Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000
Effects of Video Communication and Telepresence on Cooperative Telelearning
Arrangements
Andreas Johannsen1, Wouter van Diggelen2, Gert-Jan de Vreede2, Helmut Krcmar1
1
University of Hohenheim, Information Systems Department,
70599 Stuttgart, Tel. 0049-711-459-3345, E-Mail: {johansen, krcmar}@uni-hohenheim.de
2
Delft University of Technology, Department of Technology, Policy
and Management, 2600 GA Delft, Tel. 0031-15-278-8545, E-Mail: {wouterd,
gertjanv}@sepa.tudelft.nl
Abstract
This article describes a research project in the area
of cooperative telelearning. It summarizes the
characteristics and results of a groupware-supported
international teleseminar with 14 virtual student
groups. On the basis of this field research and a
theoretical model, the requirements and advantages of
telepresence on effective and efficient learning are
considered empirically. Thereafter, the article
discusses additional determinants of learning
productivity to explain the role of information and
communication technology in the field of telelearning.
In the field study, a generally positive effect of video
communication on the perceived grade of telepresence
was found, but no direct effect of telepresence on
learning success could be traced back.
1 Introduction
1.1 The teleseminar: learning from a
distance
A teleseminar (or remote interactive seminar)
represents the transition from a conventional local
seminar held at a university or other institution of
higher education towards a geographically dispersed
seminar. A teleseminar is often jointly offered and
performed by several universities or institutions.
Computer-based information and communication
technologies as well as digital courseware support or
enable the cooperative management, teaching and
learning activities during the seminar. The notion of an
academic seminar in the field of social sciences
generally entails learning objectives in the area of team
working, problem solving and experiences with scientific
working practices [Jaspers 1977]. As in a conventional
seminar, the emphasis in a teleseminar is still on active
participation, group work, discussions, and the (sometimes
cooperative) online creation of a seminal paper.
This article sketches first results of a research project
that studied the management of a teleseminar and the
effects of telepresence on learning success. However, we
propose that the results may also be transferred to nonacademic telelearning settings, since we asssume that the
impact of telepresence on learning success is neither
dependent on specific features of academic content or
content provision, nor on attributes of academic (learning
or teaching) actors.
In the first section, we summarise the results of previous
research activities in the area of distributed university
courses. It concludes with a problem statement. The
question raised is how learning oriented interactions can be
guaranteed in the case of a teleseminar. We assume that a
feeling of telepresence is crucial for establishing such kind
of interactions. This is further elaborated in the second part
of the article. In the second part, we also present a
theoretical framework that guided our understanding and
analysis of a telelarning arrangement. In the third part, we
discuss the research questions, the structure of the field
study and data collection. The fourth part describes the
results of the teleseminar field study, especially with
respect to the impact of telepresence. In the fifth part, we
interpret the results and give suggestions for carrying out
and evaluating a teleseminar.
1.2 Previous Research
Initially, teleseminars have been implemented and
investigated primarily on the basis of asynchronous, text-
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Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000
based or document-oriented communication and
cooperation support technologies [Hiltz & Turoff
1992; Hiltz & Wellman 1997]. Broadly available
document-based online communication tools are still
the prevalent support technologies for „computer
conferences“. These tools utilise text-based and mostly
asynchronous communication over networks, as
opposed to synchronous audio-/videoconferences.
The concept of a „virtual seminar“ evolved from the
extensive work of Hiltz and others on virtual
classrooms [Hiltz & Wellman 1997]. Following [Hesse
and Schwan 1996] we define virtuality in a learning
setting as the existence of a number of learning
possibilities of real-world teaching, which create a
feeling of mutual awareness and presence among the
participants and tutors who do not interact face-to-face
(for the concept of telepresence, see section 2.1). We
assume that a feeling of mutual awareness and
presence is an essential condition for the learning in a
‘virtual seminar’. Participants in a virtual seminar must
have a sense of the knowledge, perceptions and
attitudes of the other persons in order to provide those
persons with the needed information and relevant cues.
More recently, telelearning projects included
synchronous communication support. Examples are the
projects of [Alavi et al. 1995], [Neal 1997], [Beuschel
1998], [Graziadei et al. 1998], [Vogel et al. 1999].
An increasing number of projects today represent a
transition as they experiment to virtualize a whole
program or course of studies and therefore are based
both on asynchronous as well as on synchronous
support concepts, e.g. the projects described in [Kotlas
1996] or [Kraemer et al. 1998].
The majority of the previous projects, however
concentrate on lecture-style teaching arrangements,
where interaction rarely takes place. They either
exclude support designs for distributed small groups on
the whole [as e.g. developed in [Johannsen et al.
1996]) or ignore the telecooperative parts in the
fulfilment of the assignments and tasks in groupwork.
Instead, they focus on the phases of result presentation:
the more or less unidirectional transfer of knowledge
or information. None of these pojects studied relational
aspects of interactions like telepresence. Nevertheless,
a feeling of mutual awareness might heavily impact
cooperation and learning especially before the paper is
jointly written up or presented, for the following
reasons:
• Telepresence enables spontaneous communication
and ad hoc discussions initiated by mutual
recognition of the presence of other participants.
• Telepresence provides the full range of mutual
awareness over the audio and visual senses.
• By visibly establishing one virtual room, a feeling of
social presence and belonging to a specific group could
be enhanced.
• The participants can apply familiar communication
rules and interaction patterns in a shared media space
as opposed to computer conferences or virtual reality
simulations of a shared room.
It might thus be useful to investigate the relationship
between telepresence on the one hand and the interactions,
learning activities and cooperative construction of
knowledge on the other hand.
1.3 Problem
In traditional (face-to-face) seminars, besides the social
aspects of getting to know each other, the active and
passive participation in discussions and working on
documents is a natural component of the learning oriented
interaction. The face-to-face interactions guarantee the
knowledge transfer between the participants. In distributed
courses this is no longer the case. The question arises to
what extent and when is there a need for synchronuous
audio/video communication in a teleseminar. Concerning
the effects of audio-/videocommunication it would be
interesting to know if such kind of communication
increases the feeling of presence by the participants. We
are also interested in the effects of the phenomenon: does
telepresence reduce the impact of physical separation?
Does it impact on group building, motivation and
commitment of the participants?
If these questions could be answered positively, then
cooperative telelearning arrangements would show strong
parallels with real world classroom teaching and real-world
university seminars without the necessity of bringing the
learners together in one room. A better understanding of
telepresence effects could help us to design the appropriate
learning arrangements in a distributed setting. This would
accelerate the development of our current educational
systems towards global markets for education, where
interactive curriculum activities could be carried out in a
virtual manner.
2 Theoretical basis
2.1 Theories of Presence
Buxton defines telepresence as “use of technology to
establish a sense of shared presence or shared sparce
among separated members of a group“ [Buxton 1993].
Communicaton researchers as e.g. Lombard and Ditton
define telepresence much wider, rather technology
independent and without the explicit focus on groups.
They define telepresence as “A mediated experience that
creates for the user a strong sense of presence and entails
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an illusion of nonmediation“ [Lombard & Ditton
1997]. Hence, they use telepresence synonymous to the
term “presence” because both terms merge in the eyes
of the affected under the assumption that they do not
perceive the distance at all.
Unlike telepresence, telecooperation always
includes shared objects commonly used or manipulated
during the process of communication. In contrast,
telepresence denotes a direct relation “sender message – recipient” without necessarily including
shared materials or objects into the communication. In
this paper, we follow Lombard and Ditton and define
telepresence as the feeling of colocation which occurs
through communication mediated over distance.
goal, since meaning, according to social constructivist
theory and social learning theory [Bandura 1986] is largely
socially constructed. The constructivist theory of learning
asserts that students learn most effectively when they are
creating artifacts that are both personally meaningful and
make connections to the world around them [Papert 1993].
Due to post-modern pedagogical approaches towards
group learning and in reaction of the advent of groupware
and the world wide web, constructivist theory for grouplearning has recently received renewed interest [Jonassen
et al. 1993], especially in the „constructionist learning“
form, which Seymour Papert as most prominent
representative set forth [Papert 1993].
Institutional Influences and Ressources
2.2 Research Framework and Pedagogical
Dimension
Before investigating the influence of applied
technology clusters like telepresence in telelearning,
one should be aware of other influences and design
factors in telelearning. A framework for telelearning
was developed to consider these factors (figure 2).
It contains in its center (inner circle of figure 2) the
conventional didactical parameters of successful
instruction, according to the Hamburg and Berlin
model of pedagogics [Schulz 1986]. The parameters
have to be mutually adjusted within each single
learning episode. In other words, the crucial point for
learning is to reach a mutual fit between the intentions
(learning objectives), the initial status (competencies)
as well as the media and methods of knowledge
transfer together with suitable methods for evaluation.
The media and methods are of special interest for
telelearning. Traditional media and methods are no
longer sufficient due to the spatial distribution of the
learning setting. The methods often have to be adapted,
because the distribution creates a new learning
situation, for which new learning and teaching models
become necessary.
Figure 2 shows that it is important to adjust the
organisation and the management of the telelearning
activity with the surrounding institutional conditions
and restrictions of the participating organisations (outer
circle). At the same time one has to assure the
achievement of the didactial objectives and the needs of
the learners (inner circle).
Most writers agree that traditional learning theories
as for example in [Piaget 1950] do not cover all of the
important aspects of mediated (group) learning as it
occurs today. Learning is today viewed as a
constructive process. Social constructivist theory adds
that learning of meaningful representations of the world
can only be achieved by interpersonal communication
and cooperative acitvities based on a common learning
Organisation & Tele-Management of the Learning Arrangement
Learning Episodes
Teacher
Teaching
Objectives:
Initial
Position
Control of Learning Success:
Media and
Methods
{
Teacher
Student
}
Student
Interactions
Figure 2: A framework for telelearning (following [Schulz
1986])
We follow a constructivistic understanding of learning
since it seemed more applicable to higher educational and
training seminars than transmittive learning paradigms.
Given the theoretical understanding of interactive
constructionist learning outlined above on the one hand
and the empirical requirements and objectives of teaching
and learning in academic seminars in practice on the other
hand, the design of interactive systems with possibilities of
establishing high degrees of telepresence seems more
appropriate for teleseminars than deploying conventional
presentation oriented learning environments and systems.
3 Field Study Design and Methods
3.1 Research Model
An explorative field study design was chosen, which would
allow for substantive observation and quantitative as well
as qualitative analysis of the student-student interactions.
For an academic seminar with group assignments, most of
the learning actually actually takes place during these
interactions.
To answer the questions mentioned in section 1.3, a
model for analysis can be used that, among other relevant
factors for telelearning, relates media choice and degree of
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interaction to telepresence and learning success. (see
figure 3).
Media:
Amount of video
communication
Q1
Telepresence:
Interaction:
Amount of mediated
communication
Perceived grade
of telepresence
Q3
Learning Success:
Grades
Q2
Figure 3: Research Model
First, we investigated how the use of media, which
here consists of the choice of videoconferencing, the
adoption of videoconferencing and the frequency of
videoconferencing use, impacted on the mutual
perception of telepresence. See our research question 1.
• Q1: Groups which used more videoconferences
perceived a higher degree of telepresence than the
comparative groups.
The joint preparation and presentation of a scientific
seminal paper can be considered as an unstructured,
cognitive as well as cooperation intensive and
coordination intensive task. Consequently, it can be
assumed that there is sufficient demand for
communication and cooperation for successful task
completion in this telelearning course. Thus we may
conclude that an investigation into the question
concerning the relationship between communicative
behaviour and learning success within a telecooperative
setting will yield interesting results (Q2). Note that with
Q2, we are testing whether communication over all
available media impacted on the learning success, not
only videocommunication, as in Q1.
• Q2: Groups with a high degree of interaction and
communication within the working group show a
higher degree of learning success than the
comparative groups.
With respect to the effects of telepresence we
formulate the assumed relationship between
telepresence and learning success as follows:
• Q3: Groups with a high perception of telepresence
during synchronous cooperation generally exhibit a
higher learning success.
In the study, communication patterns, learning
success and percieved telepresence were measured. As
a measure for learning success, the final grade of each
student was chosen, since other measures would have
been too subjective and biased to be as valid as the
final grade. The extent to which the final paper appeared as
a coherent whole was an important criterion for assessing
the grade. So the papers that varied in writing style and
consistency received a lower grade. This was judged as an
indication that little cooperation and learning took place
between the group members. The papers were graded
separately by one professor and two supervisors. The
effective reliability following [Rosenthal 1973] is 0,79 in
our study, a value indicating high interjudge reliability.
The grade of telepresence was measured for each
instance of communication (i.e. each time the students
made synchronuous contact with each other) on the basis
of the questions "„During the communication, I felt as if I
was in the same room as my partner“, and „During the
communication, I was deeply engrossed into the subject“ in
the documentation sheets. The answers were scaled
according to the 5-point Likert-scale, ranging from „True“
to „False“.
3.2 Content and Schedule of the Seminar
The department of information systems at the University
of Hohenheim (Germany), in cooperation with the
Technical University of Delft (Netherlands), department of
technology, politics and management, run an international
teleseminar within the curriculum of the regular “IS”programmes of the departments. In this teleseminar, the
Dutch and German students worked as teams without ever
meeting face to face.
The seminar lasted 12 weeks from April to July 1998.
Four interactive tele-lectures were held, one obligatory
exam was written at the beginning of the seminar.
Afterwards, the students had to write one English seminal
paper in groupwork and to present it in a joint presentation
in English.1
Students presented their papers in a two-day
videoconference session. As in the tele-lectures, each
student had access to a software environment where
questions were asked and which was used to discuss
specific statements. Having passed the exam and paper
including the oral presentation, the students received a
regular „Schein“ or the corresponding credits.
3.3 Groups
17 mixed groups of two students and one supervisor
were formed. The students were allowed a free choice of
topics, and were then assembled in groups accordingly.
Two out of 34 students did not pass the exam and left the
seminar. Two purely German groups were formed, which
are not represented in the analysis. The 14 international
groups either had a Dutch or a German supervisor (see
Table 1).
1
Details and the papers can be found under (http://www .unihohenheim.de /~www510h /texte /lehre /seminar /SeminarSS98.html)
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Group types
Hohenheim
Delft
Hohenheim Groups
(Supervisor)
Student 1
Student 2
Delft Groups
Student 2
(Supervisor)
Student 1
Table 1: Types of groups
Two of the international groups officially handed in
a joint paper, but observation and analysis quickly
showed that groupwork was not comparable to all the
other groups because communication only took place
over less than 10 per cent of the seminar period, no
video communication was held, and the paper was
actually written and edited by one student. So these
groups were also dropped from analysis.
3.4 Technologies
Students had access to the telecooperative tools
listed in table 2 at the two departments and partly at
home.
Tools
E-mail
including
mailing list
Newsgroup
Available:
to all participants
Used for:
group and seminar
communication
to all participants
WWW
to all participants
ICQ Chat
NetMeeting 2.1
to all participants
8 PCs in total
Intel ProShare
GroupSystems
over WinFrame
4 PCs in total
to all participants
discussion groups
and help desk
run by students
announcements and
download site
for course material
group discussion
audioconferencing/
videoconferencing
videoconferencing
seminar meetings
and presentations,
evaluation work-shop
Table 2: Technologies and Usage
We consciously did not set up rules concerning tool
use. The student groups selected freely which tool they
wanted to use and when. However, it was mandatory to
read E-Mail regularly and to visit the common web site
as well as to hold one video conference with the
supervisor.
We
provided
more
PCs
with
videoconferencing systems than were demanded by the
students at any point of time during the seminar, some
of which were installed at interested student's homes,
some of which installed at the two departments. The
observed usage of the different tools will be explained
more precisely in the following.
During the telelectures, the students had the
opportunity to ask questions or give comments via an
IP-based
distributed
group
support
software
(GroupSystems for Windows via WinFrame). Furthermore,
this software based learning environment was used to pose
short starting questions and to analyse the answers via the
computer network during the lecture. This gave the lecturer
information about prior knowledge and potential
knowledge gaps of the participants. Students who could not
attend the lecture watched the videotaped lecture and the
available sheets in the web at a later time (lecture on
demand).
During groupwork (after the written exam), teletutoring
via videoconferences and E-Mail were the predominant
and most important communication forms to supervise the
work, besides newsgroups and the mailinglist. Two
videoconferences per group were obligatory to focus the
topic and to agree on the structure of the seminal papers,
but in many cases further videoconferences were held
within the student groups, but also between students and
the supervisor.
The concept of telepresense in the seminar consisted of
three components.
• A Netmeeting Directory Server to support spontaneous
contacts between the seminar participants and the
supervisors,
• A 24 hours per day Netmeeting videoconnection
between the two group working rooms, and
• Official chat contact times (normally half day) between
the supervisors and their student groups.
The awareness function in the ICQ tool was used for the
virtual office hours (3. above) and the chats within the
student groups. The ISDN-videoconferencing computers
had to be booked in advance via the mailing list, but in
secondary priority it was also possible to use them
spontaneously.
3.5 Data Gathering
The relevant data for the investigation was gathered
from nine different sources by means of different methods.
This was possible because of the small number of students
investigated and the advantageous student-supervisor ratio
(one supervisor for five to six students). The specified data
was collected in the three following categories.
• Questionnaires: a) initial questionnaire, b) final
questionnaire, c) weekly electronic questionnaire
• Documentation sheets: 389 documentation sheets of
synchronous
communication
and
cooperation
instances for d) mediated communication and e) face
to face communication were filled out by the
students and collected.
• Electronic archives: f) E-Mail-archives, g) chat files,
h) Multichannel video tapes (about 15 hours
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videoconferencing) and i) a GroupSystems file of the
evaluation workshop were collected and analysed.
Table 3 summarises the data collection.
Questionnaires
28 initial questionnaire
14 x 6 weekly questionnaires
28 final questionnaire
389 Documentation synchronuous mediated
Sheets
communication
synchronuous face to face
communication
Electronic Archives
e-mail-archives (372 e-mails)
chat files
15 hrs multichannel video tapes
GroupSystems protocol file
4 Results
4.1 Video communication and telepresence
The difference of using video in the most extreme
groups ranged from 20 minutes to 342 minutes (see figure
4). Three groups hardly used any videoconferencing. These
'Low video-users' only used videoconferencing for 10 up to
32 minutes. For the test of research question 1 ("Groups
which used more videoconferences perceived a higher
degree of telepresence than the comparative groups."), the
12 groups were subdivided in 9 "Video-User" groups and
those 3 "Video-Non-User" groups.
Table 3: Data types
The questionnaires were designed on the basis of
expert interviews and an extensive literature study.
They were filled out from all participants. The weekly
electronic questionnaires contained three questions
regarding the individual participation, group work
status and the perceived time pressure. They were used
to analyse how groupwork dynamically evolved from
week to week.
The documentation sheets consisted of a one-sided
form with information concerning the content, the type
of communication, the employed tools and the
perceived degree of telepresence during the
teleconferences. They were used to gather telepresence
and other data immediately after each mediated
communication instance. The multichannel videotapes
were produced from the IP and ISDN conferences with
a Quad-Processor. (Face of the local person, screen of
the videoconference computer, and on the third and
fourth picture the face of the remote person and the
local room setting.) The videotapes were used for an
interaction and content analysis and the corresponding
general results are discussed in section 5.2.
Further data was gathered in a half-day lasting
workshop with 7 students and three lecturers using
GroupSystems for Windows over WinFrame including
a statistical analysis by means of the statistics tool of
GroupSystems. The focus of this workshop was the
overall summative evaluation of the seminar. Some
selected esults from the workshop are also discussed in
section 5.
Figure 4: Relationship between video communication and
learning success
Analysis of all documentation sheets showed that for the
question concerning the perceived grade of telepresence,
the "Video-Users" answers had an arithmetic mean of 2,2
(between "mostly true" = 3 and "rather true" = 2), whereas
the "Video-Non-Users" answered with 1,17 (being near to
"mostly false" = 1) as arithmetic mean. The scatter diagram
in figure 4 reveals a regression line with a positive slope,
pointing to the possibility of a correlation. The groups who
used a lot of video mediated communication did report a
significantly higher feeling of telepresence (t-value = 3,86;
p = 0,0031). However, it will be difficult to interpret these
findings in section 5 because of the small number of
groups, especially in the 'Low video users' category.
4.2 Communication, Cooperation and
learning success
The second research question stated: „Groups with a
high degree of interaction and communication within the
working group show a higher degree of learning success
than the comparative groups.“
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By using the e-mails archives, the documentation
sheets and the videotapes, we counted the number of Emails sent in each group, the number of chats and the
number of videoconferences in each group. This data
gives an interesting picture of the overall interaction in
the groups (telephone calls were also reported but were
not high in number due to costs) and is shown in table
4. We included the mean grades of the groups in the
last column in table 4, which shows an obvious
correlation. However, one chat or videoconference
could be long and another short, so that we were not
sure whether the numbers in table 4 give a
representative picture. So, we computed the „intensity“
of communication.
Group
No.
9
10
2
4
11
3
14
1
6
12
7
13
8
5
E-Mails
Chats
171
86
68
56
57
46
53
31
22
19
18
10
7
8
25
70
0
1
0
10
0
1
0
0
0
5
3
1
Video
meetings
3
2
4
5
5
4
1
7
9
1
1
4
1
1
Sum
Grades
199
158
72
62
62
60
54
39
31
20
19
19
11
10
1,7
2,3
2,3
2,3
2,3
2,3
2,3
2,7
2,7
3,3
3,3
2,7
3,3
3
Table 4: Groups ranked according to the quantity of
communication instances in each group
Communication intensity was measured as the length
of all Video- and Chat meetings (in minutes) as well as
the number of all E-mails sent in each group. For each
of these media, a list ranking the groups was built and
rankings were accumulated for each group, so that the
maximal value for a group leading in communication in
each medium would be 42 on the horizontal axis. The
paper grades of the groups can be seen on the vertical
axis. The grades range from 5 (very good) to 2 (not
satisfactory), a 1 would mean „failed“. The grades
respresent the mean grades of the 3 judges.
There seems to be no direct relationship between
communication intensity and learning success as
measured by our criteria. Thus, research question 2 can
not be confirmed.
Figure 5 shows the results for the 12 groups. It
exhibits a weak relationship between communication
intensity and learning success. As can be seen, the
standard deviation from the regression line is high.
Figure 5: Intensity of communication and learning success
The 12 groups were thus split up into two categories
consisting of 6 groups each: one category of 'much
interaction' (beyond the value 20 in figure 5) and one
category of groups who had less interaction by video, chat
or E-mail (on the left hand side of figure 5).
Many
interactions
Few
interactions
N
(groups)
6
Mean
(grades)
2,7
SD
(grades)
0,49
6
2,33
0,37
Table 5: Interactions and learning success
Table 5 shows the result for these two categories. The
groups who had a high value of communication intensity
did not receive a significantly higher grade than the groups
who had a low value of communication intensity (t-value =
1,46; p = 0,173).
4.3 Telepresence and learning success
For an exploration of the effects of telepresence on
learning success (Q3), we compared the mean grades with
the telepresence group values (see figure 6). Apart from
two values at the bottom of the diagram, the scatter
diagram is unclear. A direct correlation does not seem to
exist.
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Figure 6: Perceived grade of telepresence during
synchronuous communication instances and learning
success
A further categorization of the groups in a low
telepresence condition (the five groups exhibiting
values lower than 2) and an average telepresence
condition (7 groups ranging from 2 to 2,875) shows no
significant effects in relation to learning success (table
6, t-value = 0,92; p = 0,38).
Low
telepresence
Average
telepresence
N
(groups)
5
Mean
(grades)
2,66
SD
(grades)
0,68
7
2,41
0,2
Table 6: Telepresence and learning success
These results state that apart from the perceived degree
of telepresence during cooperation, learning success
does also depend on other important variables.
5 Discussion
5.1 Research question results
On the basis of the data analyzed, the research
question whether perceived telepresence is dependent
on the medium mediating the communication could not
be fully confirmed. This could be due to the low quality
of the video of the Netmeeting and ProShare
applications over Internet or 128kb ISDN lines in the
teleseminar. Actually, during a lot of meetings the
students mostly relied on the audio channel of the
videoconferencing system.
One of the groups in the 'low video users' condition
reported a relatively high feeling of telepresence. This
group (Group 9) was the only group that used a lot of
Chat (i.e. nearly daily usage). The other 2 groups that
were labeled as 'Low video-users' relied mainly on E-mail
and reported the lowest feeling for telepresence.
The results indicate that the effects of telepresence and
communication intensity on learning have not been very
strong in this field study. This could be a sign that different
cooperative activities in telelearning have different optimal
degrees of telepresence. The chosen research design made
it difficult to uncover those relationships between
cooperation and telepresence. Another possible
explanation might be that apart from the grade of
telepresence, the appropriation of tool usage for
cooperative purposes and tool-based creation of
cooperative working strategies could be a key determinant
for learning success. This explanation is based on the
observations made by the authors during the seminar.
Furthermore, observations of the videotapes indicate
that it is not the number of synchronuous meetings that
determines successful cooperation and facilitates learning
within a group. The difference between a face-to-face
seminar and a teleseminar is that the number of contacts
and the ease of establishing a contact are reduced in the
latter situation. So the success depends more on what the
students can achieve during the small number of meetings.
A careful planning of the project, the use of an agenda, and
making explicit appointments are critical success factors.
This implies that teaching should focus more on the
processes of learning and cooperation, in other words on
how to learn in telelearning situations.
5.2 General Results
As table 4 shows, the variance of participation and, in
turn, the quality of the work was remarkably high among
the student groups. It could be deduced from this result that
differences in personal as well as group characteristics
(such as motivation, media-literacy, group cohesiveness)
lead to a higher variety in learning success than in colocated learning arrangements.
Finally, the application of the distributed group support
system GroupSystems over WinFrame was a success both
technically and from didactical points of view. This could
be deduced from the answers in the final questionnaire as
well as from observations of the tele-lectures. With the aid
of this system, a high degree of interactivity and
communication, mutual help as well as quicker decision
making over the locations could be reached during the
group videoconferences.
5.3 Pedagogical Aspects
One essential empirical result of this teleseminar may be
generalised to other telelearning courses run between
different universities. It lies in the necessity of a tighter
supervision of the students as well as the participating
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Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000
supervisors (the same report Vogel, Wagner & Ma
1999). Moreover, the requirements for the students in
an international teleseminar are normally higher than in
local seminars. Student's comments show that they had
to cope with a new situation facing problems in the
learning areas of:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
language,
use of technology,
appropriate style of tele-cooperation,
communication over telemedia,
learning content requirements,
groupwork and
cultural differences.
One student in the evaluation workshop which was run
after the seminar wrote „It is very important to
experience what there is to experience: it was too
much: technology, paper, persentation, cooperation.“.
All other participants in the workshop agreed in the
discussion of this viewpoint.
5.4 Limitations of the study
The separation of the factors influencing learning
success as well as the identification of effects which
could solely be traced back to telepresence is a natural
problem in field studies, even if we tried to ease this
limitation by different methods and measures (measures
of perceived telepresence during each meeting,
collection of impressions of all students at the end of
the seminar, comparison with presence and interactivity
measures derived from the videotapes).
The second problem involves the definition of
learning success solely based on grades. Even if this is
common practise in comparable studies, we intend to
deploy a multi-dimensional model of learning success
considering preexisting knowledge and competencies,
different areas of competence and learning and which
entails subjective measures (self-assessment, learner
satisfaction) and objective measures (supervisor
performance grades).
supervisor ratio: 6 supervisors mentored 34 students, 28 of
them being „virtual teams“.
Interlinked with the possibilities of interaction offered
by new media is the extraordinary high effort in running
distributed seminars. While tele-lectures supported by
appropriate technology and organisational concepts may
qualify better to make a contribution towards cost savings
in the educational sector, teleseminars with a high
proportion of synchronuous communication and
cooperation (groupwork) are not suitable. However, they
represent an opportunity to integrate new qualities
(especially timeliness, innovation and practical relevance),
new areas of competence and learning, and new learning
experiences for the students into higher education.
The value of video communication for groupwork in
higher education could be underestimated, if it is measured
with traditional methods or inmature technology. Shorttime laboratory tests with artificial learning tasks are not
suited to fully reveal the role which bidirectional visual
communication (including feedback etc.) plays in real taskrelated as well as social learning settings and problems.
Although this study only showed a positive effect of video
communication on perceived telepresence and no direct
positive effect of telepresence on learning success in
cooperative telelearning, this could also be traced back to
the low maturity of the tools used and the corresponding
low grade of telepresence if compared to face-to-face
situations. Therefore, we intend to perform further studies
and teleseminars with more appropriate technical,
organisational and pedagogical variants of a teleseminar
learning arrangement (ATM-based, protocol-independent,
multipoint and multiple-/full-screen videotechnology)2.
These should also investigate to what extent telepresence
tools not only help the students in cooperative telelearning,
but also the supervisors, responsible professors and other
stakeholders in the tele-management of teleseminars by
means of quicker coordination, communicationa and
tighter control of learning progress and customer
satisfaction.
7 Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Bernd Funk and Marco
Schmucker for their research assistance.
6 Conclusions and further research
The experiences with the seminar were generally
positive, although the evaluation workshop raised
critical voices and focused on possible improvements.
All students asked in the final electronic GroupSystems
questionnaire would again choose to participate in the
seminar. This implies that other elements played a role
in the individual evaluation of the seminar. Supervision
was intensive, due to the generally ad hoc availability
of staff over different media and the fruitful student
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