.C.New technologies, new structures: videoconferencing as a teaching tool. Nado Aveling, Diana Frylinck and Betty Walsh. .C.Abstract Isolation from tutors as well as peers has long been a problem for students studying at a distance. Educational technologies, hailed as the method of choice by which distance can be minimised, are often underutilised for a number of reasons. Videoconferencing is a relatively new medium in distance education which, to date, does not appear to be used to its full potential as an instructional tool and little is known about the effects technologies other than print are likely to have on student learning. When using videoconferencing as an communication tool in an educational environment new teaching/learning strategies need to be developed. This paper is a description of, and reflection on a research project which implemented videoconferenced tutorials for internal and external students enrolled in teacher education programs. The research was carried out over a six month period, during which descriptive material was gathered. Further data was collected through questionnaires eliciting demographic, as well as attitudinal responses. These were administered to all participating students before and after they had exposure to videoconferenced tutorials. c.Introduction The project we are describing here arose from a sense of unease at the inherent contradictions between a push for increased use of technologies other than print and the rhetoric of equity and access to higher education. While some researchers have foreshadowed that equity issues are likely to be problematic, to date there has been little research which addresses the complex interaction between equality of access as well as equality of outcomes, on the one hand, and increased use of technology on the other. The underlying principles which guided this project were, therefore, the notions of equity and access, while our immediate concerns were maximising student learning and overcoming isolation experienced by students. Given those concerns and an awareness of a political climate of 'more for less' , we were, at the same time, concerned with the cost effectiveness as well as general applicability, of any strategies which were employed. It is generally understood that rural students, because of their geographically remote location from centres of Higher Education, are disadvantaged in terms of access (DEET, 1990); that is, geographic distance makes it physically impossible for them to attend Higher Education institutions (Dunnett, 1991). Studying externally is for the majority of rural students the only option. However, having overcome the access barrier, external students are thought to be further disadvantaged because they do not have the face to face contact with lecturers and peers which their on-campus counterparts enjoy. If distance education is one of the strategies in improving access (Powles & Anwyl, 1987; DEET, 1990), then educational technology is seen to be the method of choice by which distance education can minimise the perceived disadvantages of distance, whether this distance is due to geographic or other reasons (Clark, 1990). Moreover, the term 'distance education' is increasingly taking on a meaning that is tied directly to delivery via telecommunications and '...reluctance to be assertive in adopting the new technologies and to familiarise oneself with the considerable body of research in educational technology will not be rewarded'(Duning, 1990,36-37). Certainly, on the surface,various technologies would appear to meet the learning needs of isolated students and ensure equality of outcomes. However, despite the excitement and the promise which the emerging technologies seemed to hold out, a note of caution speaking of 'appropriate' technologies is beginning to be heard (Melody & Catlin,1992). c.Background and aims of the project Results from an earlier study (Aveling, Smith and Wilson, 1992), which sought to identify the needs of rural students, identified costs associated with studying at a distance as the single most common area of concern. Any innovation designed to minimise distance in the teaching/learning process within the context of distance education will, therefore, need to be affordable by students and not disadvantage, possibly already disadvantaged groups, even further. In terms of the teaching/learning process, isolation from other students and access to tutors, coupled with a lack of a sense of belonging, were, not surprisingly cited as areas of concern. Furthermore, students expressly identified videoconferencing and videos of lectures as the two most important provisions which they felt could be utilised to help overcome those disadvantages. In an attempt to meet these needs we integrated two different technologies into two different, print-based courses. One course incorporated videoconferencing to facilitate greater student-student and student-tutor interaction, while the second course included in its usual learning package a video which introduced students to the tutors and provided an overview of the course, detailing aims and objectives as well as expectations in terms of readings and assessment. The purpose of this project, therefore, was to increase the level of interaction between rural students and the university; provide more opportunities for interaction with peers and more personal contact with tutors and to consider the efficacy and cost efficiency of including two instructional mediums, other than print, as integral components of external studies learning packages. Comparisons between the two courses proved to be interesting, however, what follows is a case study of the videoconferencing component of the project. .C.What is videoconferencing? Videoconferencing gives people at different locations the opportunity to interact with each other in real time. As this method of communication is visual as well as aural, body language and other visual clues are part and parcel of this communication process. However, the key element in videoconferncing is interaction. Videoconferencing implies that the meeting is to some degree 'live'. A prerecorded program is not a videoconference, nor is ita live program that lacks interaction. We felt very strongly that interactivity was to be the basis of our tutorials; all of the strategies which we employed were designed to foster maximum interaction among students, that is, the focus of each session was, wherever possible, to be away from the tutor. The content matter of the videoconferenced tutorials Aboriginal and Multicultural Education is an undergraduate course which many students choose to study as part of their Initial Teacher Education or Graduate Diploma programs. The overall aims of the course are specified in the study guide as follows: as anti-racism and multicultural education. We will try to reach the main goal by discussing values and concepts, and tackle the difficult task of how these concepts can be implemented in classrooms. We hope you may become more sensitised to problems encountered by minority groups and better understand another group's value system.. . (E230 Study Guide, Murdoch University, 1993) In the past no one has ever queried the applicability to external students of achieving the aims of the course through "discussion (of) values and concepts". One assumes the term 'discussion' was not meant to be taken literally with respect to external students who, it might further be assumed, were expected to find some other way of dealing with issues of values clarification. Certainly, we understood both the use of the word 'discuss' and the lack of response it produced, to be a general indication of the differential expectations many university teachers and the students they teach, have of the two modes of study. For our purposes, however, the aims of the course, being grounded as they were in human values and exchange, made it an ideal candidate for videoconferencing. .C.The concept of the tutorial and questions of assessment Given shrinking resources and increased student numbers, tutorials have, over a period of time, emerged as 'student- delivered mini-lectures'. Certainly, it has been our experience in teaching in this and other courses in Education, Social Science and Humanities, that this format, where one, or even two students are designated to 'present' (and an assessment component is allocated to that presentation) during the nominal hour allocated to a particular topic, was one with which many of our students were familiar. It was also a format with which students were comfortable; each student was allocated a topic on which s/he was expected to write a paper, which, in turn, was 'presented' (that is, read) to the group and finally marked. Students tended to feel that there was a lot of material to be covered and in terms of being assessed they did not want to be seen to be inadequate or 'miss out' anything in terms of content. Invariably they felt that the best way to get the content material across to their audience was to read what had been painstakingly written. To lecture, in fact. There were exceptions, of course; some students strove valiantly to involve other members of the tutorial group in discussion. Sometimes this was successful, but by and large a tutorial culture evolved in which only one, or at most two students were responsible for engaging with the subject material in any given week. Those not 'presenting' often turned up at tutorials ill prepared (not having done the required /necessary reading) to participate in informed discussions, even had time permitted. I do not mean to suggest that fruitful discussion and interaction among students did not take place; on the contrary. However, we would suggest that the scenario we have painted, is not atypical. It became clear to us that if we were to follow-through with our intention of exploring ways of providing an educational experience which would allow external students to interact with other students, both internal and external, as well their tutor, the tutorial structure with which our internal students were familiar would not be adequate in addressing this need. In order to attempt to create a climate in which all students were able to participate in an informed way we experimented with a number of different tutorial structures and strategies which were devised to encourage students to interact not only with each other but also with the required material. Initially our internal students felt somewhat uncomfortable within the 'new' structures, not because they didn't perceive discussions to be intellectually worthwhile, but more because they had become accustomed to a particular structure within which they knew what was expected from them, and which was, moreover, closely tied to a twenty percent assessment component. Although she was in favour of the changes in structure the research team proposed, and did, in fact, suggest many of the strategies,the tutor was similarly ambivalent; in terms of her contract she knew that she would need to assess students and in terms of her professional responsibility she often wondered if her students were being sufficiently prepared for their examination. Interestingly, she experienced no such qualms about the external students in the group who, in the past, would be studying totally independently, and who were subject to identical examination requirements. We understood this not to mean that she didn't care about the exam performance of external students but understood it more as a reflection of the expectations tutors have of their differential responsibility towards internal and external students. Preparation for examinations and modes assessment were clearly subject to different expectations on behalf of tutor and students and the question of differential assessment continued to pose difficulties for the tutor throughout the semester. However, students' responses to the questionnaire which was administered at the completion of the course, did not show the concern about being disadvantaged through introducing different structures which we expected. c.The strategies The various strategies we used were used either singly or in combination and were continually adapted to address the constraints imposed by time and also to suit the perceived needs of the group. Thus sessions 1-4 utilised various adaptations of 'firing line' questioning, within a framework of having a student introduce and sum up the topic. Sessions 5 and 8 saw the abandonment of 'firing line' and the trialing of discussion statements generated by the tutor. Session 6 incorporated a video of a guest lecture together with discussion statements and debate, while sessions 7 and 8 used different approaches to role play in conjunction with prepared discussion statements or debate to explore the content material. Further elaboration of these techniques follow. .c.'Firing line questioning' The initial videoconferenced sessions were based on a technique 'firing line questioning', developed by Andre Delbecq in which students are required to formulate questions from their reading rather than addressing questions that have been set by the tutors, and to fire those questions at their peers and to have questions requiring thoughtful responses fired at them. We adapted 'firing line questioning' techniques for use in the first videoconferencing session and continued to modify this structure hoping for an optimum mix. When students were asked at the end of the first session how they thought it could be improved one student thought it was just a matter of getting used to the technology, someone else suggested we make use of fax facilities, while several others requested that the sessions be extended to two hours. Despite some streamlining of procedures, in the second session we ran out of time again. In an effort to maximise the time available for discussion, the tutor asked students if they would like to dispense with the ten minute presentation, which in practice provided little or no opportunity for interaction, but without penalty to the presenter. Students declined most vehemently but some of them commented that they would like more direction in getting discussions started, as well as more general directions from the tutor. It was most noticeable that whenever the tutor made comments there would be furious scribbling by the students. These requests for direction came from both external and internal students and indicated to us that this particular group of students, at least, was not sufficiently comfortable about their abilities to articulate key concepts and questions. In consultation members of the research team, the tutor and the students decided that there would be more involvement by the tutor through the introduction of a ten minute tutor-directed segment immediately after the ten minute student presentation; the questions to be discussed, rather than being formulated by the group as a whole would be prepared by the student who was scheduled to present the topic that particular week and the 'final summing-up' was to be taken by the tutor, rather than the student who had presented the initial overview. We also reduced the numbers of subgroups for discussion from three to two. This seemed to work well and after the third session we finally had a sense that we had the timing right. However, we still had a sense that 'firing line' was working less well than we had hoped. The 'problem', as we saw it, was essentially one of time. This was evident in students' repeated requests to extend the tutorial beyond the budgeted hour. The strict time limits we needed to impose, if 'firing line' had any chance of working, did not allow for sufficient depth of discussion to take place. After the fourth session, therefore, we moved to a different strategy. .c.Discussion statements Discussion Statements were the brainchild of the group's tutor, who had recently attended a seminar on teaching strategies, where these were used to advantage. Students were to be divided into two groups and instructed to tackle statements, prepared by the tutor, in turn. Those statements which elicited either unanimous agreement or unanimous disagreement were to be 'discarded'. Those statements on which the subgroup could not agree were to be brought back to the whole group for further discussion. The statements were carefully worded to avoid simple 'yes' or 'no' responses and were based on that particular weekÕs topic. .c.Strategic use of lecture video Incorporating a video of a guest lecture into the tutorial structure was not something we had initially thought of doing. However, an opportunity presented itself to have an experienced teacher, who had spent some years teaching in a remote school, talking to the internal students. At the last moment we decided to videotape the lecture, not only as a future resource, but also so that external students could have access to the sort of 'one- off' lecture to which normally only internal students are privileged to have access. Written notes from the tutor accompanied the video and were designed to help students make connections between the experiences of a practising teacher and the readings which formed part of the course. This worked reasonably well although there was less interaction among students than we would have thought. In part this was due to the way the tutor had structured discussion points; students and tutor alike felt obliged to 'stick with' what had been planned and felt less free to discuss points which might have arisen spontaneously. Nevertheless all students ( except those whose videos had, for reasons best known only to Australia Post, not yet received the video ) were delighted with this addition to their study materials. They were heard to comment that for once they were receiving materials which was not only identical to that received by internal students, but also simultaneous. c.Role playing Two forms of role-playing were used during the final sessions. The content of session seven related to matters of policy and was generally regarded by past students as being somewhat dull. Rather than merely reiterate what various government agencies had to say about such-and-such an issue we thought it would be pedagogically useful to attempt to anchor policy issues within social/historical contexts in a direct way. We assigned each student to a particular role, from which they had to present their argument by way of a debate. We were optimistic that this approach would enliven an otherwise dull topic. Unfortunately this worked less well than we hoped. The 'hypotheticals' posed by the tutor meant that the focus continued to be largely away from students who continually deferred to her, almost as if to assess if they 'were getting it right'. The role-playing component for the final session consisted of a very brief 'sketch' which we hoped would generate discussion not only about the social construction of gender, but more importantly, the social construction of ethnicity. Teaching in this course in the past had led us to believe that the 'naturalness' of gender construction was not something which many undergraduates often questioned. What we wanted to do was to 'shock' students into a recognition that issues of gender and ethnicity were not as clear-cut as 'common sense' would have them believe. In this we were successful; so successful, in fact, that the entire group remained speechless for some minutes. Thereafter, of course the discussion took off in leaps and bounds. However, role-play was not the sole strategy we used in this final session. It served as a discussion-starter, but was followed by discussion of questions which were designed to focus students' reading. The irony of this tutorial was that we thought we had found the ideal structure at last and were pleased with it. However, one student's comment at the end was revealing - she said it was so nice to have experiences of so many different structures! .C.Results and discussion Videoconferencing was viewed positively by all students. Although students seemed to welcome the opportunity to comment on the course generally and were not hesitant in expressing their dissatisfaction with certain aspects of the course, no students viewed videoconferencing negatively. Students' responses are, perhaps best summarised by providing a sample of their comments. Overall, this was really great ... helped in motivating my study attitude for all my external work, not only this course. Being part of a tutorial group gave me the motivation to keep up with my reading ... many thanks for help it gave me. Excellent concept ... very useful for external students. Best external course I have completed ... Found this the most supportive external course to date. Truly enjoyed videoconferences and feel I have benefited enormously. Enjoyed hearing other views ... very useful to question yourself and your understanding. Responses to questions which specifically sought to elicit students' feelings about the various strategies which we introduced are tabulated below. A total of 11 students completed the questionnaire, of whom eight were external students. Table 1: Responses by students who disagreed with the given statements All students External students only Experimenting with different structures detracted from my studies 63% 75% I am concerned that experimenting with different structures may have had a detrimental effect on my overall grade 100% 100% Table 2: Responses by students who agreed with the given statements All students External students only Being required to formulate my own questions was a useful learning strategy 36% 38% Incorporating debates helped me to better understand the material 81% 87% Introducing videos of lectures reinforced my understanding of the topic 73% 78% Incorporating role play was helpful in extending my understanding of the material 82% 88% Debates and role playing were obviously the most popular options. The videos of the guest lecture was not as popular as we had thought it might be, however, as some students did not receive the video until after the tutorial, mailing difficulties can be held accountable here. Our adaptation of 'firing line questioning' was, not surprisingly the least popular. While the technique is not intrinsically a 'bad' one, it simply did not seem to work with this particular group under these particular circumstances. There is no doubt that the introduction of videoconferencing goes some way to overcoming some of the disadvantages faced by external students. There are, however, a number of issues which need to be addressed before this technology can usefully become a regular part of all external learning packages. These concerns relate to the technology itself, the organisation required and not least, students' preferred ways of studying. We will briefly discuss each in turn. The technology Currently the cost of providing videoconferencing for all students enrolled in a particular course is prohibitive. Even if reduced costs in the future would remove this barrier, it is unlikely that all students in a particular course would be in reasonable commuting distance of a videoconferencing site. Moreover, as videoconferencing depends on availability of compatible equipment, some sites are likely to be incompatible. To date most tutors are unfamiliar with the technology involved in videoconferencing and lack of time to explore different ways of doing things makes them reluctant to invest time and energy into an unproven medium. This, of course has implications for staff development. In our experience working as a 'learning facilitator' (which could be said to be a fair job description for tutors) conflicts with managing the technology without having had prior training. Closely related to this point, is the question of "what do you do when the technology lets you down?". This certainly happened to us. If a member of the research team had not been on-site to 'troubleshoot', the tutor would have been expected to manage on her own. Organisation It occurred to us that the sorts of structures we implemented were nothing more than attempting to implement good teaching practices. Nevertheless, combining external and internal students in the same discussion group necessitated attention to timing and efficient organisation. If students are considered as equal partners in the learning process then they need to be consulted and informed of planned changes. Without a fax to which all parties have access, we found that frequent phone calls and extra mailings to students were required, in an attempt to ensure that Ôall went well on the nightÕ. Similarly, if external students are to have access to the same sorts of resources which internal students enjoy, as in the production /despatching of the guest lecture video, then the implications for resources, both in terms of tutors' time and mailing costs are obvious. Teaching strategies and preferred modes of learning The questions which arose for the researchers were "how much structure is too much and how much is just right?" The structure provided by the debate seemed to be just about right; allowing all students to participate and interact with each other. The structure which the tutor had devised to generate discussions related to the video on the other hand seemed to inhibit students from interacting with each other. There are a number of possible explanations for this, however, it seems likely that the tutorial culture with which students are familiar, came into play in this instance. We observed this a number of times: when the tutor had thought that she had prepared something designed to challenge students and to stimulate critical thinking students didn't quite know what was expected of them and opted for a wait-and-see approach. The debate, on the other hand was much more straight forward: here was a game in which all players knew the rules and were happy to participate. Another interpretation might be that in the case of the 'tutor generated discussion points' both the content and the structure was generated by the tutor. In the debate the topic may have been presented by the tutor, but the way in which the topic was to be discussed was left to the students' discretion. Yet a third interpretation might be that when the tutor was present interaction among students was less than when the tutor was absent. These speculations will certainly need to be investigated further; we are far from sure about why some things worked well and others less so. We felt that discussion statements were particularly successful because they seemed to combine a number of requirements: there was sufficient structure, both in terms of process and content which allowed the tutor to feel that she was covering the required material and the students no longer worried about being on 'the right track'. Moreover, while many isolated students welcome the opportunity to interact with their peers not all students feel disadvantaged by studying independently. In fact, some students have told us that even if they were not geographically isolated, they would still prefer the flexibility which studying at a distance affords. Videoconferencing, because it is not asynchronous reduces that flexibility. .C.Conclusions Videoconferencing is an underutilised but potentially effective teaching tool. However, given the constraints we have outlined, and even if many of these can be overcome, it can only be considered an option which may be offered to those students who have access to videoconferencing sites and who express a desire to participate. .C.References Aveling, N., Smith, S. and Wilson, C. 1992, 'Meeting the needs of isolated students: is a technological fix the answer?', in Academia under pressure: Theory and practice for the 21 st century, research and development in higher education, vol. 15, Parer (Ed), Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia, Churchill, Victoria. Clark, S. 1990, 'State of the art', in "Think Tank" on research into rural education, Proceedings of the conference held by the Rural Education Research and Development Centre, Townsville. DEET, 1991, A fair chance for all: higher education that's within everyone's reach, discussion paper. Delbecq, A. 1992, Santa Clara University, unpublished paper. 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