Pitfalls, Perils, and Profound Pleasures of Live E-Learning

Room size: Evidently, size does matter, at least as far as communications technology is concerned. Early in the semester, we found Wimba works better with a small group as opposed to a group of 12–20 participants. Although we were unable to definitively determine the optimal number of students, all features experienced smaller delays in VoIP when communicating in smaller groups. If you are the type of online instructor who consistently uses polling, “pop” quizzes, “raising hands,” etc., as a form of interactivity, then, as a rough guideline, five students in a group is optimal, simply because the existing interface necessitates constantly scrolling up and down to view responses from a larger group of participants. This is a seemingly simple limitation before you have to start scrolling down the interface. Thus, using the polling features, the raising hand feature, and being aware of who is in the room is easiest with five students. Interactivity ran relatively smoothly until we reached about 15 students. With more than 15 participants in the room, a “lecture” type of Wimba environment worked best. Depending on the size of your class, you may find that some of the features sound great, but are just not feasible to use for large classes.

Sharing applications: Sadly, we gave up on sharing applications. The premise is great, but we found when everyone tried to “use” the application, chaos reigned. We spent one hilarious hour with the following conversation bouncing around in the room as we tried to share applications: “Can you see the application?” “No, I just see a box.” “I see the application—no, wait, it disappeared.” “I have it now.” “Can you see it?” “My screen is bouncing all over the desktop.” “I can see somebody’s desktop.” “My screen is bouncing all over the place, too.” “Can anybody see it?” “It just disappeared.” Well, you get the idea. We did, however, have a great opportunity to practice talking back and forth, which served us well later on.

We can sum up the solution in three Nike-like words: “Don’t do it.” While in theory being able to share applications is great, the reality was ineffectual. If you want a group of students to work on a PowerPoint together, have one student maintain control of all the changes while others provide input; yet, even this does not work effectively. Trying to do anything more than this resulted in lost time and frustration on everyone’s part.

Presentations: Wimba, like other live e-classroom programs, has a nice feature allowing anyone to upload PowerPoint presentations. PowerPoint presentations can be loaded reasonably quickly; transitioning from one slide to another runs smoothly even with 15 students in the room. The caveat is that you lose all animations, hyperlinks and transitions in a presentation. This can be frustrating when someone wants to jump from the PowerPoint to a Web site and then back to the presentation.

Wimba worked flawlessly when the instructor led the class, lectured for the allotted time using PowerPoint, then asked for questions. This “sage on the stage” pedagogy of direct instruction was not satisfying and we wanted to find ways to use the power of Wimba for building an interactive and collaborative class. Still, each week, nervously anticipating new technology glitches, we wondered what we would face in Wimba-land. But, each week, we also become more confident as students bonded, learning to accept and even laugh at the latest technology challenge. Thus, through the semester “playing” with Wimba weekly, we found ways around many pitfalls. By semester’s end, class ran more efficiently each week as we made our uneasy peace with Wimba. While nothing can help the learning curve better than just jumping in and “getting your feet wet,” perhaps others will benefit from the tactics we developed and have a less frustrating journey using live e-learning tools.

Getting ready: Wimba takes time to set up the first time, so make sure your students go online several hours before the first class to ensure their computers are ready. Students need to set up only once. Active programs, like Instant Messenger, running in the background cause Wimba to slow down tremendously. The interactive features need memory to run effectively; we found that Wimba worked better when everyone restarted their computers just before class and turned off any memory-draining applications running in the background.

Headsets: Everyone must use headsets with microphones, readily available for about 20 dollars. If speakers are used, others in the class will hear a hideous echo. You will know when this happens. In one class, the students complained about the echo. Class halted; we asked who was using speakers; someone “pleaded the fifth” and turned the speakers off. That was the last time we had a problem. Letting students know in advance that this problem can occur will usually prevent it from happening.

Talking: To talk, individuals have to hold down the talk button. This takes getting used to, especially when switching back and forth between Web sites, PowerPoint presentations, the white board, and other applications. We found, however, that by the end of the third session, we were jumping back and forth, remembering to hold down the talk button with ease. It is also possible to lock the talk feature when you are presenting rather than clicking on the talk button.

Also, the time lag when people are speaking takes getting used to. This delay caused several people to stumble over each other trying to talk, particularly when class was interesting and several students wanted to provide input. Thus, it is a good idea to establish protocol early. When students presented, we let them moderate and call on people in the order of “hands” raised. We moderated during “lecture” time and found a system in which we talked briefly, then asked for questions, and paused to wait for “hands” going up. Since students had to think about what they were going to say, then wait for the time-delay of Wimba, “wait time” had to be extended. A longer pause than you have in a typical classroom took getting used to, but it paid off with opportunities for everyone to participate. The times we ended up stumbling over each other tended to work themselves out much like students in a face-to-face class learn to communicate.

Students have the option of calling in to the Wimba room instead of using the audio feature. Several students used this and also logged into Wimba to participate in the activities. This seemed to work well, although we have no experience with 15 calling in at once, rather than using Wimba audio. One drawback to using this option is that the call incurs long distance charges.

Text chatting during class: A nice feature of Wimba, and something that might deserve more formal research in multimodal communications in virtual classrooms, is the ability to chat with others through text at all times during the session. Students used this tool to ask questions during a presentation without interrupting through audio. The presenter was then able to read comments and respond appropriately without having to stop the presentation. This feature was also useful when someone had technical difficulties and could type in “Can you hear the speaker?” instead of interrupting class to ask. Students used it to let others know when they had to leave early without disrupting the entire class. They also used chat to alert us when another student was unable to make it to class. We noticed we began to chat during those inevitable down times waiting for presentations or Web sites to load. Although some instructors immediately disable this feature during class, we found the benefits greatly outweighed any disadvantages.

Web sharing: Sharing a Web site with others in the class is a powerful tool. You have three choices: you can share the Web site as a new window, in the content frame, and in the content frame (just for yourself). We recommend sharing the site as a separate window because then you do not lose your content frame if you have a PowerPoint loaded. You can certainly go back and forth, but remember—this will slow things down when presenting. The presenter may want to use the content frame (just for yourself) feature as it reduces the stress of going back and forth to press “Talk.” Currently, this works most quickly if you share only the first page and tell others where to go on the site as you follow links. Several students commented that they preferred having control of the Web site once it was loaded because they could visit the links at their own pace. Please note, loading a Web page takes time (depending on how graphic intensive it is), so everyone must be patient while the page loads onto all desktops.

Presentations: When we turned Wimba over to the students to begin presenting, we began to see the richest interactive experiences. Here are some things we figured out:

• Practice before your first presentation. It takes some experience before becoming comfortable with moderating a presentation. An option to lock talk is available, but let everyone know they need to turn off the TV and put the dog outside when presenting or run the risk of sharing more about their household than they intend.

• If students have an interactive PowerPoint presentation, make it available before class for others to download; then, individuals can follow along using the downloaded PowerPoint and use hyperlinks as needed. This is certainly not necessary for all presentations, since the straightforward, no-frills PowerPoint works nicely in Wimba.

• Let everyone know there will be down time as you move from one slide to another, pause for others to raise their hands, go to a Web site, or use the whiteboard to emphasize a point. My class fell into calmly waiting for things to happen and we suspect the patience had to do with those first scary days of us all “Wimba-ing” together.

Additional features: Toward the end of the semester, we began looking at additional features. We discovered that we could easily create a quiz and flawlessly administer it at the end of class. Although we used the feature only once, we will be using it more extensively in the future. Quiz results are provided in spreadsheet format which provides a reasonable degree of certainty that students do their own work. “Move users to another room” offers an excellent tool for meeting as a whole, then dividing the class into groups and sending students elsewhere to collaborate on projects. Jokingly, one student commented that she felt like she was teleported to another location.

Most students (and one instructor) were apprehensive about using this new technology, so I had no agenda for the first two classes. This took the pressure off as we stumbled around, seemingly wasting almost three hours of class learning to Wimba. We will continue to do this, even though we are now familiar with the system, since it gives students a chance to make mistakes with no negative consequences.

Whether you are using Wimba or one of the other live e-classroom programs, you will find roughly the same challenges. While very sophisticated products are available, education cannot yet afford an online environment that will provide a “holodeck” experience. However, just 2 years ago, all that was available was an achingly slow no-frills text chat environment, so we have no doubt that in five years we will be collectively laughing at our frustrating beginnings with interactive live e-learning. As our experiences and our solutions grow, so will our demands for better applications, and this increased demand will result in stronger, more effective products in the future.

So where does the pleasure come from? Our last night of class eliminated any doubts we had about the value of using live e-learning. Admittedly, had we experienced that type of class the first time using Wimba, we may have abandoned it entirely. It began as most nights, with students trickling in and talking before class. But, it was a night in which almost every conceivable technology glitch occurred. Sandra was scheduled to present, but her presentation was unavailable in the content folder, although she had uploaded it the day before. So we just had another student present while she attempted to upload again. Sandra kept us informed about the status of her uploading through the private text chat without interrupting the presentation in progress. She was not able to upload her presentation so we asked her to e-mail it to us for uploading. During this interruption, others in the class used the interactive white board to play tic-tac-toe. Some were chatting back and forth using text; still others were using audio to discuss the upcoming final exam. Maria, scheduled to present that evening, was having technical difficulties at home and used Instant Messenger to let Mark know she was unable to log on. Students, weary of playing tic-tac-toe began drawing collaborative pictures on the white board. Mark used text chat to tell us that Maria was having technical challenges and would just e-mail her presentation to everyone after class.

We finally got Sandra’s PowerPoint by e-mail and uploaded it into Wimba. Since it was uploaded from our computer, she could not move to the next slide. So, much like a face-to-face presentation, she presented and an instructor clicked to the next slide. When Sandra began, the white board activities and chatting stopped as students listened to her share some of the activities she uses in her early childhood classroom. Despite much shuffling and down time, her voice rang out clearly as she discussed one slide. “I sing this song to the tune of Three Blind Mice.” And she sang to all of us:

The silence after her song did not just come from a Wimba time lag. We collectively experienced a depth of sharing interactively online that could only occur with live e-learning. That evening, our class had all the components that students say they miss in online classes with a high level of social interaction that typically occurs only in a face-to-face class. Restless students played games when the technology failed, they “wrote notes” to each other by texting between presentations, they stopped talking to listen when others presented, and they experienced a deeply emotional tug when Sandra sang for all of us—something I question she would have felt comfortable doing in front of a face-to-face class.

At the end of the course, I asked students for feedback on Wimba. They all admitted it was challenging and frustrating at first, but were glad that we persisted in using it each week. Some had already requested that a live e-learning program be made available at their schools. Several mentioned the power of Sandra’s presentation the last night of class. Without exception, students said it was a positive component of the class and recommended using it in every online course. If you plan to continue teaching online, we strongly urge you to begin using live e-learning in your courses with this type of tool.