Another kick-off message: the Bloomsbury Colleges have just decided to go for a joint licence of Elluminate, so we will use audiographic conferencing heavily starting next academic year. We already have been doing that this year in a research context.
The online activities may have been your first exposure to this kind of technology, although it is not exactly new. What I found out in my research is that it is mainly sound pedagogic models that are missing in order to make best use of the multimodal characteristics and the multitude of functions in this environment - otherwise live conferencing sessions may either become quite boring after a while, or they will more and more replicate didactic-style old-fashioned lecturing, ignoring most of the collaborative tools that are built into these systems.
By the way, I noticed that in the online activities, most Elluminate features were actually not used. I suspect this was because the environment was still new for the people involved. Sessions that take advantage of the full set of functions and that use these functions in a pedagogically sensible way do look quite different to what we did, in that they usually are much more interactive for each individual user. However, it's a bit hard to design such sessions, because - as mentioned earlier - good models or processes for mapping pedagogic frameworks to the full functionality of the web conferencing system are not really existing.
This is actually what we want to change in our research. Some background info where we are at the moment is available here:
http://www.lkl.ac.uk/research/mosaic/background
And the latest ALT newsletter has a case study from us:
http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/e_article000783770.cfm?x=b8SDCQd,b3scdv19,w
I'd be interested in hearing your ideas and thoughts, and should you want to become involved in this research, there are certainly opportunities - perhaps a joint JISC-bid?
Tim
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HI Tim,
I would definitely be interested in knowing more about tyhis project.
The Salford Research and Graduate College had just adopted a e-conference room too, to be used for and by Post-gard students. We decided to purchase a monthly license for DiscoverE Interwise. I especailly liked this one because it can be voice activated - liek ina skype meeting - which makes the environment much more friendly, and not so directive.
Looking forward to exchanging ideas!
Hi Cristina,
Yes, the microphone activation issue is much discussed and there are multiple camps with different viewpoints. It's always a compromise, because if you allow all microphones to be active all the time, it will have a negative impact on bandwidth. Not a problem if all participants have broadband, but what I like particularly about elluminate (and similar systems e.g. iLink) is that it even works on a mobile GPRS connection! Bandwidth scalability is quite important when doing conferences with very remote areas - we once did one with rural Nigeria, and we lost the link only once because the Diesel generator ran out of fuel...
I like DiscoverE - it's one of the most affordable solutions out there, but last time I saw it, it was only available for the Windows platform, which is a real drawback. Is this still the case?
More later,
Tim
Hi Tim,
although it is voice activated, it is not possible for two people to speak at the same time. What happens is that after you finish a sentence or pause your conversation, someone can contribute with their comments or questions. I find if friendlier than having to be waiting for someone to give you speaking permissions. I also think that it is a general (N)etiquette rule not to speak until someone finishes expressing themselves. So should the conversations rules and good manners be.
DiscoverE also works on dial up connections I have used it with Mozambique, and encountered no problems. DiscoverE connects now to local servers, which makes the connectivity easier and faster.
Yes, unfortunately, it still offers problems for Mac users, but the problem can be overcome if you have parallels http://www.parallels.com/ installed on Mac
Well, just sharing my own experience!
Thanks, Cristina. The parallels trickbox, of course! But that's only possible since the days of Intel Macs... I wasn't aware of this use of the gating mechanism in DiscoverE, that's quite intelligent, actually.
George, that's a good idea. I thought Elluminate was just available for the three online days - do you suggest that Emerge has access to it until September?
Best,
Tim