Lessons Learned using the Classroom Experience Project

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Lessons Learned using the Classroom Experience
Project

• How to fail at video conferenced teaching

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UW Professional Master's Program

• Five year old program with established distance
  courses.
• One course per quarter video conferenced between
  UW and Microsoft.
• One evening per week
• Commuting distance

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Before ClassroomXP technology

• ISDN Based video conferencing
• Netmeeting for PowerPoint distribution
• Electronic white board
• Lecture archive
• Continual improvement in quality
• Lighting, microphones, audio processing, camera
  management, etc.

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How to fail at video conferencing, Jim Gemmel

• Voice quality must be competitive with telephony
• Video should increase, not decrease presence
• Starting up a video conference should be as easy
  as making a telephone call
• Video conferencing must be ubiquitous

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Potential advantages for using ConferenceXP

• Higher quality video and audio
• Ease of setup and installation
• Address some known problems
• Whiteboard

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Friendly Environment for ClassroomXP trials

• Substantial resources on both sides
• Established program
• Near-located
• Existing relationship
• Experiment
• Is higher quality video better
• Better interactivity through ink on PPT

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What we hoped to achieve

• Increased interaction between sites
• Ability of remote students to interact with the
  instructor
• Ability of instructor to engage remote students
• Student interaction across sites
• No degradation of experience of local students
• No System Administrator

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What happened

• Week 1
• Used old system (for comparison)
• Weeks 2-4
• Bad patch cable caused 30 packet loss, maiming
  Conferencing app
• Weeks 5-9
• Router incompatibilities caused intermittent
  multicast failure (15 minutes between failure)
• Weeks 10-12
• Worked as expected

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How to fail at a distance course

• Transmission failures
• Production quality
• Lighting, room noise, camera management
• Structured presentations limit activity
• Classroom issues
• Table layout, overhead positionning
• Attitudes

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Transmission failures

• No connection if the bits dont get through,
  there is no class
• Interruptions short failures
• Degradation of performance (audio, video, signal
  and latency)

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Production quality

• Microphones
• Not picking up sound
• Picking up too much
• Lighting
• Camera quality
• Field of view
• Distance

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Presentation

• Restrictions imposed by technology
• Limitations on materials
• Loss of fidelity of transmitted materials

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Classroom issues

• Placement of projectors
• Dispersal of audience
• Student seating
• Conference rooms versus lecture hall

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Attitudes

• Resentment of technology
• Not attempting to engage other site
• Instructor not encouraging questions
• Students not asking questions

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Multicast

• Lack of reliability
• Vender incompatibility issues
• Substantial time to localize problems
• Intermittent failures

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Multicast test tools

• Details on what is needed it would be great to
  create interest in this

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Room Configuration
Screen 1
Screen 2
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Content Issues

• Sound issues difficulty of room(s).
• Value of picking up background noise (sense of
  presence).
• Camera issues in remote room
• Configuration required students to sit at
  distance
• Some students avoided sitting in field of view

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Student Reactions I

• Repeated failures reduced students attempt to
  interact across sites
• Even intermittent failures had significant
  psychological impact
• Students recognized that we were attempting to do
  a good job (we were present in the remote
  classroom, and shared their pain)

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Student Reactions II

• With our workarounds (high latency video,
  conference phone) students did not participate.
• In spite of technical difficulties many students
  chose to attend the remote site (commuting 15
  miles in traffic being an alternative)
• Local students complained of intrusiveness of
  interruptions. Had little sympathy for remote
  students.

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Faculty Reaction

• With technological difficulties, taught primarily
  to local class
• Presentation tools readily accepted

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Take 2

• Network diagnostics testing
• 7x24 test agents
• Long term statistics gathering web reporting
• Concept of Administrative Console
• Diagnostics to quickly determine fault
• Over 20 points of potential failure in I cant
  hear the professor
• Non-invasive reset, diagnostics, configuration
  change
• Rooms dedicated to distance classes
• Lighting, wall color, ceiling mikes, projector
  A/C noise, projector positioning, table layout
• Ease of startup shutdown

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