Virtual Conferences

[Lori Holcomb]

The other week we engaged in a virtual conference of sorts for our debate on one-to-one computing. Asides from our discussion last week, how many of you have been part of a meeting that has had a virtual component to it? What do you think are the pros of virtual meetings? The cons? Do you think the use of virtual meetings will redefine the way business is conducted, which in turn will impact education??

[Emily Jessee]

It has been several years since I was on the business side of things (rather than education), but I had virtual conferences at least twice a week at that time. They were a savior for our pharmaceutical company becuase they provided us a way to connect with teams and sponsors each week. The benefits seem to outweigh the cons in my opinion for most circumstances. For example, one is able to save thousands of dollars in travel costs by cutting down on commuting and travel as well as time spent out of the office (which in turns benefits the environment). The downside is that cost and the complications with the virtual reality equipment can be a bear and expensive to initially invest in. I do not know if virtual conferences redefine the way business is conducted 100%, but they do set a new standard in the 21st century. It will be interesting to see how education is impacted since it tends to be many years behind, but how neat would a virtual conference be for project-based learning, class meetings (rather than a day in class) and much more.

[Staci Lyon]

Last semester, my online class met using Elluminate every Tuesday. I enjoyed it. It was like going to class without driving to campus, paying for parking, and walking to Poe Hall. I was able to leave work just like I was going to class, come home, get comfortable and be in class. Although it's sort of the same with other online classes, it was nice to actually hear people and engage in conversation. Since we used Elluminate, we were able to show each other the documents we were working on as a group and it was much nicer than just reading what someone had to say.

I guess one con could be technical difficulties. When the site goes down or someone's microphone stops working, the conversation abruptly ends. Or when the sharing in Elluminate doesn't work properly, it causes disruption. But we didn't encounter very many problems during our semester.

Although I missed our debate, I'm sure I would have enjoyed the opportunity to participate in this course in the same way.

Virtual meetings will certainly redefine the way business is conducted, if it hasn't already, since it allows people to talk to others all around the world. How awesome it would be to have an actual conversation with teachers in other countries to discuss new teaching strategies! The impact on education will be that students will need to learn the proper etiquette even with a virtual conference.

[Kay Pitchford]

I have not been able to successfully meet during a virtual conference. I think the cons are technical issues and scheduling. In a previous online class (a few years ago), my computer an/or online provider could not support the meeting feature on Blackboard, so I had to complete an alternate assignment. With different online providers at dfferent speeds, the meeting may not be in real-time for everyone. Scheduling is also difficult, because everyone works on the classwork at times that fit into their schedules. Some students work on it during the day, and may have evening jobs, others may work on it during the evenings and have other jobs during the day. Others may work on the course during the weekends, since weeks are full of other responsibilities. It would take some arranging and rearranging of schedules to have a common meeting time, which I think takes some of the flexibility away from the online format. The pros would include having a chance to interact with others in the class, but I think email is ok for that, too.
Virtual meetings can be effective for specific purposes, especially if there is a video component. Meeting online helps cut travel time and costs, and can have the same desired outcomes as a F2F meeting. Online meetings will become more common as more people telecommute, and as energy and other costs continue to rise.

[Joyce Boone]

I've had the opportunity to participate in virtual conferencing, although it has mostly been text-based, without audio. Eluminate was fairly new to me although I had been a participant in it before and not a presenter. The benefits of using the virtual conferencing are great, in that it avoids scheduling conflicts for people who are unable to physically gather in the same place at the same time for a meeting. I agree with the others that one of the primary cons or disadvantages is that technical issues can and do arise.

Virtual meetings will likely continue to redefine the way business is conducted and also impact education. There is increasing economic uncertainty nationally and businesses are looking for ways to maintain their current viability while also trimming or cutting costs. Being able to meet online and communicate as well as collaborate on projects from multiple locations and at a minimal cost will go a long way toward helping the business' bottom line in today's workplaces.

Joyce

[Rhonda W]

This is a timely discussion for me as I have been working to set up a North Carolina site next week for the Data Quality Institute, a conference sponsored by the Office of Vocational and Adult Education at the US Education Department. This conference has been held in different places around the country (I've been to meetings in Washington, DC, Atlanta, Savannah, and New Orleans). Generally it is attended by high-level administrators in state secondary and postsecondary career and technical education and low-level peons like me. It mostly concerns data that must be submitted to the federal government under the Carl Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006, which is the federal legislation that provides funding for CTE. This year it was decided to hold the conference virtually, due largely to cutbacks in travel going on in states. I am excited about the possible use of the technology, but a little concerned that part of the value of such a conference -- informal learning among peers -- will not occur. It will definitely be interesting to see how it works out.

The hardest part has been the fact that this is the first time the feds have done anything like this and their directions have been just the tiniest bit unclear. I think they've also had to scale back a bit once they saw what a Rolls Royce-type conference would cost. We found a place in RTP to hold the conference using their earliest instructions that would have cost $300 an hour. It would have been cheaper to fly us all to Washington -- First Class! Today's instructions (still subject to change) require only a computer with an Internet connection, speakers, a projector and screen, and a phone line. And people are still so nervous about it that they have scheduled two sessions tomorrow and another one next week to double check the hookups and make sure people can get through.

I've been in virtual meetings before and as a general rule they save money and allow more people to participate. But technology problems have sometimes been a serious distraction. At DPI we frequently use software called GoToMeeting, which doesn't have the advanced capabilities of something like WebEX. We are limited in the number of connections and the audio takes place via phone rather than online. I think it has fewer features than Eluminate. In my experience, this type of interaction has the most potential for replacing small committee meetings rather than conferences. But as the technology (and our knowledge of how to use it) improve, its usefulness will likely expand.

[Karen Hughes]

Rhonda this sounds exciting! How many participants do you expect? You will have to let us know how it goes.

[Rhonda W]

There will be five people in Raleigh and two people in Lee County. The design is for more people, but I believe they seriously overestimate how many people care about these data issues. I logged into the practice session on Friday and it looks like it will go fine. As I couldn't get into the lab we are using I had to log on from my desk. My biggest concern is that the computer in the lab will be older or slower or whatever. We'll see.

[Karen Hughes]

The only exposure I have had to virtual conferencing is through Elluminate which I have used in 3 or 4 courses at NCSU. I like the opportunity to hear voices of classmates and to have a chance to learn a little about each of them. As I mentioned in the Ning discussion on distance education, I miss the face-to-face contact from traditional classes, and sessions through programs such as Elluminate are useful in building class camaraderie.

I think the ability to conduct virtual meetings has already redefined the way business is conducted. Years ago when I worked in the corporate world we had to purchase expensive equipment to conduct teleconferences, or we had to travel long distances to participate in routine meetings. Today with a PC, webcam, and video conferencing software any business can conduct a desktop video conference with people located around the world. This has really helped small companies as they might not have been able to purchase the expensive equipment needed years ago. The fact that businesses are communicating globally will impact education as businesses will require a workforce that is globally knowledgeable, can communicate well and multilingual.

Karen Hughes

[Veronica Lewis]

I have never had the virtual format in any business meeting that I was in prior to teaching. I worked in several different industries that could certainly benefit from it. We typically used Fed-ex to send proposals or many phone calls to resolve issues.

I think the pros out weigh the cons. Pros are the reduced travel and package expenses. Real time communication, content understanding and better rapport amongst workers who now can express themselves with each other.
The biggest cons I can think of is technology related; poor connections or inadequate training for participants.

Employees must be willing to learn how useful this can be and use it regularly. This concept will definitely define education because we have built relationships with potential employers and they express what skills they want their employees to possess.

[Laura English Lewis]

In the pharmaceutical world we constantly have to interact with many different sites across the world so that employees can share their knowledge. We currently use WebEx meeting conferencing to hold weekly online training sessions, deliver presentations to other sites, and receive knowledge from subject matter experts on issues we are having problems on, or to keep sites informed of the FDA requirements.

WebEx is being used so that we can provide on-demand access to knowledge through an intuitive application without the expense and hassles and delay of travel. For years we have cut the travel budget by using WebEx virtual conferencing.

I have come to the office in the morning working in our team meeting had a problem that we could not solve on site, and within two hours had a WebEx virtual conference meeting setup with several subject matter experts from Puerto Rico, Peal River, and Grange Castle. This is one of the best pros of using virtual meetings, allowing employees the ability to effortlessly create and update knowledge such as documentation, corporate material, and Standard Operation Procedures (SOPs) within hours. Employees are able to easily extend the reach of their knowledge quickly across our extended enterprise. Using WebEx we can even share our desktop and anything on it with other colleagues anywhere in the world, again this is being done without the hassles of travel.

The con that I continue to see around the office by using WebEx virtual conferencing is that we don’t really get to know people from other sites, we don’t get a chance to meet or have the interaction of face-to-face meetings which we have almost eliminate.

I do think that the use of virtual meetings have already redefined the way that we do business, you can be sitting in your home and having a WebEx conference with clients in Japan. Our CEO’s constantly communicate to us via videoconferencing, and he is not always at our home office. Thousands of employees are watching and listening to the president of our company at the same time hearing the same message about how we are doing as a whole throughout all of our sites. So we are right back to education students must be prepared to work in our global market place and have the technology abilities to function in or 21st century workplace environment.

[Karen Hughes]

Laura I love your example of pooling expertise via on-line. To me this could have one of the greatest impacts on the way businesses operate. Why not use the best resources you have available to you? A lot of this expertise was not obtainable years ago, and when it was it was so expensive, due to the fact that they had to travel to you or visa versa. Also, the timeliness and convenience of having access to experts just a click away. Since I have a background in business, I can see this as a “huge” advantage.

[Charley Norkus]

While selling software at SAS, we used Placeware (then NetMeeting) and Webex to hold virtual meetings and to virtually demonstrate the software product to school tech committees and faculties. We had the option of uploading PowerPoints to share, and/or we could go directly online during the meeing. I usually chose to go directly online so to better demonstrate how our potential customers would be able to do the same thing. Things generally went well; if problems were encountered, it was usually on the customers' end, e.g., not having good speakers so the audience could hear my voice. Since I could not see my audience, it was sometimes hard to judge my audience's reaction to things I had said or to what they were seeing. It worked best, when there were perhaps 100 teachers listening to my presentation over an amplified speaker phone, to have the on-site moderator sitting close to the speaker so that he/she could relay questions to me or so I could bounce ideas off of him/ her. It was not the same as being there in person, but then again, it was nice not having to travel to make the presentation.