I have fellow colleagues who use Skype and/or Yahoo IM to facilitate office hours. Alike a physical time and place for office hours not many people show up. Yet I believe that making this aspect available for the students is very valuable for those who use it and not very demanding on the instructor who might be multi-tasking on something else during that time.
Sherry,
Interesting! There are also some interesting uses of second-life online as well (http://www.sloodle.org/moodle/), but I'm not sure it it meets the cost/benefit test.
Best,
Jon
So true! I attended a seminar on e-learning and the faciliator created her own Avatar to appear in her class! It would talk to the students and give weekly announcements.
Great examples - I'll have to check out Calliflower. - Jon
Leslie,
It depends on the use - I am comfortable using it for small groups, but for lectures I would use something else (dimdim.com, Wimba, Elluminate, etc...)
Best,
Jon
My daughter is spending her junior year abroad, and my husband uses skype frequently to talk to relatives abroad - for these purposes I think skype is incredible - especially the cost is "free"; however, none of us consistently get good reception - some days are better than others.
So my response to your curiosity about "Skype to be a good addition to their online instruction model" is difficult to make . . . personally I think it would be unreliable in a more professional environment.
What have others found?
Joshua:
I have used Skype and Calliflower. We have chat rooms within each course and know that several instructors will use the Chat rooms to meet with a student who is having difficulty as well as hold office hours in an Online environment.
I also like software like Tegrity that allows one to pre-record lectures that students can then download to their I-pods or other various MP3 format to watch and/or listen when it is convenient for them.
Kim
Kerstin
Skype works well, but you may also want to look at dimdim.com
Best,
Jon
Kelly,
It actually works pretty well - I prefer Elluminate or DimDim, but you can still do 90% of what you want.
Jon
I have to do 2 "office hours" per week where I usually need to be online so that students can speak to me in real time by initiating a chat with me through a chat window. I started launching Skype during my office hours and informed my students. So now, some of them contact me during my office hours with Skype. Often, something can be answered or resolved through a short conversation that would take longer to type out in chat. Students also like to be able to speak with me, as they only an type in the live chats.
I am curious if anyone else has found Skype to be a good addition to their online instruction model, especially if there is not a lot of synchronous sessions for their online classes.
With regards to the comment you made Joshua, about virtually placed classrooms, have you seen the educational classes several schools support in virtual environments like Second Life? (secondlife.com)
Thanks -- that's exciting!
Also check out dimdim.com!
Jon
