Ideally, this should be available twenty-four hours per day, seven days a week. UCLA, for example, offers an instructor-led online training program for its online instructors using Embanet. Thomas Nolan, a student enrolled in EDUI 6701, an online class, during the 1999 spring session at California State University-Hayward, used a stopwatch to time his access to the discussion areas in both RealEducation and WebCT from his computer at home. Adding insult to it all, if I quit RealEd, I have to go through the entire loading sequence again from the very beginning, taking another full 4 minutes. Password and username security most providers offer this.
Price can range from free to several thousand dollars.
This may be important to visually-impaired learners and teachers. Selection of a Web conferencing product can be a very difficult decision. It requires thoughtfully considering institutional and system objectives and requirements, analyzing users existing hard- and software, users capabilities, and specifying any technology requirements that may be needed to assess learners attainment of learning outcomes. Fortunately, most Web conferencing softwares offer free demonstrations via the Internet. Socrates Distance Learning Technologies Group.