Building Bridges - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 240

Figure 1. Lecture hall organized for a webcast

from the live presentation, and those who were
very interested could simply walk over to the
auditorium. This is critically different from the
lifelong learning settings that we focus on here
where attendees are more broadly dispersed and
do not have this option.

STUDY DESCRIPTION
AND CONTEXT

To better understand how to facilitate instructor-
student interaction in presentations to distributed
audiences, and to explore the potential problems
inherent in combining webcasting and videocon-
ferencing approaches, we conducted and present
data from a case study simultaneously offered on
two campuses of our university. Students could
attend the course on either campus, or participate
from any Internet-accessible location. Such flex-
ible setups can aid in accommodating the varied
needs of lifelong learners.
We sought to address questions that come from
two different perspectives:

dents on two campuses of our university, located
25 kilometers apart (and with separate networks,
both independently connected to the Internet).
Approximately 60 students were enrolled at the
“main” campus (where the instructor was based),
and 15 at the “satellite” campus. The class met
weekly for 3 hours, and consisted of lectures and
discussion led by the instructor and guest speakers.
Guests were entrepreneurs and professionals from
software companies, who described and derived
lessons from their experiences.
These presentations were, for the most part,
delivered in a lecture hall on the main campus,
though there were occasional presentations to the
entire class by teaching assistants at both cam-
puses, and two of the guest speakers delivered
their presentations from remote locations using
our system. Students had the option of attending
the course at whichever campus was most con-
venient for them, or attending remotely from any
Internet-accessible location. Students who elect-
ed to do this will be referred to here as “remote”
students or participants, to distinguish them from
the students at the “satellite” campus.
At the main campus, the lecture room was
configured as shown in Figure 1. There were
two video cameras, and two staff members who
operated the cameras, controlled which online
participants had permission to speak (i.e., were

• Students:

◦ How well did the system work? Were

all students able to participate and
grasp the content?

◦ What were student perceptions of

their experience? Did they feel they
were able to participate? What were
their reactions to the system?

• Instructors:

◦ Did the system facilitate instructor

awareness of students in all loca-
tions? Did the system enable instruc-
tors to interact with students at other
locations?

In fall 2006, we deployed our experimental
system (Figures 1-3) in an advanced Computer
Science course about creating new commercial
software ventures. The course was offered to stu-