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Web Conferencing

Posted on July 15, 2009

Elluminate Live! is a web conferencing system that offers synchronous (same time) communication for online learners. Its “live session” interactivity can enhance the quality of teaching and learning in online courses in numerous ways. Elluminate can be used to:

· Facilitate program or course orientation sessions

· Hold virtual office hours

· Conduct advising sessions with distance-based advisees

· Conduct live tutoring sessions

· Provide one-on-one conferencing for a student

· Introduce a course unit/module

· Review difficult concepts/procedures and facilitate guided practice of them

Elluminate also provides a means to promote student to student interaction in online courses. Examples include:

· Collaborative work in small groups (using Breakout rooms)

· Real time problem-solving and project work

· Discussion of course projects, reports, or presentations (using the application sharing feature)

· Student-led reviews of homework, problem, or case study solutions

While web conferencing offers a number of features that can support online learning, it is not meant to replace the largely asynchronous interaction in online courses. For most students, the most important feature of online learning is that it allows for a greater degree of flexibility to pursue an education around complicated schedules. If you are interested in adding a live component to your online classes, you might like to consider these guidelines:

· For a 3-credit course, avoid conducting more than 7 required live sessions;

· Always be prepared to offer alternative times for each required session, in case some learners have a conflict with the times you schedule;

· Record all required sessions so that they can be made accessible later.

Judicious use of a web conferencing system can improve social presence and ultimately affect learning positively (Yong et al. 2007). It can also promote active learning which has been shown through extensive research to be a key principle of learning (Chickering & Gamson 1991). The trick is to see the capabilities of the web conferencing system not as a mirror of the traditional lecture-based classroom, but as a means to promote new forms of interaction among students.

Chickering, A.W., & Gamson, Z.F. (Eds.). (1991, Fall). New Directions for Teaching and Learning: Applying the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education, (47), San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers.

Yong, L., Huang, W., Hongyan, M., & Luce, T. (2007) International Conference on Interaction and Social Presence in Technology-Mediated Learning: A Partial Least Squares Model. Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing. WiCom. 21-25 Sept. 2007 Page(s):4411 – 4414

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