If I were tasked with designing an interactive tour where students could take a
tour of a museum’s new exhibit and interact with the museum curator, I would
choose to set up a webinar online. The term webinar comes from Web
technology and a seminar blended together. There is usually a host that will
guide participants through a module which is both visual and audio. It can be a
PowerPoint presentation, pictures, or video and it can be both synchronous and
asynchronous. This type of technology is advantageous for use in many
different settings and according to Wang and Hsu, there are 5 notable
advantages for using a webinar in instruction. This article can be found at
http://www.ncolr.org/jiol/issues/pdf/7.3.2.pdf but I have included an excerpt
which discusses the 5 advantages (Wang & Hsu, 2008).
(1) Webinar tool is affordable (de Gara &
Boora, 2006). Users can participate in a webinar session with a computer,
video/audio capture devices, and broadband network connections.
(2) Webinar tool
enables synchronous communication. Instructors can communicate with the
learners in a synchronous format to provide immediate feedback to learners
(Hotcomm, 2003).
(3) Webinar tool
facilitates real-time multimedia demonstrations. Instructors can share the
application on the presenter’s site with all participants.
(4) Webinar tool
facilitates multi-level interaction. Instructors can lecture, interact with the
audience, facilitate participant group collaboration in a real-time format
(Marjanovic, 1999), and designate certain participants to be in charge of the
sessions.
(5) Webinar tool
provides an environment in which participants can archive seminar content for
personal review or for people who missed the realtime session.
There are many exciting webinar
technologies that designers can use to facilitate this type of interactive
communication such as Live Meeting, Elluminate (which Wang and Hsu discuss),
WebEx, and Adobe Acrobat Connect. I have
experience with Live Meeting and find that this is very easy to use and makes
for a nice sessions. The facilitator has
choices on how to make it interactive such as allowing participants to ask
questions and make comments verbally on the conference call or by writing them
in and showing them visually to all participants. The website for the WebEx software has some
examples of their technology. http://www.webex.com/why-webex/who-uses-webex.html
Webinar
technology is a great way to make any type of distance trainings or even
corporate meetings more exciting and collaborative among participants in
different locations. Everyone can log in and call into the meeting phone number
to participate and exchange ideas.
Usually there are some meeting rules like everyone mutes there phones
until they want to make a comment. As
with other means of distance instruction, there is planning that needs to take
place when setting up this type of event.
As Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, and Zvacek caution, “To be an effective
educator, it is important to consider what can happen within an instructional
event” (212, p. 164). It the
presentation is such that it would be more effective to hold questions and
comments until the end of the session, the webinar facilitator has control over
all of this. Live Meeting has a feature where all phones can be muted
automatically by the facilitator so that the presentation can be effective and
then opened up for discussion.
Reference:
Simonson, M.,
Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations
of distance education (5th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.
Wang,S., &
Hsu, H., (2008). Use of the webinar tool (Elluminate) to support training: The effects of webinar-learning
implementation from student-trainers’ perspective. Journal
of Interactive Online Learning (7)3.
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