Remote Classroom Research Articles

Using blended synchronous classroom approach to promote learning performance in rural area

The advancement of the Internet technology has changed the way how different types of classrooms can be created including the blending of multiple physical classrooms, synchronous cyber classrooms and asynchronous cyber classrooms. Classes in rural and urban schools could be fully integrated together by using various synchronous tools such as video conferencing systems, electronic whiteboards, interactive response systems, etc. The way of fully integrating two or more physical classrooms together to support online real-time interaction among teachers and students in different locations is called Blended Synchronous Classroom (BSC) in this study. Rural schools cannot attract enough number of good teachers which creates a serious problem of education inequality. A promising solution to this problem is to bring good teachers from urban schools to rural schools by using BSC approach. In this study, a two-year long project of applying BSC approach in two primary schools in Ningbo China is reported, and the effectiveness of BSC is explored through comparative analysis, questionnaire survey and classroom video analysis. The results of this study include: (1) students' learning performance in rural school was improved significantly after the two-year practice of BSC; (2) there are no significant differences in the perceptions of the efficiency of BSC between students in local class and remote class; (3) teachers pay equal attention to students in both local and remote classrooms is the key factor to the success of BSC implementation. The large-scale application of BSC to deal with urban-rural divide is discussed based on the results.

Delivering blended bioinformatics training in resource-limited settings: a case study on the University of Khartoum H3ABioNet node.

MotivationDelivering high-quality distance-based courses in resource-limited settings is a challenging task. Besides the needed infrastructure and expertise, effective delivery of a bioinformatics course could benefit from hands-on sessions, interactivity and problem-based learning approaches.ResultsIn this article, we discuss the challenges and best practices in delivering bioinformatics training in resource-limited settings taking the example of hosting and running a multiple-delivery online course, Introduction to Bioinformatics, that was developed by the H3ABioNet Education and Training working group and delivered in 27 remote classrooms across Africa in 2017. We take the case of the University of Khartoum classrooms. Believing that our local setting is similar to others in less-developed countries, we also reflect upon aspects like classroom environment and recruitment of students to maximize outcomes.

980. Using Videoconferencing with the Clinical Microbiology Lab to Enhance Medical Student Learning During Clinical Rotations

BackgroundPreclinical medical student learning in the microbiology laboratory traditionally focuses on enhancing understanding of microbiology but less on understanding clinical workflow. During a novel course that revisited foundational sciences during clerkships, we designed a virtual microbiology laboratory session to enhance understanding and familiarity with clinical workflow on testing of patient samples.MethodsThe virtual microbiology laboratory sessions were conducted twice in 2018, each including 80 third-year medical students. Clinical cases were used to build upon foundational knowledge. We live-streamed video and audio content from the clinical microbiology laboratory to a remote classroom via the Zoom videoconferencing platform. We conducted the session as a tour and lively interview with microbiology staff who explained the processing as well as diagnostic testing Methods. Students were able to ask questions. To evaluate the sessions we (1) distributed a quantitative survey using a 5-point Likert scale (5 = strongly agree) and (2) conducted focus groups with learners. Qualitative data were analyzed using open and axial coding.ResultsIn a questionnaire administered to 160 students, 74% of respondents agreed that the technical aspects and faculty in the session provided the feeling on a “hands-on” tour. Of the respondents, 58% reported that they would be more likely to contact the microbiology laboratory team for help in ordering or interpreting various laboratory tests. In focus groups, learner reflections reinforced the ability of this format to ensure standardization with each student getting to clearly see the demonstration and hear instructor perspectives. Students also appreciated the linear approach of following a specimen from arrival to the laboratory, a better understanding of the laboratory staff and their roles in performing and interpreting laboratory tests. The live feed could be enhanced further by better audio and video synchronization and by reducing ambient noise.ConclusionVideoconferencing with the clinical microbiology laboratory can be used to effectively teach microbiology and infectious diseases content to advanced medical students. Whether this exposure to the microbiology laboratory can enhance patient care outcomes requires further study.Disclosures All authors: No reported disclosures.

Cable driven robot as a blackboard writer for remote classrooms: modelling, control and trajectory planning

A remote classroom is one of the successful technologies to share knowledge beyond boundaries and to a large population. But the remote classroom demands for high-end visual systems to display the teachers' writings, which are costly and cannot be afforded by all. This paper presents an alternate idea of using a cable driven robot as a blackboard writer, which is able to replicate the teachers' writing on a blackboard. A planar fully constraint cable driven robot with a writer as an end-effectors is employed as a blackboard writer. It is basically an X-Y plotter that navigates on the planar plane according to the desired trajectory. A novel method for trajectory planning called 'appending trajectory points' was also introduced such that the CDR can faithfully follow the trajectory. The trajectory planner appends trajectory points to decrease the rate change and achieve bumpless transfer in the trajectory. An adaptive PD control scheme was employed for closed loop control to track the trajectory. Finally, the performance of the proposed controller was compared with the conventional PD controller and results are discussed in detail.

Cable driven robot as a blackboard writer for remote classrooms: modelling, control and trajectory planning

Cable driven robot as a blackboard writer for remote classrooms: modelling, control and trajectory planning

Denoising Processing Technology for Remote Classimage Transmission Based on Cloud Computing

Denoising processing technology for remote classroom image transmission is studied. In the traditional method of image denoising, the image after denoisinghave obvious spots, communication is not ideal, noise variance estimation is required in practical applications. This paper presents a MCMC image denoising algorithm based on multi-core, throughremote image transmission fusion method toachieve fast denoising process for remote classroom image transmission. Experimental results show that the algorithm improves the operational efficiency, reduces speckle noise, so that remote image is clearer, and denoising effect is very satisfactory.

Red Dirt Thinking on Power, Pedagogy and Paradigms: Reframing the Dialogue in Remote Education

Recent debates in Australia, largely led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island academics over the past 5 or so years, have focused on the need for non-Indigenous educators to understand how their practices not only demonstrate lack of understanding of Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, but even deny their presence. This debate has serious implications for the non-Indigenous remote educator who wishes to support remote students to achieve ‘success’ through their education. The debates on the one hand advocate the decolonising of knowledge, pedagogy and research methods in order to promote more just or equal approaches to research and education, while other voices continue to advocate the pursuit of mainstream dominant Western ‘outcomes’ as the preferred goal for Indigenous students across Australia. This dilemma frames the context for this study. The Remote Education Systems Project, in the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation, seeks to explore these and other questions as part of the broader research agenda being undertaken. This project is particularly focused on large-scale questions such as: ‘What is a remote education for and what would ‘success’ look like in the remote education context?’ We are approaching these research questions from community standpoints and perspectives as a critical starting point for these types of debates and discussions. In doing so, our findings indicate that remote Aboriginal community members have a strong sense of western education and its power to equip young people with critical skills, knowledge and understandings for the future, but also a strong sense of retaining of their ‘own’ knowledge, skills and understanding. This presents a complex challenge for educators who are new to this knowledge interface. Here, we offer the concept of ‘Red Dirt Thinking’ as a new way to position ourselves and engage in situated dialogue about what remote schooling might be if it took into account power issues around Indigenous knowledges in the current policy context. This article questions whether remote communities, schools and systems have, in fact, taken account of the knowledge/power debates that have taken place at an academic level and considers how remote education might consider the implications of stepping outside the ‘Western–Indigenous binary’. It seeks to propose new paradigms that non-Indigenous educators may need to engage in order to de-limit the repositioning of power-laden knowledge and pedagogies offered in remote classrooms.

Instructor Interaction and Immediacy Behaviors in a Multipoint Distance Educational Environment: Using Technology to Improve Low-Incidence Teacher Preparation

The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of professors teaching in a multipoint videoconferencing instructional environment and how they interacted with students in proximate and remote classrooms. Qualitative and quantitative data were analyzed to gain an understanding of the teaching experience and to examine differences between instructor interaction and immediacy behaviors based on student location. Results indicated that no clear difference existed in instructor interaction behaviors with local and remote populations, but that they engaged in more immediacy behaviors with the remote population.

Tricycle-style operation interface for children to control a telepresence robot

Telepresence robots will provide significant value to childhood education. They will offer children opportunities to join remote classrooms and to communicate with speakers of different languages in more enriched ways than are available by conventional video conferencing. However, the introduction of child-operated telepresence robots has yet to be tested. The design of the operation interface presents a particular challenge. In this study, we report the development of a tricycle-style operation interface based on requirements identified through classroom field observations. It was designed for intuitive use, even by young children, without the need of detailed instruction. The usability of the interface was tested in a field experiment involving 20 participants (4–8 years old). The participants were asked to perform six elementary tasks using a telepresence robot system controlled either by the tricycle-style interface or a standard video-game controller. The operational performance of the tricycle-style interface was found to be superior to that of the standard controller. The advantages and disadvantages of both interfaces are discussed.

Enabling and supporting remote classroom teaching observation: live video conferencing uses in initial teacher education

In this paper the authors present findings from a small-scale study in order to extend their understanding of using live video conferencing in initial teacher education. Four distinct steps, consisting of observation, contextualisation, reflection and development of personal practices, were identified based on an in-depth focus group interview. The authors argue that current conceptualisations of video conferencing are limited in their scope in terms of focusing predominantly on pragmatic and instrumental teacher training issues. They suggest that video conferencing needs to be integrated further into training practices in order to be truly beneficial and to have long-term effects for all continuous professional development, based on the opportunities that live video conferencing offers above face-to-face observations and lesson recordings.

Bugscope: Online K–12 Microscopy Outreach

Bugscope is a free online microscopy outreach program that offers K–12 classrooms anywhere in the world the ability to remotely operate a high-resolution scanning electron microscope, collect images of insects and other similar arthropods, and chat simultaneously with a team of scientists. It was conceived and implemented in the late 1990s when K–12 schools were beginning to gain broadband Internet access, many as a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. One of several projects that took advantage of this opportunity to use the Internet to bring the laboratory into the classroom, Bugscope began as an NSF grant to purchase a field-emission scanning electron microscope and develop sophisticated client and server software to control it via a standard web browser. Inspired by the success of and lessons learned from the Chickscope remote magnetic resonance imaging project and from having successfully established remote web-based control of a transmission electron microscope, Clint Potter and Bridget Carragher created the Bugscope project with the goal of developing a remote microscopy educational outreach project that would be sustainable over the long term. This goal led to two significant design decisions. First, the software involved in setting up and running the live outreach sessions was purpose-built to ensure that only one staff member, if necessary, would be required at the instrument (as opposed to Chickscope, which required staff at the remote location as well as at the instrument). Second, students from a local high school would be employed as a renewable resource to help with pre-session sample preparation and to participate in live chat, answering questions from the remote classrooms. Although we now operate with permanent staff at the instrument, these efficiencies in the original concept/design have allowed Bugscope to operate continuously since March 1999, long after the original funding was exhausted.

Innovation in Construction Engineering Education Using Two Applications of Internet-Based Information Technology to Provide Real-Time Project Observations

Improvements in construction engineering education result when innovative information technologies are incorporated into academic curricula. Through the use of internet-based communication technologies, no longer must students physically travel to a construction project site to observe and hear construction operations. This paper discusses two applications of internet-based, audio and video technologies currently being piloted at Iowa State University (ISU) and at the University of Calgary (UC) for the purpose of bringing live construction projects into the university classroom. Virtual Project Tours have been piloted at Iowa State University in which real-time video and audio are delivered from active construction projects to a remote classroom through the internet. The second application discussed in this paper, Virtual Supervision, is being piloted at the University of Calgary and consists of the monitoring and analysis of construction projects by using imagery gathered by web-enabled, digital cameras ...

Smart Classrooms for Distance Education and their Adoption to Multiple Classroom Architecture

This paper provides an overview of the technologies used in smart classrooms for distance education by classifying smart classrooms into four categories and discussing the type of technologies used in their implementation. It gives an example of a successful implementation of distance education technology being used to link university campuses in Japan and the US, and describes its underlying architecture and implementation technologies. It examines the methodologies being used to make distance learning an exciting experience and as effective as the traditional classroom type education. Furthermore, the paper shows how a similar architecture can be extended to a model where a single local class can simultaneously cater to the needs of multiple remote classrooms and presents a workable solution to some of the technical challenges that exits in multipoint, multiple classroom architecture. Finally, it shows how some of the inherent challenges of the system are being managed and identifies physical and practical limitations of a multiple classroom architecture for a successful remote lecturing environment.

Teleconferencing Surgery Enhances Effective Communication and Enriches Medical Education

Medical student surgical training has traditionally occurred in the operating room (OR). Present technology allows real time communication between the OR and a remote classroom. We seek to evaluate the value of the teleconferencing (TC) environment compared with the traditional OR environment. Students enrolled in the third-year core clerkship in surgery participated in both TC and OR teaching sessions. A total of 23 sessions were conducted and observed (TC=8; OR=15). In TC sessions, students asked over 4 times as many questions (17.4+/-8.5 vs. 3.4+/-3.0; P<0.01) and faculty asked 4 times as many questions of the students (13.1+/-6.8 vs. 3.1+/-2.7; P<0.01). In TC sessions, students felt more able to ask questions (P<0.01), left with fewer unanswered questions (P<0.01), and more felt it was a good use of their time (P=0.04). These findings demonstrate that TC is a valuable modality for medical student education.

Information professionals in a globalized world: Distance learning/E‐learning for Iraq: Concept and road map

Information professionals in a globalized world: Distance learning/E‐learning for Iraq: Concept and road map

The remote classroom (training)

The remote classroom (training)

Five Recommendations to Law Schools Offering Legal Instruction Over the Internet

Five Recommendations to Law Schools Offering Legal Instruction over the Internet, addresses the emerging market for legal distance education. The market is being driven by recent changes in ABA regulations, as well as specialization in the curriculum, and expanding costs of traditional education. We are seeing the emergence of legal distance education consortiums, which offer a platform for the trading or selling of courses and programs. However, much skepticism remains about the ability of distance education technology to offer law schools and law students a sufficiently interactive pedagogy. In the words of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg legal education is a shared enterprise, a genuine interactive endeavor that . . inevitably looses something vital when students learn in isolation, even if they can engage in virtual interaction with peers and teachers. This paper uses my experience as the Director of the University of Alabama's successful LL.M in Taxation Program to advise law schools how to expand into distance education, while avoiding common pedagogical limitations and administrative problems. The first of five recommendations addresses what to offer and the remaining four offer advice on how to offer distance learning: 1) Offer programs more generously than courses. 2) Collaborate with other schools in offering courses but not when offering programs. 3) Use synchronous delivery of information, like videoconferencing, for the primary mode of instruction. 4) Use asynchronous forms of delivery to increase the level of interaction and support the primary, synchronous form. 5) Use relational marketing to retain and recruit distance education students. In addressing the issue of whether the internet is appropriate for law school instruction, this article contributes to that debate by presenting a model of the right way to offer legal distance education. Until the technology catches up with the traditional classroom, asynchronous forms like web-based discussion boards and streaming video should only be used to supplement a more interactive and synchronous primary mode of instruction like videoconferencing. This article also explains how resolve the potential difficulties that may arise when offering a videoconferencing course or program. The University of Alabama's LL.M. in Tax is a good model for these propositions because it is the only program that I know of which uses over 10 remote classrooms and videoconferencing and asynchronous technologies to create face to face interactions with law students and professors from four different Southeastern states.

Project Smart Remote Classroom Providing Novel Real-Time Interactive Distance Learning Technologies

Real-time interactive virtual classrooms play an important role in distance learning. However currently available systems are insufficient in supporting large-scale user access, and they cannot efficiently support accessing with heterogeneous devices and networks. Furthermore, these systems are usually desktop-based, until the result that the teacher’s experience is completely different from teaching in a real physical classroom. This paper discusses the Smart Remote Classroom project that deals with these difficulties using the following novel technologies: 1) A hybrid transport layer multicast protocol called TORM and an adaptive content delivery scheme called AMTM, which work together to enable large-scale users to access a virtual classroom with different devices and networks synchronously. 2) A dedicated software called SameView, which takes use of the proposed TORM and AMTM technology, and provides a rich set of functions for teachers and students to efficiently carry out the real-time interactive tele-education. 3) The Classroom augmented by Smart Space technology called Smart Classroom where the user interfaces of the SameView are incorporated in the classroom space. Thus the teacher can instruct the remote students just like teaching face to face in a conventional classroom. All these technologies have been successfully integrated and demonstrated in the prototype system at Tsinghua University.

Sense of community in a higher education television-based distance education program

The purpose of this study was to measure sense of classroom community in a television-based higher education distance education course and in the same course taught by the same instructor in a traditional face-to-face learning environment, in order to determine if differences existed and if so to identify the nature of these differences. Participants for this study consisted of 120 adult learners who were enrolled in either of two sections of a semester-long undergraduate educational technology course offered by an urban state university. One section was taught tradiationally and the other section was taught to a small studio audience and at a distance to 24 remote classroom sites using synchronous one-way television and two-way audio technologies. Study results revealed a significantly lower sense of classroom community among learners in the distance education course, to include the studio audience.

Instructional Television versus Traditional Teaching of an Introductory Psychology Course

In this study we compared the effectiveness of an introductory psychology course delivered through instructional television (ITV) with the same course taught in a traditional classroom. We compared 3 groups of undergraduates, with 83 receiving traditional classroom instruction one quarter. The next quarter, new enrollees were split into 2 groups: One received instruction in an ITV studio with the instructor (n = 29); the second received televised broadcasts in a remote classroom on campus (n = 29). The 3 instructional formats produced similar outcomes in performance, attrition, and attendance. Likewise, attitudes toward the course were favorable and rarely differed by format. Student attitudes toward ITV were positively affected by exposure to the experience.