First draft of Telepresence in Education

Reasons for choosing this topic:

Most of us have heard of telepresence in education. Telepresence refers to the use of technology which allows a person to experience of being in a distant location, able to interact and work with people at that location. When it is applied to education, teachers and students use computer technology, video cameras and other medium to exchange ideas. Although teachers and students are separated in different locations, they can communicate as naturally as if they are staying in the same classroom. Every gesture, every expression, every nuance of interpersonal communication is shared.

In fact, it is a trend for using this alternative way of teaching. Companies and schools work together to provide e-meetings, e-courses and videos to the students. However, students and teachers in Hong Kong lack the chance of experiencing this new teaching method. The telecommunication is often limited to Windows Messenger, ICQ, 3G mobile and so on. Although Hong Kong has several educational reforms recently, they still continue the traditional way of teaching, face to face method. Hong Kong is lagging far behind the world trend. It is time to evaluate telepresence in education.

In this research paper, I will explore different methods of teleteaching. Sunet, ThereNow and Pebbles will be taken as examples to indicate how teleteaching actually works. Each new technology has its pros and cons. Since I am interested in finding out the hidden problems of new medium in education, I will further discuss both the positive and negative sides of teleteaching. After that, I will evaluate which academic field or types of students are more suitable in telepresence in education. The emerge of teleteachers also causes a threat to the teachers at present. This paper will finally evaluate the role of teleteacher.



Research Questions:

- Are there any limitations in telepresence in education?
- Can teleteacher replace the job of the teachers at present?
- Is teleteaching effective for all types of learners?
- Is it possible to bring telepresence to education? How?
- Will traditional universities disappear because of online education?



Key Quotes:

i. Bruce Tognazzini' s comment on Project ThereNow :
(http://www.edmoweb.com/therenow/dissertation.htm)

"I began arguing at the beginning of the multimedia semi-revolution that the goal should be to make the best teachers available to the most students. We've done that with the best singers, best actors, best artists, best writers, and best entertainers. Educators have lagged far behind...The kind of presence you are achieving can amplify the power of gifted teachers several-fold."

ii. Davis Blair's comment on teleteaching :
(On the Interent, pg.60)

" much of my sense of the immediate presence of the students in a class comes from my ability to make eye contact over a visual channel, no matter how good thetransmission is. To look into another person's eyes, I would not be able to look straight into the camera but then I would not be able to see the eyes of the other person since, to do that, I would have to turn the camer to the student's image on the screen."

iii. Trust in cyber world:
(On the Internet, Pg. 70)

"the trust that we have that our mail carrier will deliver our mail does not require looking her in the eye or shaking her hand. The kind of trust that requiries such body contact is our trust that someone will act sympathetically to our interests even when so doing might go against his or her own."

iv. Carol Twigger's comments on online education:
(Our Virtual World: The Transformation of Work, Play and Life via Technology, pg. 69)

" When you think of all the colleges and universities there in the world today - about 3600 in the United States alone - the notion that there will be only three or four survivors is ludicrous. That's like saying everybody will go to Yale or Harvard. There's tremendous diversity in market. What the Interenet and technology allow is an explosion of universities."

v. Comments by C J H Fowler and T Mayes about the advantages in teleteaching:
(BT Technol J Vol 15 No 4 October 1997)

"In some earlier studeis with primary school children using videoconferencing technology (the PC-based VC8000 over ISDN-2), it became clear that the constructionist approach is extremely effective in increasing children's levels of motivation, their general attitude to learning, and their levels of self-esteem."



Images for teleteaching nowadays:

School: Lulea University of Technology (Sweden)
Course: Introduction to Media Technology
Images taken from: http://www.meetings.sunet.se/?lang=en

This is a real teleteaching in Lulea University of Technology. The students attend a course, Introduction to Media Technology, by wearing headsets and using video cameras.

The traditional way of teaching is face-to-face meeting with a teacher and some students exchanging ideas in a classroom. Some of us have heard of teleteaching. However, we seldom have the opportunity to try this new technology. This case is significant in illustrating the method of telepresence in education nowadays. What do we need in teleteaching? How does it work? And most importantly, what are the benefits and disadvantages in e-meeting?

The teacher and the students use computers

equipped with headsets and video cameras.

Private audio and chat between a tutor and a student.

The other students can't hear or see this.

The "arrow" representation of the students were used to indicate some request

from the teacher to get feed-back. The arrows acts as avatars of the students.

Forming of groups in the whiteboard

The group working in the group room

The result of group 1.

A story board for a film to promote this kind of lectures. Showing how nice it could be

to participate from home and for example without needing to do make up