Virtual Seminar Courses: Issues from here to there

This article is a brief examination of some of the benefits and concerns of virtual conference seminar courses within higher education. Virtual conference seminars take place entirely on-line as discussion forums, through the extended use of e-mail or bulletin board forums. Student participation is asynchronous. Discussions are prompted and facilitated by the course instructor, after students have engaged in readings. Benefits from this mode of course delivery include more in-depth discussion and networking of participants. Time, adequate resources and access, as well as training and support are key issues for administrators. Ongoing research agendas need to address concerns about learner involvement as well as gender participation and discursive styles of facilitators and students. What was first the privileged provenance of military defense networks and university researchers has blossomed into a robust Internet system accessed by millions. Higher education early recognized the potential opportunities for expanding the boundaries of discourse communities. It was a gradual evolution from these communities to virtual classrooms that meet in the text and graphic environment on the Internet. The use of computer mediated conferencing coursework such as virtual conference seminars has been steadily increasing according to Wells (1992). This new instructional technology impacts faculty, students, and administrators. Northern Arizona University has been using distance education for years. Recently, virtual conference formats have been added as part of their extensive IITV offerings as well as stand-alone virtual conference seminar courses. Many of the points noted in this article have been gained through the author’s experience of teaching and facilitating virtual conference seminars with graduate students. Demands and concerns: What is required to make a virtual conference seminar course work? There are basic hardware and software needs that must be met. The first concern is that the hardware must be able to support the software and grant access to many users. Secondly, the software must accommodate the needs of instructors and students by providing ease of access and flexibility of use. The content of the course work must be matched with the technology. The virtual conference format can easily meet the needs of a graduate level seminar course where the focus is on discussing and analyzing current research and trends. However, an undergraduate course in teaching mathematics, using manipulatives, may not be as well suited to this approach. Time is also a concern when using a virtual conference seminar method of course delivery. It takes time to train faculty and students to use the virtual seminar format. Course materials are all assembled for access before the course begins. Time and effort are required to ensure that students have access to these materials as they progress through the course. There are also issues involving the amount of time an instructor is available to the students taking this course. To provide timely feedback, instructors must be actively involved with the virtual seminar several