Online learning
Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2007 9:33 pm
I'm not quite sure what you're asking... I attend lectures/plenary sessions, meet my team and give presentations all on campus, so it's not an online course for me per se. There are those that are remote and have to do these things through a conference call and some sort of remote meeting program like webEx or livemeeting. I've called in a few times because of being sick or having to be somewhere else and I didn't get as much out of it because it's hard to stay focused on what's being said on the phone. What's worse is that the volume is different depending on the person and their distances from the polycom, so you have to turn the phone up for some and way down for others so you don't go deaf.
I was on a remote team my first semester since they didn't realize that I work close to the campus. That class was more team based without large lectures, so I only worked with 3 others plus a faculty member a few times a week. When everyone is remote, I think it's a lot easier to deal with, especially on skype which tries to normalized people's volumes.
I know I'm picking on the voice connection a lot here, but it's gonna be your main link to these courses if you're remote, so it is important. Maybe stanford's infrastructure is more advanced since they're not trying to operate a satellite campus and additionally support remote participants.