synchronous real-time platforms for distance education

Evaluating synchronous/real-time platforms for distance education

by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com, www.samizdat.com

The following article is based on chat sessions held in May 2001 (see www.samizdat.com/chat.html) and research done for the Otter Group www.ottergroup.com.

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Increasingly, people who could benefit from online courses have ever more powerful PCs and ever faster connections to the Internet. At the same time, suppliers of software and services for distance education are providing platforms better suited for education, and easier for both instructors and students to use.

The earliest distance education programs over the Internet depended largely on email and asynchronous communication tools -- like forums or bulletin-boards, which allowed people to connect to read or post whenever was convenient for them. This capability is important for serving people with busy schedules, who are located in many different time zones.

Synchronous/real-time chat was mainly used for informal communication, and, in particular, for "office hours", as a way to encourage and enhance interaction among students and with the professor.

Now, platforms using voice -- either over the Internet or in parallel by ordinary telephone -- can make it possible to provide rich, interactive synchronous, real-time experiences, where everyone connects simultaneously and interacts immediately. that feel "natural" to non-technical participants. And the contents of these sessions (including text, audio, and graphics/slides) can be saved and posted on the Web for later review, for the benefit of students who couldn't show up live, and also for possible packaging on CD/DVD.

When both voice and text are available, voice dominates -- that's where all the action is. People won't use text -- even though text is better for searching, saving, and editing.

Hence, you should use voice-powered real-time platforms for high-energy, high-impact, for experiences that benefit greatly from interactivity between teacher and students and among students, not for tasks that could be performed at other times and in other ways. And maintain asynchronous discussion platforms as a place to post documents to be read by the entire class, and for students to post their work and comment on one another's work as well as class topics and activities. Course designers and deliverers face the challenge of balancing these very different capabilities to optimize the learning experience of a diverse and widely dispersed student audience.

At the high end, auditorium-style platforms allow hundreds, even thousands of students to attend simultaneously, mimicking a lecture hall experience, but with everyone having a clear view of what is being shown, and with clear sound, and with opportunities to "raise you hand" and ask questions, either directly to the professor or to assistants who are also available online. Some also offer virtual break-out rooms, where smaller groups of students can meet to work together on projects that they then report out to the larger group in the auditorium. Other platforms, with similar capabilities, are designed for more intimate classes with a dozen or two students.

When shopping for such a platform, don't presume that it needs to include every feature on your wishlist. Simple alternatives may fill in the gaps very well.

For example, if the platform you prefer is weak in terms of storing audio archives, good inexpensive software (like Total Recorder from High Criteria, www.highcriteria.com) can record any audio from any platform using a PC, and you then can post the audio file on the Web for anyone to hear later.

Also, don't give too much weight to software features that enable you to forcibly control the discussion. For groups as large as two to three dozen people, protocol (rules of procedure that you establish) works fine for managing the discussion. In running chat sessions at PalTalk, a free voice chat platform, we did not need to use the handy force-style admin tools (whereby the administrator can shut off and turn on microphones). Rather, everyone who wanted to speak clicked on the Request Speak button, which generates a raised hand icon, and waited politely until called upon.

Business considerations

While the needs of distance education and business collaboration/events/training sometimes overlap, their goals are quite different, and hence the business models and pricing for synchronous platforms should also be different. Unfortunately, the vendors often don't make that distinction, and hence while their capabilities may be great, the packages they offer may simply not make sense for distance education.

For instance:

Unlike businesses, colleges may want to use the platform as part of their offerings, not as the whole thing.
Colleges will want to handle their own registration, etc.
Pricing should be not by the event or the "seat" or minutes per user, but rather on a flat-rate basis by quarter and semester and year. If the meter is ticking, course designers, teachers, and students won't take full advantage of the capabilities.) With a flat rate, they will experiment with new uses, leading to greater interaction among students and between students and instructors. The more interaction the better.
The customer should be able to pick the maximum number of participants and later adjust that number based on actual usage, not be stuck with a pre-determined number.
The platform should include text chat, voice chat, ability to use either and both voice over IP and telephone, co-browsing, and white board/presentation space. It should also make it easy to archive and replay the entire experience.
The platform should not include capabilities which are expensive, resource intensive, and not really necessary for the classroom experience. That includes private voice chat, webcom, and application sharing -- capabilities that increase costs and also increase the risk of user connection problems.
Ideally, the text chat portion should include threading of discussions and automatic archiving. Macintosh support. Macs are far more important in education than in business.

Observations and recommendations regarding auditorium sessions

The technology is just a tool. Learning doesn't happen automatically -- it takes work. And in this environment the "work" involves activities that the students may at first not be familiar with. Often the "devil is in the details." The platform may be powerful and effective in theory. But to implement it properly, you need to set rules for student and teacher activities, you need to provide detailed advice, and set appropriate expectations.

For example:

In auditorium sessions, you should encourage students to turn off their screensavers for the duration of the session. For the most part, they will be passively watching and listening and the screensaver could continually interrupt their experience.
International phone calls are expensive. Hence, ironically, the people who are most likely to have time delays and other difficulties with voice over IP and streaming audio are the very ones who will have to use it.
You need to offer both voice over IP/streaming audio and telephone. Telephone provides the best sound quality and the best reliability, but people who dial in to the Internet and have only one phone line cannot use the Internet and the phone at the same time.
You need to be able to record voice over telephone as well as over IP, and you need to be able to easily archive all elements in sync, for easy replay of the full presentation from archive.
People with voice over IP/streaming audio need to be able to hear all that is said on the telephone conference call, not just what the professor says.
Recommended protocol for auditorium sessions -- The professor speaks (one-way), and one or more assistants monitor the text chat area and answer questions and respond to comments there, perhaps bringing some to the attention of the professor during question-and-answer periods. Also, several pre-selected students (who have submitted particularly interesting questions in advance) are also available on phone and can be called upon by the professor to ask those questions verbally, for the professor to respond to verbally. (There should be competition for this honor -- rather than wasting time begging for questions or trying to formulate answers on the fly to good but very complex questions during the live presentation).
The professor should have a live face-to-face audience, to make the presentation as natural as possible. The audience may consist of just one or two people. But it is important that the speaker see and respond to the facial expressions, gestures, and body language of this audience, rather than just talking into a microphone in an empty studio. That will encourage the professor to speak naturally and interestingly -- to maintain high energy and contagious enthuasiasm.

Other strong candidates

WebEx, www.webex.com

The WebEx Onstage service can handle 1000 people. It works with Macintosh as well as PCs. It allows:

"presentation sharing" (any user can share any presentation without uploading the file to a server)
"document sharing" -- users can jointly view any document or graphic, with zooming and annotation
application sharing
web page sharing/co-browsing
"desktop sharing" (presenters can share anything on their desktops)
integrated polling (preloaded or created on the fly)
handraising
text chat

But this service seems designed and priced for business meetings and business training, as opposed to distance learning (though they do offer education discounts and have education customers.

At this point, they have no voice over IP. Everyone has to connect by phone. (Their voice over IP provider, Lipstream, went under). They claim that they will have voice over IP in a couple months. But even then, they will not be able to mix and match -- you would have to go either all voice over IP or all phone.
Their support people recommend that you use the phone exclusively -- "voice over IP doesn't really work well." Also, their voice over IP application will be proprietary software of their own, for which you will need their plug-in.

There is no simple way to archive an entire session. They save the polls and the chat text and the slides (but in a proprietary format of theirs which resembles pdf, they say.) But audio would have to be recorded by the customer. While it is possible to put together complete synchronized archives, it's complex to do so (in contrast to HorizonLive, which makes that easy.)

They have very limited polling functionality, and the polling data, using a proprietary format, cannot be exported for use in another polling app. Also, they have no breakout rooms and only very limited Macintosh functionality.

This platform appears to be designed and priced for business, not really for distance ed. (So far, they have no college-level customers to point to as examples.) Their very expensive pricing is based on per user, per minute (now either 35 cents/minute/user or $200/concurrent user/month).

They have many features, but most appear to be unnecessary for distance education, just adding to complexity and cost.

Centra, www.centra.com (Symposium product)

Centra sounds much better in the marketing descriptions than it looks and feels in demos.

It doesn't work with Netscape (at least not my Communicator 4.75). In demos, the voice cuts in and out. The text chat is not immediately evident -- you have to click on Tools in the tool bar to get into it, and then it opens a separate window that obscures the regular presentation until you resize your windows. And the text chat is barebones, with no threading.

The marketing material indicates that the maximum audience size is 250. But there are probably ways to work around that (e.g., two rooms simultaneously delivering the same presentation).

They offer voice over IP only. You'd have to set up with another provider for telephone.

Strengths:
· breakout rooms
· polling (but with delays -- the results don't appear until the presenter gives the okay)
· whiteboard
· handraising
· professor can selectively allow particular students to speak (with microphone, voice over IP)
· Web pages sharing/co-browsing
· purportedly firewall friendly

You can run it on their hosted service or buy their server and run it yourself.

Evoke, www.raindance.com (they just changed their name and URL to Raindance)

Evoke is very telephone-oriented. Normally, you meet in a teleconferencing room. The telephone voice is normally two-way, but the administrator can mute all others and unmute individuals. Individuals can also unmute themselves if they know the command. They also offer streaming (one-way) audio.

Strengths:
· works with Macs as well as PCs
· purportedly firewall friendly
· works with both Netscape and IE
· 24X7 support by toll-free number
· presentations stored, with voice synchronized with other content, but they charge for every time a student accesses the presentation (you don't "own" it to put it to other uses, as is possible with HorizonLive)
· text chat

Limitations:
· normal limits are 96 people over the phone and up to 2000 over the Internet, but with advance notice they can hook bridges together
· polling, but only in their "collaboration" product, which requires everyone to be on the telephone (no streaming audio)
· very expensive pricing (per user, per minute)
· students can submit questions by text chat, but only the moderator sees them, unless the moderator elects to "publish" them

Placeware, www.placeware.com

Placeware seems better suited for corporate events than for distance education.
The system requirements are on the high end: 166 Mhz Pentium-based Windows or Sun SPARCstation. No Macintosh. The audience needs 64 MB RAM, and the presenter needs 128 MB. The audience also needs a 56K modem, or faster. And presenters need PowerPoint 97 (2000 recommended).

Strengths:
· works with both IE and Netscape
· auditorium can hold up to 2500 attendees
· on-the-fly polling
· archival of presentations with visual and audio content synchronized
· lots of features
· both phone and Internet for audio
· no plug-ins or new software required
· powerpoint presentations
· purportedly firewall friendly
· the color-coded audience feedback
· the text submission of questions (separate from chat)
· wide range of annotation options for the presenter
· wide range of additional services available a la carte

Limitations:
· Many people in your target audience probably don't have the latest and greatest equipment.
· They do not "formally" support Macintosh
· High per-seat, corporate-style pricing (probably negotiable)
· the archive is custom-made (typically with a week delay)
· no voice over IP (just streaming audio and phone)
· none of the chat content (even that done "publicly" to an entire row) is saved

NB -- several vendors (Hewlett-Packard, Knowledgenet, and Click2Learn) are developing distance education platforms based on Placeware.

HP Virtual Classroom http://e-learning.hp.com/store/classroom.asp

This hosted solution is "built on PlaceWare's PlaceServer engine." The specs are very different than Placeware's. Users need just 28.8 modem (instead of 56K), and it is only "scalable" up to 500 users (instead of 2500).

Strengths:
· handraising
· online polling
· private chats
· question management
· whiteboard
· web page sharing/co-browsing

This might be a viable option, but there are no demos of archived presentations, and there is no simple way to get a live demo. (The pricing is steep -- per user per hour).

Additional players

Webtrain www.webtrain.com offers an environment that is similar to HorizonLive, but without archiving and without phone (just voice over IP). This platform is intended for small classes and is not appropriate for auditorium style, but it does offer high quality voice and white board. They charge $2/student-hour for their classroom platform. For a guided tour/demo, go to www.webtrain.com/webtrain/webtrain.asp and click on "join Kevin" during business hours.

Epiclearning www.epiclearning.com offers:
· polling
· white board with annotation
· PowerPoint presentations
· two-way voice over IP and telephone conference call
· text chat
Their classroom size is limited to 200, there might be some way to work around that).

Educata from Catatech.com www.catatech.com offers many useful features, but no polling. They have voice over IP, but not phone. They require a high-end PC (Pentium 166 MHz is the minimum; 200 MHz recommended), and do not support Macintosh. Students need to install a 250K plugin. Their Web site does not indicate the limit on the number of students, but their support people indicate that there is no upper limit -- that they can accommodate "hundreds". They do archive the sessions, but not the audio portion -- and since the professor's presentation will be largely audio, you would need to find another way to record the audio and then put the pieces together so they are synchronized for later playback.

According to the marketing descriptions, Interwise www.interwise.com has many useful features. But it's simply too complex for students to get set up to use it. You have to download and install a 3.6 Meg program. And you even need Acrobat to view the installation instructions. I gave up after half an hour of trying to connect to their live demo.

The Web site for LearnLinc www.learnlinc.com is overloaded with marketing hype and facts are hard to find. The canned demo has no sound, though the service includes voice over IP and streaming audio. You would need to schedule a live demo to properly evaluate this platform.

Keep an eye on for the future --

Cisco's Collaboration Server apparently derives from their recent acquisition of Webline Communications. At this point it seems like an erector set -- much is possible, but it needs to be customized. Apigent Solutionswww.apigent.com is one company that is in the process of customizing it with the idea of using it to host distance ed applications.

Observations and recommendations regarding real-time chat for office hours

Most distance education platform providers bundle realtime chat with asynchronous discussion and other course elements as part of total "solutions". You would probably need to make special arrangements to use the chat alone, without paying for all the other services they provide and which you do not need. And most of these chat applications are barebones, with no threading and no ability to save the content.

Also, it is important to minimize the number of different tools/applications students need to become familiar with. Hence it would be best if you could use the same application for both real-time office hours chat and asynchronous forum-style discussion; or use the same application for office hours chat and for auditorium-style sessions. Less is more.

When selecting a chat platform for office hours, keep in mind:

You need to provide an experience that matches student expectations in terms of quality of presentation. Students should intuitively grasp what they can do and how to do it, and should be able to express themselves naturally (in voice or text, as they choose).
When both voice and text are available, voice dominates -- that's where all the action is. It's far faster and easier to talk than to type. Text makes threading possible, and once saved can be edited and integrated with other content and searched. If only a subset of the group will be able to connect live, then text chat is best, with threaded transcripts automatically saved, and related asynchronous discussion. If, however, nearly everyone will be able to connect live, then voice is probably best -- simple, powerful, and natural.
Real-time discussion requires that everyone be connected at the same time. This presents serious scheduling problems with a participants in different time zones, with some students preferring to connect during work hours and others wanting to connect from home, etc. Hence it would be best to offer a wide range of times for real-time discussion sessions, and let students self-select the work groups they want to be in based on the times. They also should have the option to connect to a different group if circumstances occasionally prohibit them from connecting to the one they originally signed up for.
Hold practice get-acquainted sessions prior to actual course sessions to give everyone an opportunity to get familiar with the platform. For each such session, give at least three students the assignment of introducing themselves and providing a description of their work and what they hope to get out of the course. Others can be requested to do likewise on an ad hoc basis, but you want to be sure to have people prepared with significant content when the session begins.
Limit real-time discussion sessions to an hour, and stick to it. That encourages everyone to connect at the start time, and no one has to feel guilty about going back to work or moving on to other commitments when the hour ends.
Whenever possible, manage by protocol (simple and clear rules for participants to follow) rather than depending on software-based management tools (even when such tools exist). In other words, it is better to ask people to "raise hands" when they want to talk and for them to wait to be called upon, rather than forcibly shutting them off until permitted to speak by the administrator.
For office-hours chat, give priority to and strongly encourage (with recognition) pre-submission of questions and comments. If there are assignments in the course, pre-assign selected students to make presentations/statements in office hours chat. In other words, do everything possible to make sure that at least a handful of students come fully prepared to speak up, and to make sure the professor or teaching assistant has some opportunity to ponder and prepare answers before the session.
With text chat, anticipate some dead-time, especially in early sessions when students don't know what to expect and may be inclined to lurk rather than speak up, and because it takes time for the professor/instructor to compose answers, and because it takes time for students to read the long, complex answers of the professor. Encourage the professor to enter relatively short answers -- posting a series of short ones in answer to a single question, rather than a single very long one. Better still, use voice chat and those delays go away.
Voice chat is particularly important for people for whom English is not their native language. It is far easier to speak than to type in a foreign language.

Other options:

WebCT www.webct.com includes a barebones chat as part of its packaged education solution. Their main strength is asynchronous discussion and organization of related educational materials. Chat is an afterthought. The chat is recorded, but only the instructor can see the records, which are not portable. It's doubtful if you could use their chat capabilities without signing on for their full package.

Delphi www.delphi.com offers free forums and chat rooms. But their java-based chat is not savable and is not archived.

There are many free public chat services (at Yahoo, Excite, etc.), but they either use java or IRC for chat, which means it is difficult if not impossible to save the transcript.

You also could use Paltalk www.paltalk.com for both voice and text chat. Their text chat is barebones, but savable. Their voice chat is excellent, and easy to manage, but cannot handle Macintosh. The voice could be saved with a separate application (e.g., Total Recorder from High Criteria) and posted at a Web site for future reference. Paltalk is far more complicated to get setup than HorizonLive. You have to download and install software. It runs as a separate app, not through a browser. And your chat room does not have a URL for quick connection, rather you have to go through a lengthy process to get to the right room. This is, however, quite viable -- even in its free version; and the paid service is incredibly inexpensive. I've tested this platform in my weekly chat sessions. Despite all the barriers we had as many as 32 people participate in a single session, and the great majority were very favorably impressed. For detailed advice on how to take advantage. PalTalk, check my article at www.samizdat.com/pal.html

Alternative solution for telephone:

If you wished to put together a mixed solution (such as Centra plus a phone provider), you should consider the Benjamin Franklin Institute, www.bfranklin.edu for the phone piece. Contact John Hibbs, hibbs@bfranklin.edu. They have a wide range of capabilities at a reasonable price. John indicates that they could easily handle 300 people over the phone. 500 is possible, but they would have to test. If you needed a toll-free number, the cost would be 18 cents per minute. If the students paid for their own calls, the cost would be just 5 cents per minute.

Another choice -- Chatterbox

For info about another, excellent voice conferencing platform see my article at http://www.samizdat.com/chatterbox.html or notes from a recent chat session/demo of Chatterbox at http://www.samizdat.com/chat204.html or listen to the entire hour-long chat session with RealPlayer at http://www.samizdat.com/audio/chatterbox.rm

Please send your comments and related suggestions to seltzer@samizdat.com
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