LEARNING by video conference can be just as effective as attending classes.
Researchers in California鈥檚 Silicon Valley have compared the exam performance of
students who met face-to-face with others who interacted only by video
conference. There were no differences between the two groups鈥� final grades.
A growing number of universities offer courses to students who live too far
away to attend classes on campus. Videotaped lectures are broadcast or mailed,
and students can take tests over the Internet. But this 鈥渄istributed鈥� learning
has raised concerns that students miss out on the benefits of classroom
discussion. James Gibbons of SERA Learning Technologies in Palo Alto and Bert
Sutherland of Sun Microsystems in Mountain View now say that video conferencing
provides a solution.
Before he founded SERA, Gibbons pioneered a teaching method known as tutored
video instruction (TVI) at Stanford University. In TVI, several students watch a
videotape of a lecture together. Their tutor stops the tape frequently and
encourages discussion among the students, who may also interrupt the tape with
questions. Research has shown that TVI students outscore those who attend the
lecture and study on their own.
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Gibbons, Sutherland and their colleagues have devised a video conference
version of TVI. Each participant can see the face of everyone else involved on a
monitor divided into three rows of three. The recorded lecture, which the tutor
controls, appears in the bottom right window. 鈥淲e wanted it to be as much like a
real TVI session as possible,鈥� says Rob Pannoni of SERA, who worked on the
project.
Some 900 undergraduates taking five different courses at two Californian
universities took part in a trial of the system. Half attended lectures, while
the other half took part in TVI sessions or their video conference equivalent.
While the average grade of the lecture students was 2.8 out of a possible 4, the
TVI and the video conference students both averaged 3.1.
A number of universities have already expressed interest in the video
conference system, perhaps using cable or satellite television connections. But
that would require each student to join the conference from a small studio
dedicated to the purpose. For the system to take off, it will probably have to
work over the Net. The problem is that Internet connections can鈥檛 handle the
volume of data needed for nine simultaneous video channels. 鈥淭he Internet is not
now capable of doing what we did,鈥� Gibbons says.
But the researchers are confident that these problems can be solved. Then
anyone with a computer and a digital camera could take part from home. 鈥淭his is
a plausible way in the near future to pick up a class,鈥� says Randy Smith, a
researcher at Sun Microsystems. 鈥淵ou could go home in the evening and attend
class over the Internet.鈥�