7.6: Virtual Classrooms/Web Conferencing
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Web conferencing tools can bring a new dimension to your programs. They add presentations, audio, video, graphics, synchronous chat and voice interactions to meetings and classes at a distance. They can effectively complement online courses where some live interaction is called for and where there is an immediate need for new information or skills. Recordings can often be made to enhance asynchronous distance education programs. In an education/training mode, they are often referred to as virtual classrooms.
With a few exceptions, virtual classrooms are not included as part of an LMS, either for education or business, but are available separately. Some LMS vendors partner with web conferencing software vendors to integrate the products so they will work well together.
There are more than 50 vendors of these products. In most cases, these systems can support either corporate or education needs. Some of the best known include:
Licensing of these products varies from annual subscriptions (Elluminate) to pay-as-you-go (WebEx) to free (TappedIn). If they are only used occasionally, then the pay-as-you-go option is probably the best choice. However, that can rapidly get very expensive.
Tip
As with any software or instructional approach, it takes considerable skill to facilitate an online session effectively.
The management of learning content involves saving developed courseware as learning objects in a learning object repository (database). It is catalogued using metadata (descriptive tags) so that it can be easily found and retrieved by anyone who has access to it. It supports institutional or corporate reuse of the learning objects. Systems that do this are often called learning content management systems (LCMS). They are specialized content management systems.
Most education LMSs include at least some capability for content management. Some even call themselves learning content management systems.
Learning content management is not usually a feature of the corporate LMS, but some of the major corporate LMSs include content management as part of a suite of programs. It is also available separately. Most separate LCMSs include content authoring and some learning management features as well.
Performance support: Some corporate LCMSs provide for a feature called performance support. Also called JIT (just in time) learning, performance support allows employees to immediately access information (courses, units, and learning objects) that enables them to do their job better “in the moment”. For example, if an employee working on a task cannot remember exactly how to do something, he or she can quickly access a course, or parts of a course, that will show how to perform the operation. This requires managing the course content as learning objects, and making them easily accessible to all learners. Such systems when available separately are often called EPSS (electronic performance support systems) but are now sometimes included as part of an LCMS. This is another concept which does not really apply in the education environment. See Appendix C, LCMS Features.
LMSs that include this capability as part of a suite include:
Some examples of separate systems are:
Tip
Be careful about learning content management. Everyone thinks, “What a great idea—save the course materials in a way that they can be reused easily.” But too often it doesn’t happen. Some organizational cultures do not support the value of sharing. This is a great tool if it is used but an expensive mistake if not used.