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we07 1/23/2010 13:12:12

General Session - Conference Presentation Only (no formal paper)

//Janine Loveless, Eastern Iowa Community College, Muscatiner, Iowa, USA, jloveless@eicc.edu//
 * Web Conference as a Classroom: Distance Learning, Now!**

Online distance education is generally assumed and accepted as asynchronous. In my 10 years as an online instructor and instructional designer for Information Technology and Educational Technology courses, and while walking through my graduate degrees, I have wondered: why not synchronous?

Synchronous online distance education could meet the needs of a population that is at work, at home, or anywhere else with a computer with Internet connection, and an hour or two that could be used for learning. It might also meet the needs of colleges which could use partnership in order to meet minimum enrollments to make some courses viable.

This presentation is a mix of a show-and-tell and a workshop about a successful and innovative use of conference rooms for education. You will hear about and see how to deliver online synchronous distance education and training using tools that make the difference between delivering a speech and delivering a class for a live audience over the Internet.

Better still, the tools already exist in most conference rooms, and have solid Open Source options. Even better, you can apply learner-centered resources and techniques that you would regularly use in a physical classroom.

Grab a cup of coffee or tea, maybe a cookie or two, and let's have a talk -- you and I, and some of my eConference students.

All Audiences web2.0, online, distance education, synchronous, teaching, learning

Web conference students from Clinton Community College, Muscatine Community College, and Scott Community College that in the last 2 years have been teaching me what works better to keep them interested and engaged in the eConference learning process.