Building Bridges - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 238

and software (i.e., without some investment in
facilities, connectivity and equipment).
This separate treatment of these two modes of
delivery is artificial and potentially problematic
for several reasons. First, it forces designers and
educators to choose in advance whether or not the
audience will be able to participate or respond to
a presentation, which is a constraint rarely faced
in face-to-face educational settings, even where
the audience is large. Second, this choice may
have important consequences in lifelong learning
contexts, where audience members may have very
different preferences (e.g., based on age, experi-
ence, background) about whether and how they
wish to interact with the system (Chrysostomou,
Chen, & Liu, 2009) and the utility of educational
technology generally (Caruso & Kvavik, 2005).
Third, there is substantial evidence that both
learners and presenters benefit from opportunities
for interaction. We argue that substantial benefits
could be derived from combining these approaches
to e-learning in ways that afford both interaction
opportunities and configuration flexibility for
designers, educators and participants.
In this chapter, we present a case study of our
experience in offering a multi-campus university
course using a novel prototype system that builds
real-time, dynamic bridges between videocon-
ferencing and webcasting, hereafter called the
“modified ePresence” system. Our system uses
webcasting to reach a broad audience, but also
allows webcast viewers to periodically participate
more actively via on-demand, temporary two-way
videoconferencing links that immediately become
a part of the streamed webcast that is visible and
audible to all. We conclude with design principles
and implications for designers of future systems.

in systems for distributed lectures, and then to
past systems intended to support awareness and
interaction in lectures.

Interaction in Lectures

There has been substantial study of lecture-style
presentations, and the role of interaction in these
presentations. While the effectiveness of lectures
depends, of course, on the individual style of the
lecturer (Fardon, 2003; Saroyan & Snell, 1997),
the amount of student participation and interaction
also have a substantial impact (Steinert & Snell,
1999). Similarly, the amount of instructor-student
interaction (Moore, 1989) can impact faculty satis-
faction with online instruction (Shea, et al., 2005).
These findings motivated our interest in improving
interaction in lectures to distributed audiences.
In particular, we focused on instructor-student
interaction, as contrasted with, say, student-student
interaction (Moore, 1989).
In exploring instructor-student interaction
behavior, Birnholtz (2006) observed several
lecturers and found frequent, though varied use
of interactive techniques ranging from asking
frequent questions of students to allowing students
to raise their hands and ask questions. Building on
this, Birnholtz et al. (2008) interviewed instructors
to better understand how they interact with and
respond to their students. In addition to explicit
interactions such as questions, participants re-
ported that being able to see at least some of their
students' faces enabled them to gauge whether or
not material was being understood, and to adjust
the presentation accordingly.
All of these results served as the foundation
for the system we present below. Motivated by the
potential benefits to both students and instructors,
we aimed to design a system that would facilitate
live interaction and questions, in addition to ba-
sic instructor awareness of student presence and
comprehension.

BACKGROUND

As background for our case study, we discuss
the principles that led to our system we describe
below. We focus first on the value of interaction