Use of Webinar Tool to Support Training

Use of the Webinar Tool to Support Training: from student-trainers’ Perspective New York Institute of Technology Wang, S.-K. & Hsu, H.-H., (2008, March). Use of Webinar Tool to Support Training: The Effect of the Implementation of Webinar Learning From Trainers’ Perspective. Paper will be presented at the Annual Conference of the American Educational Research Association, New York, NY

Introduction

CMC: Computer-mediated communication (Kerr & Hiltz, 1982, p. 2)

Asynchronous (delayed time) communication: e-mails, bulletin boards, course management system, blogs

Synchronous (real-time) communication: VoIP, instant messaging, video conferencing, webinar (web + seminar)

Why use CMC?

Asynchronous tools:

Provides participants the flexibility that they need to manage learning time;

Provides students more time to read, reflect, and respond (Meyer, 2003);

Facilitates structured and mandated discussion (Johnson, 2006).

Lacks immediate feedback (Gao & Lehman, 2003)

Involves less social presence (Stodel, Thompson, & MacDonald, 2006).

Why use CMC?

Synchronous tools: (Branon and Essex, 2001)

Hold virtual office hours,

Facilitate team decision-making,

Engage in community building,

Facilitate in-depth and ongoing discussion

Research on CMC

Past studies’ focus on asynchronous learning environments is due to the limitations of network bandwidth and to the lack of synchronous learning tools ;

There have been few studies whose aim is to identify and to analyze either the learning effects or the associated pedagogies of synchronous learning environments.

Research on synchronous tools

Pan and Sullivan (2005) adopted VoIP (Skype) to facilitate online chat sessions

Duemer (2002) found that chat tools effectively develop a sense of learning community.

Locatis (2003) used videoconferencing to broadcast instructions to audiences at various U.S. locations

Wang (2008) used IM (Yahoo) to strengthen online users’ sense of community

Webinar tool

Able to transmit video, audio, and images

Enables users to share applications and to use whiteboard

Exchange information in a real-time and two-way format.

Elluminate , Adobe Acrobat Connect , Live meeting

Webinar delivery formats

Presenter vs. multiple participants from one site;

Presenter vs. multiple participants from multiple sites;

Multiple participants from one site vs. multiple participants from one or multiple sites.

Webinar study

Chen et al. (2005): use webinar to deliver lecture and office hour

Ng (2007): webinar promotes tutor-student interaction better than student-student interaction

Kohorst and Cox (2007): use webinar to deliver virtual office hour

de Gara et al., (2006): negative experiences

Webinar advantages

Affordable (de Gara & Boora, 2006).

Enables synchronous communication

Facilitates real-time multimedia demonstrations

Facilitates multi-level interaction

Can archive seminar content for personal review or for people who missed the real-time session.

Purpose of this study

Corporations have widely adopted the webinar tool

Webinar tool is relatively new for online learning and needs to be tested for pedagogical merits.

Purpose: investigate pedagogical issues underlying the use of the webinar tool in online learning and training

Research method

Qualitative research:

Methods:

Observation,

Open-ended survey,

Focus group,

Recorded Elluminate training sessions.

Validity and Reliability

Triangulated data (Mathison, 1988).

multiple data sources,

peer examination on data and theme analysis

Present the context and the participants’ backgrounds so that other educators and researchers can decide the extent to which they should apply the findings to other settings (Merriam, 1995).

Characteristics of Participants **** = Excellent, *** = Good, ** = Average, * = Weak Sex Office skills Tech- skills Training experience Online training experience Expertise Participant A F **** ** 3 yrs No Legal Studies Participant B F ** * 3 yrs No Library Science Participant C M **** **** 6 yrs Synchronous videoconferencing Multimedia Authoring Participant D F **** **** 0 yrs No Management Information Systems Participant E F **** **** 2 yrs No Multimedia Authoring Participant F F **** *** 8 yrs Synchronous videoconferencing/ webinar Human Resource Management

Research questions

(1) What are the perceptions that trainers have regarding their use of webinar tools for the development and the implementation of an instructional session?

(2) What are the issues that characterize the development and the implementation of a webinar-based course?

(3) What strategies effectively support webinar-based learning?

(4) Which learning domains are appropriate for webinar-tool use?

Researchers role & setting

One researcher was the instructor; the other researcher was the semi-independent researcher.

“ participant observation ” approach (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2001; Savenye & Robinson, 2004).

Format: “presenter vs. multiple participants from multiple sites.”

IT graduate program

“ teach-back” method (Phillips et al., 2000, p. 24).

Instructor (Participant observer) Independent observer

Week 1: Practice through the Elluminate demo room

Week 2: The instructor led a six-hour webinar session to demonstrate the use of Authorware software

Week 3 & 4: Each student chose a topic in his or her specialty and then moderated a forty-minute to an hour webinar training session.

Topics

Conceptual knowledge:

Successful synchronous learning

Podcasting

Law

Procedure knowledge:

Authorware (instructor)

Google

PowerPoint

Data Collection and Analysis

Student-opinion Surveys:

A: participants’ first impression of using Elluminate

B: feedback to a particular webinar session

C: capture host students’ reflections

Observation log:

The host-learner interaction,

The participants’ use of webinar functions, the effectiveness of the teaching

Student focus-group interview

(Miles & Huberman, 1994).

Discussion of Findings

Presenters’ use of the webinar Tool

Conceptual knowledge: Interact with the learners through polling, break room, whiteboard

Procedural knowledge: focus on the software they introduced to avoid heavy cognitive load

Effectiveness of teaching: Participants’ rating, researchers’ observation notes, assessment data, and the presenters’ self-reflection reveal that topics focusing on conceptual knowledge or basic procedural skills were more effective than those focusing on hands-on skills .

Host 1 Host 2 Host 3 Host 4 Host 5 Host 6 Topics successful synchronous learning Podcasting Law Authorware Google search engine Interactive PowerPoint Knowledge Conceptual Conceptual Conceptual Procedural Conceptual/ Procedural Procedural Assessment Multiple questions, T/F Multiple questions Multiple questions, T/F Hands-on Multiple questions hands-on Hands-on Effectiveness ****** ****** ****** ** **** *** Interaction video/ 2-way audio/ polling/ whiteboard/ chatting/ break room video/ 2-way audio/ polling/ whiteboard/ chatting video/ 2-way audio/ polling/ whiteboard/ chatting video/ 2-way audio/ chatting video/ 2-way audio/ polling/ chatting video/ 2-way audio/ chatting Real-time demonstration No No No Yes Yes Yes

Host-learner interaction

Presentations focusing on procedural knowledge involved many confirmation-type of questions.

Presentations focusing on conceptual knowledge ranged from topic-related questions and a sharing of experiences or of information to freely expressed comments (rich)

Effective webinar-session strategies

Used the polling and direct-message tools to realize or to monitor individual learning progress,

Break room was an effective tool for real-time group work

Application of the electronic whiteboard to explanations of concepts was convenient and caught learners’ attention

Advantages and disadvantages

Connected instructors and learners

Relieved their nervousness about learning

Real-time video and audio communication increased the social presence of all participants

The Elluminate-embedded tools greatly facilitated the training process

Technology issue

Can’t attend to several learners at once

Conclusion

Participants were satisfied with the different levels of interaction that the embedded tools made possible

Enabled the participants “to attend” sessions in a personalized environment

Webinar sessions were appropriate for delivering those topics whose direct focus was conceptual knowledge or basic procedural knowledge

Suggestions

Sessions required high levels of interaction and that as this level increased, the sample size, or group size, should decrease

The instructor should ensure that participants who attend a webinar session have prerequisite skills

Test the webinar environment to exclude any possible technical problems

Backup plan

Synchronous communication does not mean “learning that is superior to asynchronous communication

Future research

Research use webinar to teach in various domains and that the research report the domain-specific results, particularly regarding the implementation of domain-specific practical strategies.