Amazingly, web conferencing has been with us now for close to 20 years. As a tool for virtual meetings it is well established and widely used; as a means for live, online group learning experiences it has never evolved much beyond being ‘one for the future’. Given the obvious time, cost and environmental benefits compared to the face-to-face classroom, this is somewhat surprising.
One explanation is technical unreliability. After all this time, you would expect there to be enough bandwidth around to ensure consistent connectivity for everyone involved but sadly there are still the occasional frustrating problems to contend with.
A much more plausible explanation is that the virtual classroom simply does not deliver a compelling enough experience. My own view is that this is not so much because of limitations with the software (although there probably is much more that could be done if anyone put their mind to it) but inappropriate and unskillful use of the medium.
A webinar or virtual classroom session is a live event and generally speaking these are hard to organise and awkward to schedule. So, they must compensate by offering the emotional engagement that you can only achieve in real-time. And, as a group experience - in itself much less flexible than things that learners do on their own - it simply must be highly interactive.
So, forget using web conferencing for delivering content - video, web articles and podcasts are far more practical, flexible and accessible. Concentrate on group interaction and you have a great opportunity to add value.
Here are my ten suggestions for interaction-rich virtual classroom sessions to get you started:
- Very short presentations by engaging experts followed up by extensive Q&A and lots of peer-to-peer interaction in the text chat
- Interviews and panel discussions with lots of audience participation
- Software demos with plenty of Q&A
- Group activities in breakout rooms
- Debriefs of group activities whether or not these were undertaken in the virtual classroom
- Teams presenting the outputs from their assignments
- Welcome sessions at the start of major blended programmes to allow participants to get to know each other and ask questions
- Role plays in 2s and 3s using webcams
- Quizzes in teams
- Group discussions and debates
So, what are you waiting for?
Great suggestions. I think one helpful tip is to have an admin/producer so the facilitator can concentrate on content and not the software. Many of the things you mention here would require a facilitator alone to be doing a lot in the background and one technical issue can make things go awry.
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