Online teaching and learning tools - Web-based Conferencing Tools

Christopher Essex
Instructional Consulting

Web-based conferencing is an element in almost all online courses, and is becoming increasingly more popular as an element of on-campus courses as well.

In general, they operate in a manner similar to Internet newsgroups. Students (or the instructor) post a message, and then other students read it and reply, and add their own ideas. If properly structured, this can lead to a very productive virtual "class discussion."

There are advantages to this type of class discussion, as compared with the traditional, face-to-face kind. For one thing, everything is recorded, and the instructor who wants to consider class discussion as part of a course grade can keep track of the discussion in an objective manner that is impossible in the classroom--who posts, how often and how long.

Another advantage is that discussion is archived, so that students who join a class late, or miss a week, which is common in online courses, can quickly catch up with the discussion.

Some research has also suggested that this type of class discussion is actually more thoughtful, extended, and constructive than traditional class discussion, which is usually limited by time and social/personality issues. With web-based conferencing, many students who would not normally speak up in class, because they are shy, need time to think or are simply intimidated by louder, more aggressive students, may have the chance to contribute to the class discussion. For international students, the fact that they can read the discussion at their own pace, perhaps with a dictionary at hand, can make joining in a much more comfortable experience.

Of course, there can be downsides to web-based conferencing. Students often complain that it is more work than simply showing up for class, a situation where they are not always required to be active participants. It does take time to read, think and comment in the web-based conferencing system, and this time should be considered in the overall design of the course.

The Tools

There are currently two web-based conferencing systems available to IU School of Education faculty and graduate assistants to use in their teaching. These are Site Scape Forum and Web-BBS. In the following paragraphs, I will briefly describe them.

SiteScape Forum is the web-based conferencing tool that has been chosen by UITS for campuswide use. This is a real advantage for instructors, because it means that students may enter a course having already used SSF, and thus less time would be required for orientation on using the tool.

SSF's best feature is its capacity for Team areas, where subsets of a class can have their own work groups. These Team areas are idea for collaborative problem-solving activities or other types of small group projects. Team areas include the same discussion and document-sharing features of the whole-class areas, but also include synchronous chat, team member profiles and email notification options.

SSF is relatively easy to navigate through, by using the icons at the top left of the screen.

Web-BBS. The latest and the simplest of the web-based conferencing tools available to School of Education faculty is Web-BBS. This system, available only on the veritas server (http://www.indiana.edu/) allows users to simply and quickly add a primitive bulletin board system to their course websites. For courses where discussion will be straightforward and limited, this option makes a lot of sense. In just a few minutes, you can have a conferencing tool on your website, without any need for outside assistance. Posting is as easy as filling in a few boxes with text and pushing a button. The learning curve is low for both instructor and students, but of course the features are also minimal.

For more information about Web-BBS, visit the IU Webmaster's page about the system.

For more information about incorporating web-based conferencing in your teaching, please feel free to contact us.