Author Archives: Janine Lim

Coordinator Demographics From My Study Part 1

This post is part of a series inviting discussion, comments and reflection on the results of my dissertation.

In this set of posts on my research, we are examining who actually took the survey. Some of the coordinator demographics are shared in this post. Do these demographics include someone like you?

Gender (in percent)

Coordinator Demographics: Gender

Age

By the way, how do you like to see this type of data? I like the frequency graph because it gives you a feel for the spread as opposed to the traditional range & mean as reported in my dissertation.

Coordinator Demographics: Age

Years in Education

Coordinator Demographics: Years in Education

Years Experience with Videoconferencing

Coordinator Demographics: Years Experience with Videoconferencing

Ethnicity

Are VC Coordinators really not very diverse? Why is that?

Coordinator Demographics: Ethnicity

Highest Level of Education

Coordinator Demographics: Level of Education

Your Turn: What do you think?

  • Do you see yourself represented in this study? If not, what is missing? Please comment!
  • Do any questions arise as you see these demographics? What do you wonder about?
  • Why do you think there are way more female VC coordinators than male?
  • What type of position or job title do you think is represented by the different levels of education?
  • Do you think the coordinators in the study, as described here, are representative of who is using videoconferencing in the curriculum? If not, why not? Remember, the demographic information helps us know if the results are representataive/generalizable/applicable in other situations.

School Demographics from My Study

This post is part of a series inviting discussion, comments and reflection on the results of my dissertation.

In the next set of posts on my research, we’ll look at who actually took the survey. Today, let’s review the demographics of the schools where the videoconference coordinators work. Is a school like yours represented in the study? That is one way to assess the results and determine if the results are applicable to your school.

277 Survey Responses

310 participants in eight countries and 33 U.S. states originally responded to the survey. However, 33 of these did not give enough information to create a complete utilization score; therefore the final number of participants in this study was 277 in six countries and 31 U.S. states.

School Level

Question: Select your school level.

School Demographics: School Level

Ethnic Makeup

Question: Indicate the ethnic makeup of the school. The percents are shown.

School Demographics: Ethnic Makeup

# of Teachers (Size of School)

School Demographics: Number of Teachers

City Population

School Demographics: Population of the City

National School Lunch Plan (NSLP) Score

Question: Do you know the National School Lunch Program score for your school? yes / no. If yes, please enter the NSLP score or your best guess.

One hundred nine participants (39.4%) knew the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) score for their school and a few more were willing to enter their best guess. So 124 participants gave the NSLP score for their school.

The NSLP score is often used as a measure of poverty and is the percent of students receiving free and reduced-cost lunches.

School Demographics: NSLP

Your Turn

Do you see your school(s) represented in this study? If not, what is missing? Please comment!

Do any questions arise as you see these results? What do you wonder about?

Do you think the schools in the study, as described here, are representative of who is using videoconferencing in the curriculum? If not, why not?

I really do want to know what you think! One of the weaknesses of my study is that I don’t know exactly who is on the listservs for videoconferencing. How do I know that those who answered my survey are representative of the population (the people on the listservs)? This matters because the results of a study can only be generalized (applied) to a population similar to those who participated in the study. So what do you think? Is this sample (the people who responded) representative of the population of videoconference coordinators?

Measuring Utilization of Curriculum Videoconferencing

This post is part of a series inviting discussion, comments and reflection on the results of my dissertation.

How would you measure the use of curriculum videoconferencing? In my research, I examined specifically the videoconference coordinator and their role in the implementation of videoconferencing. I compared factors such as school and coordinator demographics with the school’s use of videoconferencing. But to do any comparisons, first I had to define utilization. How would you define it?

Three Components of Utilization

I added together three numbers to calculate utilization:

  • Total videoconference events (professional development, meetings, and student events, excluding daily courses) divided by the number of students times 100 to get a whole number.
    (Total events / #students * 100)
  • Total student events (projects, collaborations, content providers, etc; excluding daily courses) divided by the number of students times 100 to get a whole number.
    (Student events / #students * 100)
  • Percent of teachers using videoconferencing.
    (#Teachers who used VC / total#teachers)

I didn’t want to count daily shared classes, because I was specifically researching using videoconferencing in the curriculum as opposed to a method of delivering curriculum.

I divided by the number of students to more fairly compare number of events across various sized schools.

Results of Total Events

  • Total events ranged from0 to 60 with a mean of 4.
  • Student events ranged from 0 to 67 with a mean of 4.
  • Percentage of teachers using videoconferencing ranged from 0 to 100% with a mean of 26%.
  • The three added together ranged from 0 to 180 with a mean of 35.

Your Turn
Using this formula, calculate your school’s use of videoconferencing last year. How are you doing in comparison with the average? In comparison with the highest use schools? Do you have any guesses (hypotheses) about schools that use it more?

Please comment. How would (or do) you define and measure the use of videoconferencing?

Research Tips: What Worked for Me

In preparing to defend my dissertation in July, I collected several notes in case others asked me what went well, or what advice I might have for others. I thought I’d share them here in case they are useful to others.

  1. Read a dissertation in your intended field as soon as you can. A month before I started the Leadership PhD I found one of the key dissertations that I quoted throughout my study. It was very helpful to see how the dissertation was put together, to get a map for what was ahead.
  2. Create a research journal. My research journal at first contained my search methods for finding articles and dissertations on my topics. During my statistics classes I recorded questions and thoughts about my own research ideas. During the writing stage, I recorded notes, questions, learning from talking with my committee members, and lists of things to fix in my dissertation. It ended up about 30 pages long, full of notes & ideas.
  3. Email Summaries. Another useful practice was my email summaries. Soon after I talked to a committee member, usually within an hour, I wrote a list of things I learned and things to change. This helped me rephrase my learning, “catch it out of the air” and nail it down to words that I could re-read later. Some of the statistical procedures and knowledge I would have immediately forgotten if I hadn’t written it down. My committee members also found this habit very helpful as they also had a record of my understanding of what was said. They corrected me as needed.
  4. Adapt to your advisor. I thought at first that I wanted to work via email because I want to be able to read things over & over. Yet one committee member wanted to work via phone. I found that adapting to this method was wise because of the give & take that occurred in real time.
  5. Ask questions. If you don’t understand something, don’t just say “uh, huh.” Ask! Clarify. Check for understanding. It’s your own learning! Take control of it!
  6. Take the initiative. After getting feedback on one set of multiple regression analysis, I did all the rest of them. I didn’t wait to be told to do the next analysis. Playing with my data helped me know it better, even when I had to redo analyzes.
  7. Know your data well enough to find errors. Several times I found odd results that didn’t look right. Upon further examination they weren’t right! Understanding your data and the analysis makes it much easier to reflect on the results and implications.
  8. Psych yourself up to spend time on formatting. The formatting will take longer than you expect and can get annoying. Just psych yourself up to know it’s going to be a pain and slog through it! It’s part of the process and makes for a clean nice looking document when you’re done.

What tips do you have for doctoral students writing a dissertation? Feel free to comment and share!

Blogging My Dissertation

Do you remember way back in the spring of 2008? Many of you assisted my research by completing my survey for VC coordinators. Well, now I have finally defended my dissertation, and am ready to share the results and discuss them with you!

Why This Research?

I wanted to study the role of the videoconference coordinator in the school and the factors that might affect their ability to support videoconferencing. I wanted to compare these factors with the school’s use of videoconferencing – how much they were using videoconferencing.

Read the Research

If you are sucker for punishment, you can read my dissertation here.

If you’re interested but don’t have time for the whole thing: read chapter 2 for a review of the literature on curriculum videoconferencing; read chapter 5 for the application of the results.

Discussing the Research

What I really want to do though, is take the results piece by piece, and discuss them with you. See if you agree with the results. If they are similar to what you see in your area. If you have similar opinions on what is important in the use of curriculum videoconferencing in schools. So I invite you to join the conversation. We’ll take it slow and this might drag on for a month or so. I’ll slip in other posts here and there so you don’t get too bored! But please join the conversation! I’ve been anxious to share with you!

Thank you!

Let me say again a big thank you to every single one of you who completed my survey and encouraged your VC coordinators to complete it. I couldn’t have done it without you!

Goals for 2009-2010

Lori inspired me with her blog post with goals for 2009-2010. So I thought I’d share mine.

School hasn’t started for us yet. In Michigan, by law, due to economic reasons, we don’t start school till the Tuesday after Labor Day. So I still have a few days of planning left! In addition, my schools are busy prepping for MEAP in October, so the videoconference schedule won’t get really busy til Monster Match the last week of October. That gives me time for planning. I also front load my school year with professional development.

So, here are my goals for 2009-2010:

  • More meetings via videoconferencing. This is being encouraged by the organization, so I need to be ready to help make this happen.
  • Systematize and streamline my projects. The discussion on work flow helped me a lot; and I’m very pleased with how my project wikis are turning out so far.
  • Work with low-use schools. For the last three years I’ve been focused on my RUS grant schools. Now I want to work with those who haven’t been using their systems as much and weren’t part of the grant.
  • More people in CAPspace. This is the year I want to get all my VC coordinators and active VC teachers in CAPspace. They can arrange their own VC projects and holler when they get stuck!
  • High School English. I have 4 high school English teachers from 3 districts who really want to VC. I plan to do two projects for them this year in Feb & April.
  • Blog my research. I still have a few more series on videoconferencing research to share with you!

Now it’s your turn! What are your goals? Post them on your blog, or if you want, post as comments here. What do you hope to accomplish with videoconferencing in your area this school year?

Still Thinking about VC in the Classroom, Skype etc.

The saga/conversation/thinking continues…..

Mirial: Desktop H323 VC from Italy

This morning I downloaded Mirial, a 30 day trial version, (recommended on a comment yesterday) and got excited about the possibilities of getting VC in our “21st century classrooms” around the county. We have several teachers with “tricked out classrooms” who also love VC but want it in their classroom. I haven’t tested too much yet, but so far:

  • The download and install was easy.
  • I didn’t have to make any network or firewall changes and it worked. But I can only dial out (so far).
  • It’s 165 euros which seems to be about $250 US. Now how to buy it?
  • It registered to my GK, and can do H.239.
  • It connected fine to my Polycom endpoints and my Tandberg bridge.
  • It doesn’t work with a firewire camcorder on the Mac yet (bummer).

I’m seriously thinking of getting a classroom to try this out for a year….

Teacher: H323 is better than Skype

Then this afternoon, in a collaborations workshop for Tech Camp, I had a teacher who has Skype and has connected to Mexico. But she says “this is way better” pointing to our VSX7000 set up. She doesn’t have access in her building, but plans to bus the kids here to participate in VCs!!!

So there’s another perspective to compare to yesterday’s.

Bottom line as a VC coordinator for my schools, I need to be able to have a variety of solutions to meet their needs!

Skype from a Teacher's Point of View

Today I got an email from a teacher in local school that doesn’t have VC (H323) equipment in his school. The teacher explained why he plans to use Skype instead:

I received my classroom upgrade and I have a [laptop] and [interactive whiteboard] which does allow me to utilize Skype for videoconferencing.  I will likely go that route this year because there are some opportunities from sites like Skype in Schools and Skype An Author.  [Tech name deleted] is so swamped in our district just trying to do tech support, it makes it hard for teachers to set up special projects that require extra hook-ups and equipment.

Now, how can I pull this teacher into doing all the programs we offer? I thought of Polycom PVX, but he has a Mac. I’ve played with XMeeting for the Mac, but I think it might be too annoying and unreliable. If I could get low cost software on that computer that is connected to the [interactive whiteboard], we could be up & running for all the other content available via H323 as well as the Skype content.

Intriguingly, a superintendent asked me for this a year ago – see my VC in every classroom post.

Videoconferencing as a way to enrich the curriculum will never be mainstream until teachers can innovate and implement easily on their own like they do with Web 2.0 tools. It has to be super easy and not require much, if any, tech support. Teachers ask, “Does it have to be formal and complicated?” It’s a good question and we have to keep working towards making it way easier.

We need something very low cost that has no peripherals and extras, no complicated and unreliable H.239, etc. and can be installed on the computer that is hooked to the interactive whiteboard. Who will make it????

What do you think? Am I off base here? Please comment!

Calling Other MCU Conference Rooms

One of the conundrums of my videoconferencing life is how to make calls work with weird dialing. Since 60% of my calls are with schools across the country (off my network with various dialing policies of their own), I run into these a lot.  Please, please, please vendors, when will it work like a phone?!

Yesterday I received additional training on TMS from SKC. We spent pretty much two hours trying to figure out how to make TMS in conjunction with my Tandberg MPS 800 dial conferences on other MCUs that are off my network. Since the results are obscure and undocumented, I thought it would be helpful to share. This was tested with TMS J12.2 and the MPS J4.5.

Codian:

Create a Participant Template. Enter the MCU IP as normal. In the DTMF box, enter the extension this way:
,,,numbers#

Polycom MGC:

Create a Participant Template. Enter the MCU IP as normal. In the DTMF box, enter the extension this way:

,,,,,number,,number,,number,,#

(Apparently the numbers come too fast for the MGC. The commas slow it down.)

Polycom RMX

Create a Participant Template. Enter the MCU IP as normal. In the DTMF box, enter the extension this way:

,,,numbers#

Tandberg MPS

This needs the alias@IP format, however you can’t enter this in the participant template. If you put the alias@IP in the IP field, it strips out the @IP.

So, instead, use the phone book to enter alias@IP.

This solution works for a Tandberg endpoint behind a Border Controller as well.

Your Turn: If you have additional tips for making MCUs dial conferences and extensions on other equipment outside your network, please comment!!

Future of VC in Schools

Today I’m pulling another comment out to make it a full post. This one is by Craig Mollerstuen from GCI, Alaska. Craig has been involved in VC for as long as I can remember, champions educational use in Alaska, and has served the NECC sessions with VC support for several years. He commented on my question, “what do you see as the future of VC in schools?” Here’s the full comment:

There are lots of different ways to look at this, from community, technology, equipment, pedagogy and other perspectives.

1) Community: Individuals vs. Groups

Skype isn’t optimized for groups where H.323 systems have been. One can connect a good camera (firewire camcorder) and echo canceling speaker/microphones (Phoenix Duet, etc.). But that have very low usability compared to an integrated appliance with high quality, pan/tilt/zoom cameras and good quality microphones with echo canceling built in.  Group ease of use goes to the incumbents.

Individual ease of use goes to Skype (and other desktop solutions.) This is because of the H.323 protocol. It is easy to make a high quality H.323 application (for Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.) but the protocol sucks. It dies across firewalls.

Individuals are also looking for low bandwidth and high quality solutions as they are often “on the move.” Such solutions typically use adaptive encoding which H.323 doesn’t (easily) support.

For groups we accept high bandwidth requirements because we want significantly higher resolution (larger rooms) and we can typically afford to put more bandwidth into a limited number of fixed locations.

2) Protocols – Standard vs. Proprietary

In general, schools would do well to use VC equipment that supports open standards. Standards eventually lead to wider adoption, greater choice and lower cost. However it takes FOREVER for standards to develop and often we can’t (or don’t want to) wait.

Because of it’s reliance on proprietary protocols, there has been many fewer devices that support Skype. And it is hard to find a Skype MCU.

3) Point-to-point vs. Multi-point

We need to be able to do both point-to-point and multi-site conferences. Solutions that are only point-to-point don’t provide sufficient flexibility for education.

Multi-point conferencing needs to be easy to use. Today’s audio conferencing is a good model, dial a number, enter a code and you’re in the conference.

4) Pedagogy – Video conferencing vs. Web conferencing.

This isn’t really pedagogy, but I’m using the term to describe the gulf between “on-line” conferencing and “video” conferencing today.  We need video conferencing to support some of the really great tools that are available in “on-line”/web conferencing environments (chat, polls, forums, breakout rooms, etc.)

And “on-line” environments need to support better and higher quality audio and video, more video and audio streams and group environments.

So… What is the future of live Conferencing in education?

Long term, I can foresee technology that supports the gamut of teachers and teaching styles, learners and learning styles and content types.

Eventually we will have a conferencing protocol that will replace H.323, SIP, Skype and the rest. It will support multiple audio, text, video and content streams from each endpoint.

We’ll see conference servers that support the new protocol (and that can transcode the old protocols) and support a variety of endpoints (analog, wireless, audio, digital, video, room, desktop, appliance, etc.)

Care will have been given to the user interface, ease of use and to pedagogy. We’ll be able to have multiple PTZ cameras in the classroom, audio mics for teachers and students, content from multiple sources (computers, lab equipment, off-net, etc.) so that we don’t have to limit what we are sharing from the “classroom”.  (Develop an open API so that people can develop content widgets.)

Responsible learners will be given the flexibility to choose the streams that they want to view and hear. Learners who need more direction can be given fewer choices and more structure.

And we’ll get all this in a low cost, easy to use, high bandwidth environment with good professional development.

In the near term, we need:

  1. open standards and protocols
  2. conferencing that adapts to low and high bandwidth environments
  3. transport that traverses the net as easily as HTTP
  4. professional quality equipment for content providers, appliances for theatres, classrooms and desktops and software that runs on our computers (fixed and mobile) as endpoints.
  5. We need academics to study and solve the technology problems
  6. We need practitioners to study and solve the practice problems
  7. We need industry to build high quality and low cost solutions

Products like Elluminate, Mirial and Vidyo are good “next steps”. There is still lots and lots of room for improvement and advancement.

Cheers, -Craig-