Facilitator’s Roles in a Videoconference Learning Environment

The paper reports a study of a videoconference-based environment in decentralized university education and factors contributing to the success of teaching and learning in the environment. The focus of the paper is on the role of a person having the formal responsibilities of a technician. An ethnographic study conducted over the course of a year revealed that the contribution of this person far exceeded the scope of formal responsibilities. The person, who was acting in the setting as a facilitator, was found to possess expertise, which was critically important for supporting interaction between remote participants at several levels, such as attention management, time management, acquisition of setting-specific skills, and coordination within a larger institutional context. The findings suggest that “supra-situational” activities can be important factors for the successful functioning and development of emerging learning environments.

[1]  E. Matusov.  Intersubjectivity Without Agreement , 1996 .

[2]  Y. Engeström,et al.  Learning, working and imagining : twelve studies in activity theory , 1990 .

[3]  Mary Beth Rosson,et al.  The task-artifact cycle , 1991 .

[4]  Paul Dourish,et al.  Re-place-ing space: the roles of place and space in collaborative systems , 1996, CSCW '96.

[5]  M. Cole.  A cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition , 1993 .

[6]  B. Nardi.  Studying context: a comparison of activity theory, situated action models, and distributed cognition , 1995 .

[7]  E. Hutchins.  Cognition in the wild , 1995 .

[8]  Mattias Esbjörnsson.  Förutsättningar för den distribuerade utbildningen. Den fysiska och virtuella miljöns påverkan på inlärningsprocessen. , 1997 .

[9]  Patricia Sachs,et al.  Transforming work: collaboration, learning, and design , 1995, CACM.

[10]  A. N. Leont’ev,et al.  Activity, consciousness, and personality , 1978 .

[11]  Victor Kaptelinin,et al.  Computer-mediated activity: functional organs in social and developmental contexts , 1995 .

[12]  Volker Wulf,et al.  Lecture and Tutorial via the Internet - Experiences from a Pilot Project Connecting Five Universities. , 1998 .

[13]  Ben Shneiderman,et al.  Designing The User Interface , 2013 .

[14]  L. Suchman.  Plans and situated actions , 1987 .

[15]  Ben Shneiderman,et al.  Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction , 1998 .

[16]  CHRISTINE A. HALVERSON,et al.  Activity Theory and Distributed Cognition: Or What Does CSCW Need to DO with Theories? , 2002, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[17]  Ben Shneiderman,et al.  Designing the user interface (2nd ed.): strategies for effective human-computer interaction , 1992 .

[18]  Victor Kaptelinin,et al.  Re-contextualization of teaching and learning in videoconference-based environments: an empirical study , 2002, CSCL.

[19]  Victor Kaptelinin,et al.  Individual and collective activities in educational computer game playing , 1997, CSCL.

[20]  Ben Shneiderman,et al.  Designing the user interface - strategies for effective human-computer interaction, 3rd Edition , 1997 .

[21]  John Bowers,et al.  Workflow From Within and Without: Technology and Cooperative Work on the Print Industry Shopfloor , 1995, ECSCW.

[22]  John M. Carroll,et al.  Designing Interaction: Psychology at the Human-Computer Interface , 1991 .

[23]  S. L. Star,et al.  Social science, technical systems, and cooperative work: beyond the great divide , 1999 .

[24]  Johann H. Schlichter,et al.  Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: Introduction to Distributed Applications , 2010 .

[25]  Lynn Diamond,et al.  Effective videoconferencing : techniques for better business meetings , 1996 .

[26]  Paul Dourish,et al.  Portholes: supporting awareness in a distributed work group , 1992, CHI.