1. Abstract

Firstly, a literature review of current research was undertaken, to elicit skills and knowledge requirements of users within education. This review found good coverage of hardware and software aspects of video conferencing. However, poor attention was given to pedagogical factors within the articles reviewed.

Secondly, training resources were located and assessed with respect to the user needs identified or found deficient within the initial study. Two conclusions were drawn from the training resources reviewed: The resources covered did not address specific pedagogical scenarios which may occur in education based video conferencing, and the delivery style of the training material was not particularly task oriented or user centred in design.

Thirdly, an on going video conferencing training resource was designed to address the lack of user centred design in current training resources. Using HCI techniques, a prototype minimal manual was produced.

The Minimal manual is detailed in Figure 7 and Annexe 4 within this document. To attain the widest possible audience, this document was constructed as a paper based document and in parallel as an electronic resource available on the World Wide Web Internet computer network. Both this document and the resulting minimal manual can be found at http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~cjs/sima1.html. The Minimal Manual prototype has also been posted to the Alt.Education.Distance Internet newsgroup and the Distance Education On-line Symposium mailing list (DEOS-L).

Conclusions from this study are based solely upon the documents and resources covered within this research. Resources and documents reviewed below are evaulated with respect to their relevance to the needs of users of video conferencing in education. This should not be taken as an implication of their overall ability with respect to other areas of video conferencing that they may address.

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