S.O: Virtual Classrooms

Virtual classrooms (also known as webinars or web conferencing) are synchronous online classrooms that incorporate audio, video and text communication along with other learning tools such as whiteboards, polling, application sharing and breakout rooms.

I currently support the use of Blackboard Collaborate virtual classroom software on the CPEL programmes (and other programmes) and am involved in the roll-out of the software across Cardiff University.

In this section I will provide an overview of my experiences with virtual classroom software and attempt to illustrate some key themes and learning points.

Previous Experience of Virtual Classroom Software

I first used Blackboard Collaborate (and it's predecessor Elluminate) for several years in my previous role at Birmingham University to support distance learning tutorials and international seminars, and switched to using Big Blue Button through Canvas VLE when the institution rolled out Canvas and our Collaborate licence ended.

Initially I was satisfied with the transition to Big Blue Button as I found that the learning curve is shallow for users and tutors and the streamlined interface (compared to other tools) was straightforward and user friendly. Furthermore, unlike Collaborate, it didn't rely on permissions or downloads to run so there seemed to be less technical barriers to students engaging with the software.

However, Big Blue Button was not as stable as Collaborate during sessions, and we had many issues with students not being able to participate fully due to losing connection with the software, plus much odd behaviour. Furthermore, Big Blue Button did not have the functionality of Collaborate, lacking polling features, web tours, application sharing and breakout rooms for example, while the recording ability was limited compared to Collaborate.

Interestingly though, whether we offered the lightweight and user friendly Big Blue Button, or the feature rich and relatively stable Collaborate, we found take up of virtual classroom software was poor, despite the fact that we had in the School of Education a number of distance learning programmes that seemed an ideal fit for such tools. This was despite concerted awareness raising and training efforts from myself and colleagues, which wasn't enough to overcome an underlying wariness and apathy around this kind of technology from many academics.

Overall my experiences in University of Birmingham left me with mixed feelings about virtual classroom software; while I felt it had great potential to enhance the student experience, particularly for distance learning courses, I was unsure about how quickly it would become embedded and ubiquitous across the higher education landscape (even at distance learning level).

First Steps on CPEL

My new role in Cardiff allowed me greater influence within a small number of distance learning programmes (CPEL), and one of the first challenges in this role was to facilitate synchronous ('real-time') learning online. The concept of 'live engagement tasks' had been built into the programmes' learning design before I arrived, but more to the point feedback had suggested that some of our students, even early in the programme, were feeling isolated by distance learning. Whilst not unexpected given the initial structure of the programmes this sharpened the focus on providing an online student experience that emphasised communication and collaboration, contact time with both the tutor and fellow students, and the building of an effective learning community.

As well as using discussion boards effectively, it was felt that ‘real time’ engagement should be provided; This corresponded, happily, with the School of Social Sciences purchasing a one year licence for Blackboard Collaborate and I decided to trial this, despite reservations about the initial learning curve and access barriers associated with Collaborate.

In February 2015 we staged four Collaborate workshops on the Mental Health and Well Being module of the CPEL Experienced Practitioner Programme. These sessions had three main aims;

1. To test out the Blackboard Collaborate environment.
2. To get feedback from students on the module thus far.
3. To encourage sharing of ideas around some of the main themes of the module.

The Collaborate integration for Learning Central proved flexible and intuitive, and sessions were created within the Mental Health and Wellbeing module. We provided students with instructions on how to access their session, and guidance on using Blackboard Collaborate; this included a strong recommendation to test their computer set-up prior to the session using Collaborate’s ‘First Time Users’ page, and in particular the configuration room.

The first session was very successful, with all students managing to access relatively easily and on time. The remaining three sessions were much more mixed, and successful participation was around 50%. There were various reasons students weren't able to participate:

• Personal / work reasons – some students had unforeseen demands on their time that took priority over the session.
• Technical reasons – in particular issues with opening the Collaborate interface.
• Other reasons – such as not following instructions to find the correct links etc.

More positively, the academic who ran the sessions accessed Collaborate without issue from a number of locations and was quickly able to grasp the interface and the functionality for running sessions. He was pleased with the sessions overall and reported good levels of enthusiasm and engagement from students. The student feedback about the sessions themselves was also very positive; they appreciated the opportunity to engage in real-time with both their tutor and with fellow students.

The Collaborate sessions were a significant commitment in terms of time; although scheduled to be an hour each the time commitment for each was closer to two hours, taking into account accessing early to help and welcome students and also running overtime due to late starts (or catching up with students who accessed late). It would have been possible to run fewer sessions but this could have affected levels of participation and, conversely, if resulting in larger numbers per session, may have had an impact on the quality of engagement from students.

There was also a significant amount of time commitment from myself, though largely focused at the start of and prior to each session. This support is crucial when starting to use Collaborate though, and the need has diminished somewhat as academic colleagues have become more familiar with the technology.

Collaborate was used in another module (on a different programme) over the following months, with similar mixed results; although there were some technical difficulties these were overcome for most students and there was a generally positive response from students and tutors around the usefulness and potential of virtual classrooms.

For more detail on technical barrier and how these were overcome, please see the document 'Collaborate-Lessons-Learned'.

Embedding Virtual Classrooms on CPEL

Based on our first experiences with Collaborate it was decided to use it across all CPEL modules for the next academic year (2015/16) and we have implemented at least one virtual classroom session (each run a number of times) in each module.

In order to do this I delivered several training sessions in Collaborate for the CPEL academics; the file ‘Collaborate-Intro’ shows the presentation I created and used as the basis of this training. I also continued to support the sessions including publicising, sign-up and technical support. Experiences across modules have been mixed, and although technical problems for students have been relatively low (and in particular students seem to be accessing from mobile devices with much greater ease), student participation has not been very high; the reason for this seems to be that the sessions are optional and students on this programme are very time poor.

There is also further work to do with academics both in terms of the technical side of the software and in designing pedagogically engaging and collaborative virtual classroom sessions. Some sessions are currently little more than open-ended 'catch-ups', although these can have value on a distance learning programme like CPEL. Overall, it is felt that the opportunities Collaborate provides are important and I have developed a plan for the next academic year (2016/17) which involves three main strands:

• Transferring to Collaborate Ultra - this is a newer version of Collaborate that we have used successfully for several meetings with some success, particularly in terms of academic confidence. There are lower technical barriers with ultra and these, on reflection, outweigh the drawbacks in functionality compared to Collaborate Classic, particularly as this additional functionality has not been used much this year.
• Streamlining delivery - as Ultra is less integrated than Classic in Learning Central I will create a single link to a webinar room for each module rather than creating a room for each session. This will have the additional benefit of decreasing the resource requirement on myself and colleagues in the eLearning team, and also give academics more freedom and flexibility to arrange sessions at short notice.
• Working with academics on session design - this will ensure that webinars are collaborative and engaging, and not just a series of individual conversations between the academic students.

I hope these changes will make a significant difference to the uptake of webinars and that they can become a highly-valued and integral part of the CPEL programmes for students and academics alike.

University Rollout

As the School of Social Sciences were among the first in the University to use Collaborate there was much interest in what we were doing from other schools and colleges; because of this I ran a small number of training sessions with colleagues from other schools and in May 2015 I wrote a blog post entitled 'First Steps with Blackboard Collaborate' which I shared with the learning technology community within Cardiff University.

This led to me becoming involved with the rollout of Blackboard Collaborate across the University, as part of the project team that managed the implementation and dissemination of the software following the University’s purchase of a site-wide licence. I was able to feed in my experiences to this group, represent the needs of the CPEL programmes and the School of Social Sciences and contribute to decision making around the project.

As part of this, I also decided to trial Collaborate for meetings and have been doing this sucessfully with colleagues in the School of Social Sciences. Going forward I hope that Collaborate will become a valued part of the suite of learning technologies used in Cardiff University and that I can play a part in helping to embed it in the School of Social Sciences and wider. There are still challenges, but generally barriers have lowered as the technology has got more stable, and peoples perceptions of this kind of technology have also changed, due to the proliferation of technologies such as Skype and Facetime. However, if we can support colleagues and students to access and use virtual classroom software as easily as they can these other technologies then there is great potential for enhancing the student experience.