|
Hearing and speaking in learning spaces -- this
raises a variety of issues of acoustics which outside the
scope of this web site. Our culture has centuries of
experience with designing theaters and lecture halls with
acoustics that help a speaker at the front of the room be
heard by a large audience, for example. But the use of
computers is often empowering students, so here are a few
thoughts about student talk.
Physical learning spaces: Hearing can
be a problem in large classrooms, especially when students
are speaking. It's worse when computers are making noise,
when the student is soft-spoken or has an accent, when some
students are seated with their backs to the student who is
speaking... Audio quality is especially challenging if
there's a need to transmit or record student voices [click
here for the page on recording class sessions].
Good acoustics isn't always about enabling
hearing. Sometimes the challenge is to prevent students from
hearing one another. Consider, for example, a class of 28
split into four project groups of 7 people each. One group
of seven may have a hard time hearing due to the 'noise'
from the other three tables
Here are some examples of setups that make it
easier to break students into sizeable small groups that can
hear within the group without too much interference from
other groups.
-
The study court immediately outside
classrooms in Virginia Tech's Torgersen Hall [Big
image 1] makes it easy to send some student groups
outside the main room, yet still within sight and
earshot of the classroom door. The hallway, like the
rest of the building, is equipped with wireless, making
it possible for students to talk about the work they're
doing with their laptops.
-
The Evergreen State College is a
long-time user of learning communities; a new classroom
building has small breakout rooms near each large room,
making it easier for classes to split into small groups
where hearing is easy inside each group.
Click here to see a floor plan (and the rest of the
slideshow about the building).
Virtual spaces using audio: Online
interaction provides some capabilities for handling sound
that are more difficult when face to face. For example:
-
With some systems, the learning space can be divided into
working groups; if a group of 30 is divided into 5
groups of 6 people each, the 6 people in that group can
then only hear one another. After the groups have been
recombined, each person can once again be heard by all
29 others. (During working group sessions, the
participants also share a whiteboard, chat area, and
applications).
-
Individuals can adjust their own volume
when listening to talk, music, foreign language
instruction
-
Chat windows provide a way for people to
provide running commentary about the audio that others
are hearing (e.g., music) while not 'talking over it.'
-
Simulated worlds such as "Second Life"
provide a sense of social presence as well, combining
some of the virtues of physical and online classrooms.
This
illustrated description of a discussion about music in
Second Life illustrates some of these possibilities;
it was written by Joe Sanchez, University of Texas,
Austin, for EDUCAUSE Connect. [For more about Second
Life and evaluation of educational programs in simulated
worlds, see
this
chapter of the Flashlight Evaluation Handbook.]
However, Internet audio also has a
downside. There can be gaps of several seconds in the
audio. No words are lost during the silence, but, if the
gap is too long, the pitch and speed of the speaker's
voice will increase as the system makes up for the lost
time.
-
Another possible issue: at The TLT Group,
we've been seeing what may be a decline in the
reliability of audio over the Internet in 2004. We've
begun using conference calls as a backup so that, if a
user experiences a breakdown in Internet audio for
discussion, they can call an 800 number and continue
participating in the discussion. If you'd like to know
how we do that (and it wasn't easy), contact
online@tltgroup.org.
Virtual using text chat: In chat
rooms, "speaking" requires typing; Jenny Niven of Robert
Gordon University (Scotland) points out that online chat can
be a bit easier if the software tells the reader that
someone else is currently typing a message; I've had that
experience, too, but not all chat room software provides
that information.
|
