Desktop Videoconferencing Bridges the Distance between Learners - August 30, 2007

On a rainy spring morning, the Dawson Elementary School fourth grade class of Inez Flores took a tour of the University of Texas at Austin. They were shown around several campus locations by students in Dr. Mary Claire Gerwels classroom management class. They were thrilled to get an inside look of Royal Memorial Stadium and to hear a College of Education teacher education class sing “The Eyes of Texas.” The children loved the tour and all said they wanted to attend UT.

What was remarkable about the visit was that the children didn’t need umbrellas to stay dry—they didn’t even need to leave their classroom. Their tour was a virtual one, via desktop videoconferencing using laptop computers, iChat software, video cameras, and Ethernet connections. It’s just one example of the many benefits that desktop videoconferencing can bring to teaching and learning, in both K-12 and higher education. Like traditional videoconferencing it can eliminate travel time and costs, but provides the additional advantages of being more readily available with less expensive equipment than traditional videoconferencing installations, and useable in practically any location. The Learning Technology Center’s IDEA Studio, led by Coordinator Karen French, has explored the use of desktop videoconferencing over the past three years to support teacher education and professional development and to develop new applications of the technology for K-12 classrooms.

Support of Apprentice Teachers

Many of the College’s desktop videoconferencing activities focus on providing more support for teacher education students while they do their apprentice teaching. Virtual meetings allow facilitators to meet more often and more easily with their apprentice teachers. Travel costs are eliminated, and the facilitator can meet with several apprentices per day instead of just one or two. Remote observations are also possible with the same sorts of savings. A digital camera captures the apprentice teaching a class and the facilitator can observe the action. Or the camcorder records the class, then later, the camcorder is connected to the computer and the lesson is played back through iChat while the facilitator and apprentice co-view and discuss the teaching performance together. Remote observation can also be used to allow an entire teacher education class to observe a master teacher’s class.

Several COE pilot projects explore these uses. In 2005, the PORTAL project allowed a bilingual education methods class to observe master bilingual teachers as they taught. The class then reviewed the taped lessons with the teachers, who described what they were doing in the classroom and why. The College Vision Plan has provided ITAC funding for the purchase in fall 2007 of enough equipment to allow several Kinesiology and Health Education students to receive remote support as they pursue required internships in a variety of settings, including professional sports teams, sport equipment companies, and health clubs. Also planned for fall 2007, an apprentice teacher facilitator, Michelle Bauml, will work with a class of 15 apprentice teachers. She will come to the classrooms to observe the students as they teach, but will do follow up with remote videoconferences.

Support of Novice Teachers

Desktop videoconferencing can bring the same benefits to the support of novice teachers. The ability to work with and get support from a mentor can provide new teachers with help as soon as they need it, alleviate the isolation they often feel in the classroom, and may help keep teachers in the profession. In 2005, Project PROMISE allowed a UT graduate/induction year teacher to work closely with a UT mentor through a variety of means, including face-to-face meetings, phone, and e-mail, as well as iChat and desktop videoconferencing. The PROMISE project will be revived and expanded in fall 2007 with ITAC funding. Several novice teachers, at schools across the state will work with UT mentors, using remote conferences as well as remote observations and co-viewing of their teaching.

Benefits for Higher Education

Desktop videoconferencing provides options and flexibility for higher education faculty. Instructors can teach campus classes from a distance. For example, Felicia Rader, a Lecturer in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, taught a class the entire spring 2007 semester from out of state. Instructors can use videoconferencing to avoid class cancellations when they are traveling or cannot otherwise get to campus. The technology can also allow professors to more easily bring in experts or other guests to speak to students, such as when teacher education students here in the College videoconferenced with a young teacher in Kuwait who discussed her experiences teaching there.

Many college courses are now taught largely online, with many students, if not most, scattered throughout a large region. Seeing and hearing the instructor and fellow students via desktop videoconferencing can foster learning by helping the group get to know one another and come together as a class. Paul E. Resta, a professor of Instructional Technology in Curriculum and Instruction, teaches online classes that use the Web and other technologies to create online learning communities and virtual “real world” settings to provide authentic context and tasks for learning. Distant students can work on the course at their convenience while on-campus students take the course in a more traditional format. Both groups are brought together several times during the semester when campus classes are webcast; distant students watch the live video on their computers and communicate with the campus group and each other with iChat.

K-12 Applications

“Developing new uses of desktop videoconferencing for schoolchildren has been the fun part of our research,” says IDEA Studio Coordinator Karen French. “The kids love the technology and seeing places and talking to people they wouldn’t otherwise have access to. Desktop videoconferencing is fairly inexpensive and technologically simple and can have a great educational impact.”

Some of the many activities that Karen has planned and led include the virtual tour of UT for the Dawson fourth graders this spring and a videoconference in November 2006 between Anne Bustard’s Social Studies Methods class and middle school students in Damon, Texas. Bustard’s students created iMovies describing places of interest in Austin. The Damon kids saw each movie and discussed them with the UT students. In the spring, the Damon youngsters created their own iMovies about life in Damon and shared them with the UT students. Karen is currently planning a similar activity with children taught by recent UT bilingual education graduates in several rural school districts.

The use of desktop videoconferencing in education should continue to grow. Apprentice and novice teachers will be more easily and effectively mentored, which could improve teacher retention and mitigate shortages. The savings in time and travel costs it provides will be increasingly attractive to budget-squeezed colleges and school districts. And the unique way it can bring the world into the classroom will continue to be priceless.

—Laurie Caldwell, LTC Communications Coordinator