Audiographic Teleconferencing Project: An Evaluation

Coordinators also identified several "human" problems.

• For one, booking a common time at all six sites in her area was difficult because the equipment is so heavily used.
• This person also thought the number of participants was overwhelming. She suggested starting with a smaller group first and building up to this larger size.
• Three coordinators thought that one of the instructors was not familiar with the equipment. One said, "One presenter did not handle the technology well and this made a difference. My learners felt frustrated and short changed." She pointed out that the style in this type of presentation is very different than in a face-to-face. Another said, "A presenter must be good at doing this -energetic and experienced with distance education." More practice for the instructors was suggested as the solution.
• One person mentioned background noises, such as people moving about and papers being shuffled, as interfering with the learners' ability to hear.
• One coordinator received a disk of the slides which turned out to be blank. The replacement disk did not work either. So, she ended up using the handouts in place of the slides.

Tutor-learners identify problems

When tutor-learners were asked, How easy did you find the technology to use, their responses were as follows:

A range of problems was identified. Technical problems included static, audio problems such as voices cutting out, legibility and technique of the writing pad, and the slides not being "teed up" to the instructor's speech. "It was tough to interact due to technical problems which took away from the content." In addition there were problems associated with the complexity of the technology or with users being unfamiliar with it. "It's hard to concentrate on all things at once: the presenter's voice, the telewriter, the microphone, notes and other participants." "With so many locations, sometimes things got bogged down."

Both instructors had found the technology reasonably easy to use. There were a few glitches - including one in which the instructor's software was incompatible with that at the sites, resulting in sites not being able to use the telewriter.