Video Conferencing: a Solution to the Multi-campus Large Classes Problem?

Whether due to amalgamation or export education strategies, many universities now face a problem of delivering subjects, programs and courses across more than one campus. There are significant costs to students, staff and faculty of this teaching and administrative duplication. Information and communication technologies offer potential to achieve economies of scale but the effects on other things like student learning are not so clear. The objective of this paper is to report the outcomes of a video conferencing trial in an undergraduate mass lecture context. The effects on students and staff, and support issues are highlighted through a formative and summative evaluation. Surveys, focus groups, interviews, video recordings, exam results and reflective diaries provided data for the evaluations. The results will be useful both for decision-makers considering a video conferencing solution to duplication, as well as for staff potentially involved in using the video conferencing in a mass lecture context. Introduction The modern university faces many of the same pressures as a business. It must do more and better with less. Video conferencing is one potential solution academic managers are considering for reducing duplication. Laurillard’s (1993) observation that research on the effectiveness of information technology generally is severely lacking, applies particularly to video conferencing (Mitchell et al., 1993, 73). Frand’s et al. (1994, 20) survey of learning technologies in US business education reports that 56% of users consider the technology ineffective for enhancing classroom instruction. However, they conclude that it is too early to tell its real effectiveness. While research on video conferenced meetings, training (eg, Lundin et al., 1992) and small group teaching (eg, Martin et al., 1995; Goddard, 1995; Treagust et al., 1993) exist, the research relating to large groups in a tertiary context is both limited and unfavourable (eg, Goddard, 1995, 211). The objective of this paper is to report the outcomes of a video conferencing trial involving mass lectures across a multi-campus university. Knowledge of these outcomes should aid decision-makers considering a video conferencing solution to duplication. The message for potential users of video conferencing in a large group context is that the benefits may not exceed the costs. The structure of this paper is as follows. Section 2 briefly elaborates the context leading up to the trial. The following section describes the mass lecture video conferencing trial. Section 4 discusses the results of the formative and summative evaluations. Effects on students, staff and academic managers are considered. Section 5 contains concluding remarks and suggests future directions for video conferenced mass lectures. Context Problems of duplication in the tertiary teaching context arose in the late 1980s in Australia from government amalgamation policies. For others, duplication has become evident as universities seek to establish new campuses. In response to government funding cuts, many universities have sought to expand into export education, increasing their revenue base with offshore campuses. The multi-campus scenario applies to the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), a university supporting in excess of 23,000 students. The trial itself took place in a business faculty struggling under considerable financial constraints. Reasons for the latter include the relatively lower funding per business student (as compared to a science or medical student) and the relatively higher cost of teaching part-time on-campus students (as compared to full time students) shown by Doyle (1993). Other concerns also pointed to a video conferencing solution. A faculty requirement that subjects taught and assessed on both campuses be identical, resulted in travel or equity concerns. There are costs in time and money if the same lecturer travels between campuses. Video conferencing should make staff more productive because they could travel less and not be separated from their resources. If there is insufficient interest to justify duplicate subject offerings, students then must bear these travel costs. The final scenario is where different lecturers are used on the different campuses. While travel costs do not exist in such a scenario, students express considerable concerns about the equity of subject delivery. The latter is no surprise given the well-documented power of assessment to motivate student learning (eg, Ramsden, 1993). Concern relates to the advantage provided to the students located at the campus of the coordinating lecturer who sets the assessments. A video conferencing trial between the two Sydney metropolitan campuses was initiated in the second half of 1995. The object of the trial was the Business Finance mass lectures, a compulsory subject of the undergraduate business degree. No attempts were made to use video conferencing for tutorials or student consultations. The purpose of the trial was to evaluate the extent to which video conferencing mass lectures would: • be cost-effective by reducing duplication between the two metropolitan, domestic campuses. Improvements would then be expected to flow to servicing offshore campuses and increasing the capacity to provide export education. 198 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 29 No 3 1998 © British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, 1998. • improve perceived equity concerns faced by students on different campuses enrolled in the same subject when different lecturers are used. • improve the quality of learning for students. This was expected to be achieved for a number of reasons. As staff effectively halve their teaching load (in hours), they would have more time to produce better teaching material. Second, the prospect of looking a fool in a television-type context added further motivation to preparation of both teaching materials and teaching strategy. Finally, the extra features of the video conferencing equipment (eg, document sharing and close-up interactions) were expected to make it more interesting for students. Video conference trial To conduct the trial, a project team was established in July 1995. The team comprised members with expertise in computing, instructional technology and academic content. There was a five-week lead-time before the first lecture for the semester was scheduled, far less than the six months suggested by consultants (Daunt et al., 1994). During that time specifications were established, equipment purchased and installed, lecture theatres modified appropriately and cables installed. Staff also had a one day training session with a typical, small-group video conferencing session. Strategies for using the equipment in a mass lecture situation were brainstormed. Following the training session, efforts were made to discover previous research in the mass lecture context. While a literature search proved unsuccessful, phone discussions with several inter-state academics involved with small lecture situations provided valuable hints for adapting appropriate instructional strategies. Well-prepared lecture materials and interaction activities were the main instructional strategies suggested as well as some advice on TVstyle communicating or lecturing (eg, not wearing stripes). While the lecturing tips were handy, the instructional strategy suggestions had already been incorporated into the subject in previous semesters. McQuillan (1994) reports that any benefits of introducing technology relate to the changes in teachers’ conceptions and the consequential changes to instructional strategy rather than any introduced technology. Because of the minimal changes in instructional strategy in this trial, it was expected that the majority of effects should have been attributable to the introduction of the technology. There were 250 students enrolled at one campus and 80 students at the other. The video conferenced mass lecture took place on a Thursday evening for 13 consecutive weeks. The preceding lecture hour was booked for equipment setup and testing. To circumvent concerns about potential inequities highlighted in Treagust et al. (1993), the live or local campus was alternated each week. The remote campus received the video image of the lecturer and/or teaching materials. Video conferencing, because of costs, has traditionally been used for small group meetings. While desktop systems are now increasingly common, their use is still limited for meetings involving more than 4 people. Group video conferencing systems are more elaborate and tend to be set up in purpose-built rooms like that shown in Figure 1. The standard equipment entails one image from the remote view and the other screen showing the live image being sent. A coder-decoder system, or codec, enables images Video conferencing for multi-campus large classes 199 © British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, 1998. and audio to be sent between conferencing parties. Generally speaking, the broader the bandwidth of the link, the more natural the conference session. Utilising a leased VTel 227M Quick Frame System and transmitting via a microwave link between the campuses, a very satisfactory image and audio reception was expected. The video link was transmitted at close to television quality (at 30 frames per second or 1534 kilobytes per second (kbps)). This overcame the standard problem of non-synchronisation of image and audio experienced with 128 kbps (or even 384 kbps). A mass lecture context however, is quite different to a meeting of ten or colleagues. Even without video conferencing equipment, motivations for attending are different and interaction is more difficult. Preconceived perceptions are that lectures are more a oneway interaction of presenter enlightening or entertaining the audience. The content is typically much more structured than in a meeting of peers with a common goal to achieve. Video conferencing complicates the whole situation. Not only is it extremely difficult for remote students in a mass lecture theatre to be seen, without a portable microphone it is almost impossible to hear a student’s question. A number of preemptive strategies were therefore undertaken to improve the learning context. To improve student concentration in the mass lecture context, it was felt that there should be more opportunities to see the lecturer. To enable a larger audience to see, the image was also projected onto a wide screen using a data projector. Because of the large lecture theatre context, neither the standard camera position (on top of the video conferencing system) nor one at the rear of the theatre could be used. A camera operator was therefore employed to provide a range of shots for the remote end. Most were close-up images of the lecturer. During student-student interactions, the camera operator would focus on some students near him who were embroiled in the learning task. Another problem to be overcome was that the codec could only allow one image to be sent at a time. The image of the lecturer could be sent or the image of the content of 200 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 29 No 3 1998 © British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, 1998. Figure 1: Traditional video conferencing session for medium-sized group meetings