Student perspectives on videoconferencing in teacher education at a distance

Abstract

This article reports the findings of a small-scale study exploring student views of the videoconference as a teaching and learning tool in teacher education. The context of this study is a distance education course, run primarily through videoconferencing, for prospective primary school teachers. The use of videoconferencing in this area has not yet been the subject of significant research and so the study aims to make a contribution to the field. The study is part of an ongoing action research project, aimed at improving the quality of the course in question. Taking account of literature on the videoconference format in distance education, the project used a questionnaire to gather student views of the perceived effectiveness and value of videoconferencing, with a particular emphasis on issues relating to teaching approaches and the active engagement of the learner. The article highlights some key findings regarding the efficacy of the format from a student perspective and raises some issues for future pedagogical practice

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“…More than 60% of each country's students negatively evaluated the sound quality or video connection because of Internet problems. In some previous studies, the applied technologies, the locations of the devices, technical problems related to sound, image, and connection, the interaction inside and outside of the class, the teachers' use of body language, and the duration of courses were identified as factors affecting student perspectives on distance education (Martin 2005;Koppelman & Vranken 2008;Gillies 2008;Marsh 2010). Before the class in 2015, we conducted two undergraduate classes to share the research topic lectures with undergraduate students from the same dental schools.…”

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“…While some work has been carried out in tertiary settings investigating videoconferencing to support distance education students (Gillies 2008;Smyth 2005), few studies have explored its use in K-12 primary and secondary school contexts. Authors largely attribute the historical lack of penetration of videoconferencing in schools to cost and technology issues, with the price of equipment, prohibitive fixed line rental charges, and difficult setup and poor reliability of systems acting as major disincentives (Knipe and Lee 2002;Smyth 2005).…”