Virtual classroom, realtime learning

Why real-time learning environments?

And there's more to it. Virtual classroom experiences are generally more satisfying than pure learner-machine interaction. While it takes ten to twenty hours to prepare for a live session, authoring a standalone course of instruction takes at least five times that.

Terminology

Synchronous = simultaneous = real-time. “Synchronous” is a needlessly confusing buzz-phrase for simultaneous virtual interaction. Jay generally uses “real-time” or “RT” to avoid confusion.

VOIP = voice over IP, i.e. two-way audio over the net instead of your phone. Problematic going through firewalls. Older versions are iffy. Requires a Java applet or browser plug-in. You have to download an applet whenever you need it. Plug-ins stick around but many IT departments forbid their use.

Knowledge capture = synchronous capture for asynchronous use. (Re-runs of the live performance.) This is more valuable now that Interwise, Virage, and others can index video to let you jump to exactly the piece you want to see. Most SMEs are great talkers and horrible writers so this technology is a keep component of what I'll call "authorless authoring."

Thick client = RT that requires installation of an application program, generally more than a megabyte, by download or CD. Can provide a feature-rich, stable environment. Generally better quality sound and/or video. Examples are Interwise, Learnlinc, and Lotus. These are 4 MB to 12 MB downloads.

Thin client = browser-based RT that relies on a download, often a Java applet, that disappears at the end of a session. Another approach is to use a plug-in that lives on in your system’s plug-in collection. Some systems use both Java and a plug-in. To rate as “thin,” download should be a minute or less at 28.8 (about a megabyte). No advance planning required. Some predict that this is where the market is headed.

Warning: I am no longer maintaining this list.

Digital Collaboration Tools and Vendors

List and URLs courtesy Elliott Masie, Digital Collaboration site.

Good Sources of information

ASTD’s Learning Circuits has a wealth of information on RT.

“Guide to Synchronous WBT Features” by Jennifer Hofman, January 2000, defines three general categories and describes these 15 differentiating features:

•         audio. one-way or two, phone or VOIP.
•        shared whiteboard
•         synchronized web browsing
•         text chat
•         application viewing/sharing
•         content windows
•         video. one-way or two, live or canned
•         discussion boards. not real-time but useful for class info or FAQs
•         record and playback. by instructor or student.
•        breakout rooms
•         polling
•         hand-raising and yes/no buttons
•        assistant instructor
•         pre-session content distribution
•         assessment/testing/scheduling

Thinking Thin: The Race for Thin-Client Synchronous E-Learning by Tom Barron, June 2000

Debate Simmers Over Plug-Ins, Voice Technologies by Tom Barron, June 2000

ASTD members only: The January issue has a comparison of “Deluxe” RT Systems Centra Symposium, LearnLinc, Interwise, One-Touch, and Arel Spotlight. The July issue compares thin-client RTs Astound, CentraNow, Centra Conference, Educata, Evoke, HorizonLive, Placeware, and Webex.

CNN: Video phones, what’s wrong with this picture?

Groupware, The Changing Environment by David Coleman. Chapter 1.

“If you get only one message from this chapter, it is that groupware is not just technology, it is also social. Groupware is collaborative technology. That means it impacts the way people communicate with each other. Impacting communications results in impacting the way people work and eventually the structure of the organization. In other words, groupware is people as much as it is a tool that people use. Most organizations are able to handle the technology obstacles, because there are many technical alternatives available. The difficulty lies with the relationship between technology and the people who have to use it.”

Collaborative Strategies, David Coleman’s site.

Learning in the Time of Internet

Determining Your Distance Learning Needs: What About Me?!
Which of these interactive functions are critical?

•       Dynamic whiteboard with annotation
•        Public and private text chat between all participants
•        Voice over IP (IP audio)
•        Application viewing or snapshot
•        Application sharing
•        Testing, with automated grading
•        Pass floor control and/or multiple cursors
•        "On the fly" collaborative browsing
•        Remote control (desktop level)

Which of these asynchronous functions would be important in working with your distance learning solution?

•       Threaded discussions
•        Record and playback capabilities
•       E-mail interface (automatic meeting notification, etc.)
•       Session data capture and export
•      One-way audio/video streaming on demand
•       IP-based learning/training tools/systems, or Web authoring tools

Electronic Agoras, City of Bits by William J. Mitchell, The MIT Press

“A face-to-face human conversation-the sort for which dinner tables and traditional seminar and meeting rooms are designedis a spatially coherent, corporeal, and strictly synchronous event. The participants are all present in the same place, everybody hears the words as they are spoken, and replies usually come immediately. The telephone and talk radio have allowed conversants to be dispersed spatially but have not altered this condition of synchrony. (Until the introduction of the answering machine, you had to be by the phone, at the right time, to take a call.)

But there is an alternative….

Jay ponders…

How much does it take to lead an effective realtime session?

In the days of the clunky conference-room videoconferencing systems, people tired of the video very quickly. They found that the screen was better used for application-sharing.

Image fidelity doesn't hamper getting the message across. Grainy movies work. People get turned on by blurry porn movies the size of a large postage stamp.

Research at Xerox PARC found that sound and gesture alone could carry 90% of a class. No video. The gestures are such things as seeing a live annotation in a shared PowerPoint. Clark Aldrich, once at PARC and now with GartnerGroup, suggests that companies use more bandwidth for sound and less for video.

The highest-fidelity electronic media available today are no substitute for being there in person. I suspect this has something to do with smell or some other cryptic messages we send one another. To maximize performance, I'd rather spend money on more plane tickets than on high-bandwidth collaborative video.        

By and large, I have stolen ideas from only the best of sources:

• David Coleman, Collaborative Strategies
• Estee Solomon Gray, Interwise
• Tom Barron, ASTD Learning Circuits
• Clark Aldrich, GartnerGroup
• Eilif Trondsen, SRI Business Intelligence Group