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Some courses use real-time audio (and
sometimes video) to support conversation among students and
faculty in more than one physical classroom; each room often
has two or more people in it.
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Especially when the communication among
rooms can be turned off and on (e.g., using "push to
talk" microphones), people in each room can confer
without interrupting (or being overheard) by people in
the other rooms. Over the years a number of faculty
members have told me that this ability to confer
silently with one another seems to help students learn
("what did he say?" "do you agree?" etc.); other faculty
worry about students getting off topic and out of
control.
The following examples all involve groups of
people face-to-face who interact with one or more other
face-to-face groups in real time across distance. The
examples also share another characteristic: the quality of
learning for everyone is improved because the groups include
several kinds of students (often their differences relate to
their locations) and because the course was designed to take
advantage of this diversity.
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The late Guy Bensusan of Northern
Arizona University taught courses on the arts of the
Southwest over a statewide interactive video system.
Students scattered across the state could show examples
of art and culture from their own neighborhoods. Many
institutions are populated mainly by students who live
nearby. This use of 2-way video helped bring in a
greater variety of “local” art than would otherwise have
been the case.
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Global
Media Network, headquartered at Ball State
University The video rooms at different universities
around the world are designed so that students and
faculty can pretend they are all sitting around the same
table, talking with one another.
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Leslie Harris, then of Susquehanna
University and now with Bucknell University, paired
English classes in small colleges of different types
(e.g., an English course in an urban college with
another English course taught at the same hour in a
rural college) so that students could debate issues in
chat rooms and in asynchronous discussion lists, helping
them to learn about persuasive writing.
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Gale Young and Terry Jones of Cal State
Hayward wanted to use student diversity to stimulate
higher quality, deeply felt dialogue about race, gender,
and other issues facing society. The problem: individual
California State University campuses often had
relatively homogenous student bodies. The opportunity:
different campuses were homogenous in different ways.
The California State University’s interactive video
system was used to create single courses with students
from more than one campus, a class of students more
diverse than any one campus was likely to attract. It’s
easier to teach the real meaning of racial and class
differences, for example, when students in the course
are of different races and classes.
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Gilberte Furstenburg of MIT runs the
Cultura
Project that helps student in America and France
learn about one another, and one another’s language.
Students study materials in their own language on an
issue of common concern (the idea of individualism in
France and the United States) and then write about the
idea. Students in the other class (country) then read
and reflect on those student writings, along with their
own.
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PO Box
5643,
Takoma Park, Maryland 20913
Phone:
301.270.8312/Fax: 301.270.8110
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To talk about our work
or our organization
contact: Sally Gilbert |
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