful attention to the characteristics of particular beaches, the effects of particular winds, the benefits of various surf boards, wet suits, leg ropes and sunscreens. Then with all this research under their belts, they approach a constantly changing and unpredictable environment in a manner designed to bring maximum results: good waves and lots of fun.

Similarly, the videoconference teacher benefits from what can be called a surfing mentality: they need to know all the tools they work with, they need to be able to read and evaluate quickly the conditions on any day and to know how to get the most out of them. They need to have contingency plans for when the weather is bad, and to be prepared to be dumped rather unceremoniously from time to time. Perhaps most importantly, they need to know how to have fun. Videoconferencing offers the potential for dynamic and exciting exchanges and interactions but is all too often used to reproduce traditional education practice. In the videoconference situation the ability to surf the electronic waves makes the difference between traditional, didactic and alienating exchanges and innovative, interactive and inclusive learning environments. The fundamental challenge for educators is to determine the extent to which their own thinking is quick enough, flexible enough and focused enough to make the most out of this opportunity. top

Afterword

I have emphasised in this paper the importance of understanding the strengths of videoconferencing. Perhaps ironically, this means that, as of the year 2000 the number of students enrolled in the unit discussed in this paper, Communication, Culture and Difference, is so large that videoconferencing is no longer a viable means of delivery: it is simply not possible to maintain adequate levels of interaction with student groups of up to 140. However, videoconferencing remains an exciting and effective means of communicating to a wide range of students. top

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About the author

Dr Leonie Rowan
Faculty of Education and Creative Arts
Central Queensland University
Rockampton. Qld. 4702.
Phone: (+61) 07 49 309639
Fax: (+61) 07 40 309604
Email: l.rowan@cqu.edu.au