Collaboration

As the previous sections describe, videoconferencing can be used very effectively for meetings and classes. Travel costs and stress can be reduced while personal interaction can remain high. More people can be reached with knowledge and information when videoconferencing is used in the classroom. This section will describe going past the mere communication of presence or presentations. Collaboration is the process of working together. Videoconferencing systems can be designed to support rich multimodal interactions between sites.

A videoconferencing terminal will generally come with a number of software tools including electronic whiteboards, ftp, and chats. The whiteboard can be useful for dynamic lectures, collaborative diagramming, brainstorming, and sharing notes. ftp can be used to transfer files quickly without the need for a separate operating system window. Chat can be useful when audio quality is poor or unavailable for some participants or when a subset of participants needs to communicate privately.

An interface is often provided to enable sharing of third party applications that may be installed on participating workstations. This is particularly useful when group work is supported by project-specific software applications. Optimally, communications between the terminal end stations -- while they are sharing these tools and applications -- should be standardized to ensure the highest level of interoperability, access and accuracy. The most common implementations are supported by the ITU standard, T.120. As stated in the DataBeam Tutorial on the T.120 Series Standard, "Established by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), T.120 is a family of open standards that was defined by leading data communication practitioners in the industry. Over 100 key international vendors, including Apple, AT&T, British Telecom, Cisco Systems, Intel, MCI, Microsoft, and PictureTel, have committed to implementing T.120-based products and services."

Two terms often heard in discussions of T.120 are application sharing and data collaboration. The distinction here primarily revolves around who has control of material or application. In application sharing, the owner of the material or application is allowing the other participants to view it only. In data collaboration, the owner of the material or application is sharing both the view and the ability to modify the material (or run the application.) We will illustrate the use of these through several examples.

Videoconferencing endstation clients that support application sharing and data collaboration often do so through buttons or pull down menus. In most cases, a button will be clicked or menu item selected while the relevant application window is active. The process is very simple. A mouse click will be assumed in these examples. (See Practical Videoconferencing Examples for full graphical examples.)

Lecture: Large class distributed over several sites - You are an instructor who has the need to show material from a presentation, web page, or other application. In this case you want to present the material in one direction. So after activating the window, you simply click on the application sharing button. The material immediately shows up on the screens throughout the conference. As you navigate through the application during the lecture, each local screen change mimicked on the remote screens. (Note: it is not necessary for the application to be resident on the receiving machines.)

Lecture: Small Class - This case is similar to the one above except that you are working with a much smaller class. In this case, you might want to have more than just video and audio dialog between yourself and the students (and student to student.) Perhaps you'd like to include some problem solving aspect to the class. You might bring up an electronic whiteboard or other application and start up the shared data collaboration so that each student might present their ideas on a topic or solutions to particular problems.

Presentation Planning - You are an educator, scientist, engineer, or technologist. You have been working on a project in your field with others who are separated by quite some distance. Several of you are doing a team presentation so you would like to prepare your slides together. After activating the call between the presenters, one of you will bring up the presentation software and click on the button for application sharing (if only one person will be typing) or data collaboration (if all of you will be entering material.) You are able to discuss the material, analyze the potential audience, and schedule each section in your face-to-face dialog. As you agree on layout and topics, you can enter them directly into the presentation.

Proposal Preparation - You are an information technology director who is working with another information technology director at a different school. The two of you are proposing a joint project in educational technologies over advanced networks. You are preparing your material in your favorite publication software. After activation of the call, one of you will bring up the document and click on the data collaboration button. The document will appear on the other director's screen. Each of you can now type into the document. Control is transferred back and forth simply via mouse clicks. Changes will appear on each screen.

Student Projects - It is very common to assign group projects, particularly in higher-level classes and as term projects. This is a good team building strategy that allows the students to tackle larger problems and learn from each other. As long as the students have been located at the same campus, or reasonably close by, this works well. While application sharing and data collaboration could still be used locally (say for those night owls who don't want to drive late at night), a great deal of diversity can be added to the project if the students are in separate locations. Students in environmental studies might be teamed together from diverse locations such as a coastal environment, a mountain environment, a desert environment, etc. The students can use data collaboration to prepare their final reports, run data analysis for all to see, and then prepare and present the results to the rest of the class.

Scientific Research - You are an engineer and you are studying aircraft wing design with several colleagues who are distributed around the country. You have implemented a large-scale application on a parallel computing system at one of your sites (actually, it could be anywhere on the network!) The person at that site can begin the application and click on data collaboration so that each of you can interact with the model as it runs and see the results as they happen. You are also using CAD software (which runs in an X-Windowed environment) to analyze the output further. One of you will start up the CAD software and click on application sharing. All of you can then view the structures and discuss what happened, what to try next, and so move onto the next phase.

These are but a few examples of the diverse uses of videoconferencing for collaboration. In thinking of your own scenarios, consider aspects of your project work or instruction activities where information is being passed back and forth in the form of file or document transfer but where the information is currently being acted on or viewed individually. If manipulation of this information is really intended to support the development of a common product or understanding, these are aspects of your collaborative work that may be enhanced through application and/or data sharing.