Web Conferencing Highlights of 2013

"Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us." - Hal Borland

Another year of Web conferencing in education has almost ended, and we've learned a lot from the many educators who use this technology to connect with students and colleagues around the world. Here's a sampling from the myriad posts, articles, and stories that added to our growing insights into the Confer classroom.

January: "Where the disabled are enabled" An inspiring story from Western University shows how hearing-impaired students in Martin Zinke-Allmang's "groundbreaking first-year Physics for the Life Sciences class" use Web conferencing - with the built-in closed captioning option - to get the class caption notes along with the PowerPoint slides of each lecture.

February: "40 Tips for Webinar Success" Ken Molay shared a free resource from AnyMeeting which you can still download here. As Ken says, "what is fun about the document is not the short reminders of steps to follow in planning, preparing, and producing a Webinar. They are nice little encapsulations of best practices. It’s the fact that each of the 40 tips includes a link to an article, blog post, or recording going into more detail on that subject."

March: "Reconsidering Online vs. In-Person Professional Meetings"Joshua Kim mused for Inside Higher Ed about the value of online meetings: "We travel to meetings for the people, not the content - and people are best experienced face-to face, not screen-to-screen.... We travel to professional meetings with the best of intentions of focusing on the event, and find ourselves pulled into putting out fires by e-mail and phone, working late into the night to stay on top of things.... Lately, I've been thinking that our understanding of how to plan and run a quality online professional meeting has advanced to the point where it makes sense to always consider this option when planning our own events."

April: "The Do's and Don'ts of Using Visuals in eLearning" Karla Gutierrez provides invaluable pointers for anyone trying to use visuals in an online class. "Images and visuals done incorrectly will cause harm rather than strengthen learning. But images incorporate and integrated into eLearning effectively, will bolster learning and lead to more student engagement and material retention." Karla practices what she preaches by using exemplary visuals and accompanying text.

May: "Blackboard Collaborate Brings Web Conferencing App to Android" T.H.E. Journal covered this significant milestone for Bb Collaborate: mobile Web conferencing for all major platforms (the iOS app was developed in 2012). "The new mobile version... allows users to participate in Collaborate conferences. Participants can chat, use two-way audio, use emoticons, answer survey questions, raise their hands, join breakout rooms, and view presentations, including annotations, images, shared applications, and shared desktops."

June: "A Case Study on the Adoption and Use of Synchronous Virtual Classrooms" From The Electronic Journal of e-Learning, this research article describes how faculty at the University of North Carolina (Wilmington) reacted to and adopted a Web conferencing application that was made available to them by the University.  Survey data provided information on what influenced faculty adoption, and interview data described instructional approaches used by these adopters. A "subset of features led to ... adoption and are used frequently,"  while "perceived ease of use and usefulness of the technology may impel its use." Administrators trying to promote technology usage will find this case study useful and illuminating: it indicates the decision factors and features faculty consider when opting to use or ignore technology for instruction. "Based on the results of this case study, administrators can promote the factors and features that influence decision making to adopt the tool. Based on the interviews in this case study, administrators can also describe the ways how other faculty are using these tools in their classroom, and how beneficial it can be if adopted."

July: "Pasadena City College Classified Staff Demo of CCC Confer" and "DeAnza College Tutoring Program Presentation" In keeping with the theme of the June study (above), our June highlights include two presentations by colleges in the CCC system who describe how they use CCC Confer to accomplish teaching and meeting goals and objectives. The users are the best judges of a tool's usefulness, and these two demonstrations are user-produced and user-focused.

August: "3 Ways Webconferencing is Transforming PD" Another contribution from T.H.E. Journal describes "video learning communities" and "communities of practice" that self-generate when Web conferencing is used for professional development, connecting educators and making it possible for them to meet anytime and any place to share ideas and teaching practices.

September: "CCC Confer: Presenter Checklist" Another user-generated video from the College of the Redwoods designed to show fellow presenters how to prepare to use CCC Confer effectively.

October: "Ten Ways Web Conferencing Works in Education" Although this is a self-reflecting link, it's based on the excellent work of Beth Gallob, who is properly cited. Looking for ways to make the most of online technology? Here's a list of features you'll find it hard to ignore.

November: "Synchronous Learning: Is there a future?" Here's another academic study of adoption and innovation, using survey data to determine the thought processes of students who were exposed to instruction delivered via Web conferencing. "Eighty-two percent agreed or strongly agreed that [the technology] was 'easy to learn' and 73 percent stated it was 'easy to use.'... Seventy-three percent agreed or strongly agreed they would recommend [Web conferencing] to other persons for training, instruction, and learning. Only 31 percent of the students reported some technical problems during the three-hour session, and 55 percent reported no problems. More than 50 percent stated [the technology] was favorable or beneficial for their learning and 62 percent agreed or strongly agreed with the following, 'all things considered [Web conferencing] was a positive experience.' ”

December: "How Not to Look Ugly on a Webcam [Infographic]" If you spend a lot of time connecting to remote users and letting (or making) them see you from your Webcam, isn't it important to consider how to make that experience positive? This infographic considers lighting, background, bandwidth, noise level, what you're running on your computer, and positioning. It's easy to understand, and it will help to serve as a reminder.

The new mobile version of Collaborate for Android allows users to participate in Collaborate conferences. Participants can chat, use two-way audio, use emoticons, answer survey questions, raise their hands, join breakout rooms, and view presentations, including annotations, images, shared applications, and shared desktops.
Read more at http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/05/08/blackboard-brings-web-conferencing-app-to-android.aspx?=THE21#VcLODto0zA0xsB04.99

Blackboard Brings Web Conferencing App to Android
Read more at http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/05/08/blackboard-brings-web-conferencing-app-to-android.aspx?=THE21#VcLODto0zA0xsB04.99

Blackboard Brings Web Conferencing App to Android
Read more at http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/05/08/blackboard-brings-web-conferencing-app-to-android.aspx?=THE21#VcLODto0zA0xsB04.99

Lighten Up Online (Seriously!): The Value of Humor in the Virtual Classroom

"A joke is a very serious thing." - Winston Churchill

In Carla Meskill's forthcoming book on Online Teaching and Learning, N. Anthony has contributed a chapter entitled, "Perceptions of Humour in Oral Synchronous Online Environments." Anthony interviewed and surveyed students and teachers using the Wimba classroom specifically to determine the role of humor in this synchronous online environment. Here are some of the students' comments:

• "It helped with the anxiety levels. The times we had humor, it did kind of lighten the mood and took the pressure off...."
• "It helps me to relax and not feel pressured."
• "It makes it more fun and makes it more ok to try and make a mistake than being afraid to speak...."
• "Making it funny helps people feel less insecure about messing up."
• "I believe that teacher-initiated humor relaxes the classroom and leaves us all more willing to participate because we aren't afraid to mess up because there is a portrayed sense of light-heartedness."
• "It just makes it easier to feel relaxed and speaking in conversation is less intimidating." 
• "It's easier to remember something that is funny than something that is boring... Words are remembered better when presented in humorous situations."
• "Often humor makes the content more memorable and therefore helps to learn it faster and better."
• "I tend to remember things more easily if I have a phrase to associate them with, and humorous phrases are particularly memorable."

Other researchers have noted the beneficial role of humor - both from teachers and from students - in the online classroom. Mirjam Hauck and Regine Hampel investigated the factors in the virtual classroom that facilitated interaction (with students and with instructors) and observed, "making humorous comments or observations to improve the interaction with individual partners and the group as a whole was also identified by several students as a motivating factor." They describe a particular use of humor by a student who did so because he perceived that "some of his peers still felt uncomfortable in the synchronous online environment and were therefore exposed to techno-stress and cognitive overload."

Michael Eskey notes that "humor, whether in the form of jokes, riddles, puns, funny stories, humorous comments or other humorous items, builds a bond between the instructor and students; bridging the student-teacher gap by allowing students to view the instructor as more approachable." How you introduce and use humor will depend on your teaching style, your pedagogical objectives, and your comfort with the tools available in the online classroom, but there is a growing body of evidence that students learn better when they are allowed to "loosen up" online and enjoy themselves and one another.

In the Confer classroom, instructors will inevitably be doing some things by "trial and error": the technology changes, for one thing. Successful instructors demonstrate a fearless attitude and don't mind making public mistakes in the process: it's probably the best way to encourage experimentation and exploration on the part of students. By letting your audience (students) "in on the joke" while you try to figure out how a new tool works, you're allowing them to participate (naturally, you won't allow your experiment to last so long that it interferes with instructional time or time on task).

Have fun!