Training Needed in Web and Video Skills
The use of videoconferencing and other models of learning such as webcasting and podcasting in the higher education sector could be hampered by training and infrastructure issues, experts have warned.
University of Wollongong learning facilities and technologies manager Richard Caladine said Australian educators should understand when to use new learning technologies to benefit students.
"Videoconferencing is clearly a two-way technology," Dr Caladine said. "When it's used that way, people switch on to having an interaction with another human rather than watching, but podcasting is a one-way technology," he said.
"If a teacher is presenting a 50-minute talk with PowerPoint slides, videoconferencing isn't appropriate, but podcasting certainly is."
Dr Caladine will address the three-day Wainhouse Collaboration Summit in Sydney, which starts tomorrow. The summit has been held annually in San Francisco and Berlin and is making its Asia-Pacific debut in Sydney.
The event, which includes international and local speakers, will focus on the latest unified collaborative communications technology. The university uses videoconferencing to connect its six campuses in NSW, having shifted from using Telstra-provided ISDN lines to its own network. It has been using podcasting since 2003.
"Our challenge is to get lecturers to use the two technology appropriate to the nature of the teaching activities that they are undertaking," Dr Caladine said. "We have to be careful as to how we handle that so we don't have a negative effect on the learning outcomes."
Financial Services Institute of Australasia IT services general manager Paul Baird said lecturers could overlook the fact that two-thirds of the class were not actually in the room if they didn't have appropriate training and guidance.
FINSIA, which provides membership and education services to the securities and financial services sectors, has achieved global reach for its masters program using a collaborative synchronous teaching/learning system.
"We undertook a number of briefing sessions for each of the presenters to allow them to become familiar with the product and the tools to raise their awareness of the remote students," said Mr Baird, who is also speaking at the summit. University of New England higher education lecturer Robyn Smyth will tell the summit that videoconferencing for higher education has huge potential, particularly for distance students.
"But there are some infrastructure issues such as getting clearer indications from infrastructure providers and the telcos about the capabilities of their network and getting them involved in this," she said.
"For most people broadband has a much higher download speed than upload speed, and that means videoconferencing is very limited. Also, we can't send out multiple streams of data, so it is difficult for a student."
UNE has 10 remote access centres in the northwest of NSW that allow students to interact with lecturers for tutorials.
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