7 Things You Should Know About Virtual Meetings

The report that I chose to review was the 7 things you should know about Virtual Meetings  from the Educause: Seven Things research report library. The author used headings which made the report very easy to follow along and the terminology used were easily understandable.  The author first provided a scenario of how virtual meetings were used, then introduces virtual meetings and begins to discuss as to who uses it, how it is being operated and etc.

The report indicates that online virtual meetings are beneficial to educators as they can easily connect with their students with it. Online virtual meetings can be a successful online instructional program with software applications where educators can facilitate and develop the skills and knowledge that students need through a virtual meeting. Virtual meetings can promote and enhance teacher-student and student-student interactions as students will be able to collaborate with one another or collaborate one-to-one if it was a mentorship with the special features such as real-time video/audio, instant chat and sharing a whiteboard space where the educator can present a presentation and students can take notes, add comments and inputs to the whiteboard (The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, 2006).

Virtual meetings are also suitable for corporations, they can use it for team meetings or project meetings where one can show a presentation or perform real-time face-to-face meeting. Virtual meetings are easily accessible as long as one has a computer and internet access and it runs on PCs, Macs and Linux (The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, 2006). Depending on whether the user would like to hold a web-conference which involves video/audio then additional computer accessories such as web-cams, speakers and micro-phone will be needed. However, the software for virtual meetings does have the feature of instant chat, hence if one does not have a built-in web-cam, speaker or micro-phone he/she can use the option of instant chat.

Overall, virtual meetings can be pretty useful to the broader community of not just educators, students, learning technologies specialist and venturers but also to businessman. It is an application that can be use either for work such as project discussions, school to educate students or personal use for meeting with family and friends outside of the country.

Although virtual meetings have great incentives for education it does have its drawbacks. For example, if the internet connect was down then the users would face challenges in participating in the meeting. Furthermore, additional money will need to be spent on computer accessories if one would like to use all the features provided within the application if their computers don’t have those accessories built-in. Also, it is difficult for the educator to determine who is physically there and who is not if the web-conferencing feature is not being used. As students are situated in a situation where they are attending the class more independently because they are not sitting with their peers, students may find it more comfortable learning the material at their own pace rather than following along and collaborating on a whiteboard space.

I do see that virtual meetings has its potential to lead out success, hence I would recommend this to others. I would like to seek for future versions of this report as this would be a good component to be implemented into my workplace.

Reference:

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. (2006, 02 15). 7 things you should know about virtual classrooms. Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7011.pdf

 

Karon Wong

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