Continuing my review of last Friday's eLearning Network Thinking Synch event, I was surprised by several case studies that seemed to suggest that better results could be achieved in the virtual classroom than face-to-face. Hard-hitting evidence came from Illustra's Alan Saunders, whose presentation I mentioned in my previous post. Illustra's online executive coaching programme received phenomenal feedback:
"The delivery by virtual media made it even more interesting."
"Best training I ever had."
"We consider Illustra's programme to be the benchmark for all training."
The expectation is that online events will be lower rated, but Illustra's programme scored 4.9 out of 5. Significantly, Illustra charge exactly the same for their online programme as they do for the face-to-face equivalent. With these results, perhaps they should charge more.
Further evidence came from Matthew James and Dr Kathy Seddon from NCSL who presented on 'multi-layered synchronous learning'. They made the point that web conferencing encourages multiple dialogues among participants. Online you can be viewing a slide and listening to a speaker while simultaneously interacting with peers through text chat. In other words, online learners have excess capacity for interaction that the formal aspect of the event will not always utilise; online that capacity can be used to the full. And, this additional channel is not superficial or frivolous - the speakers reported that many participants asked if the session could continue after the facilitator had left, so they could continue their discussions. This dynamic of what the speakers called 'co-construction' is not typically evident in a face-to-face environment.
Another positive aspect of web conferencing was identified by Val Brooks and Judy Hooton of Stockton City Learning Centre. Their students reported that the relative anonymity of web conferencing meant there was less chance of one person monopolising the conversation as traditional barriers to communication were broken down.
We may not fully appreciate yet what attributes of synchronous online communication are providing this unexpected additional value, nor do we know what exact conditions are necessary for the greatest success; however, we should be encouraged that we are beginning to see really effective use of a new medium, going beyond a mere imitation of the face-to-face classroom.
Coming next: the myth that synchronous e-learning is essentially a 2D experience.
Hi Clive
ReplyDeleteI teach both a f2f and online mode of the same course, a masters in photography at the university of the arts London. On the online mode, which is 2 years part time, most of the teaching is done live in real time using synchronous web conferencing – we use the Wimba live classroom. Our sessions are typically 2 hours long for lecturers, seminars and tutorials. In my opinion, if the experience is engaging enough, and uses good visuals and materials, then a live web conference can be sustained over a long period of time – in fact our group usually want to go on longer!!
I think that one reason is the intensity of the experience, and another is that it is easier for them to schedule one long session once a week than several shorter ones – they are mostly working professional freelancers.
Wimba themselves have a long running series of online lecturers that typically run for an hour each with up to 200 participants at a time, they have done over 500 of these and again the problem is running out of time not going on too long.
Certainly I don’t feel that synchronous has to be short…
paul lowe