Building Bridges - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 250

tion. In other words, the indication of “on air” is
intended to direct attention to the current speaker.
The problem is that there are multiple modes of
participation, such that the “on air” indicator would
not indicate a text participant, for example. While
it is true that the text chat display does explicitly
indicate who said what, linking these indicators
(e.g., “on air”) to multiple modes of participa-
tion would be useful in legitimizing all modes of
interaction, and in helping to maintain awareness
of who is participating and how.

This could easily be implemented by designers,
who could support multiple modes of interaction
for participants whose preferences and access to
technology may vary, as is common in lifelong
learning contexts. Those who simply wish to
watch a one-way streaming webcast at their lei-
sure, for example, could do so. At the same time,
however, those who elect to watch the webcast
live could have the option to ask questions via text
from home, to travel to a nearby satellite viewing
site, where they could interact by video or voice
without having to worry about how to configure
the system, or could join by video from home,
if they felt comfortable doing so. As discussed
above, all of these modes of participation should
also be made salient to the presenter.
Finally, we observed evidence of a cohesive
subgroup at the satellite campus that talked infor-
mally, made jokes and shared the experience of
watching the lecture together, in an environment
where they were not audible to the instructor and
others at the main campus. Instructors in future
courses of this nature might seek to capitalize
on this cohesiveness, by designating tasks and
discussions to groups at satellite or remote loca-
tions, who can then report back to the main site.
In this way, there may be value in considering
the integration of online delivery of lecture-based
instruction with other forms of collaborative learn-
ing, such as discussion and debate (e.g., Schwarz
& Glassner, 2007).

Design Principle 3: Indicators of participation
should take all possible participation modes into
account, not just the most salient (i.e., audio/
video).

This could very easily be implemented by de-
veloping indicators that draw attention to current
participants in all modes. New chat messages, for
example, could cause the chat window to flash
or change color, as with many instant messaging
systems. Video participants who are currently
speaking could also be highlighted, but this high-
lighting should depend on actual participation -
and not just being linked into the conference or
webcast stream.
Second, the utility of text raises the issue of
how to facilitate text interaction such that text
contributions are visible to the instructor and local
students. One way to do this would be to indicate,
as we discuss above, using the awareness display
when people make chat contributions. Another
would be to use a chat “bubble” display (as used,
e.g., in comic strips) in addition to the persistent
chat display and a gesture-based interface for the
instructor to acknowledge chat contributions and
make them go away.

Design Principle 5: Instructors could capitalize
on ingroup/outgroup behaviors in conferencing by
allowing members of these groups to collaborate
and report back to the larger group.

Limitations

Design Principle 4: Different users may have
different preferences for interaction modes, and
these should be supported to the extent possible,
without discriminating against text-based media
in terms of ability to garner instructor attention.

While we believe our case study makes a useful
contribution, the results we present should also
be interpreted with caution. We present data
from a single class using a single system. It is