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Contents
The Use of Videoconferencing in Higher Education
1. Introduction
1.1 Objectives
The main objective of the project was to provide a longitudinal picture of videoconferencing in Higher Education, giving information about:
- the ways in which videoconferencing is currently being used in higher education
- how things have changed in the last 18 months
- possible patterns of use that may help those just starting to use videoconferencing
- future trends in videoconferencing for higher education
The aim of this report is to be a document of practical use to users and managers of videoconferencing (both existing and new). Videoconferencing is referred to as VC throughout the text; other abbreviations can be found in the glossary.
1.2 Background
This project is a follow-on to a study conducted by the HUSAT Research Institute (Butters, Clarke, Hewson and Pomfrett) in 1994. Part of the original project involved a survey of users of VC in higher education. This provided a small snapshot picture of the way in which some users in higher education were making use of VC facilities. It was also able to provide some advice in terms of lessons learned and successful strategies for new users just beginning to VC.
The new study aimed to extend the original survey by :
- obtaining current data where possible from the original respondents and thereby providing a longitudinal picture of usage
- extending the sample to include additional respondents and retrospectively collecting historical data
- making in-depth studies of a sample of institutions including field site visits and interviews with both the service providers/managers of each site and also with users where possible.
Contents