VIDEOCONFERENCING

1.      Definition of Video Conference

            Video Conference is an interactive telecommunications technology device that allows two or more parties in different locations to interact through sending two-way audio and video simultaneously, as well asone party can make a presentation and can be seen by each party, and vice versa.

2.      Video Conference Device Configuration

3.      Terms Related to Video Conference Technology

Audio: is sound in the acoustic range of the human hearing limit.

Automatic Gain Control: A part or block of an audio amplifier that has the function of adjusting the level of audio gain automatically.

Automatic Noise Suppression: A method for reducing unwanted noise.

Echo Cancellation: Is a source of interference waves that are reflected by new waves created by the source.

Encryption: Is the process of changing a message (information) so that it cannot be seen without using an unlock key.

End Point: Is a device that is on the side of the video conference user and functions to retrieve data and voice information from each user and send it to other video conferencing terminals.

Internet Protocol (IP): Is a data packet and addressing scheme that allows users to direct data packets according to the address they have in a network system even though there is no direct connection between the sender and recipient / destination addresses.

Multipoint Control Unit (MCU): A device that functions as a conference controller that involves many users and many conference sessions.

Video: It is a moving image that is displayed electronically.

Reference:

https://blog.narmadi.com/pengertian-video-conference/

AUDIOGRAPHIC ENVIRONMENTS AND VIRTUAL WORLDS

            Audiographic environments and virtual worlds are network-based tools for communication in real time and for the collaborative creation of text and graphics. The use of audiographic tools – integrating audio, text and graphics – in language learning started in the mid-1990s but has been slow to develop, possibly due to cost (unlike chat applications, most audiographic applications are not free). Virtual worlds are virtual reality programmes which range from immersive environments (with sound and touch sensors) to graphical spaces (with or without audio) and textbased environments (such as MOOs). Often they are open spaces, accessible by the general public as well as by those in a learning group. For the purposes of this chapter we concentrate on virtual worlds that offer more than the written mode.

            We now explore two studies: an early piece by Erben (1999), who examined audiographics in an immersion setting for the learning of Japanese by trainee teachers in Australia; the other by Svensson (2003), one of the few practitioners advocating virtual worlds as suitable platforms for communicative and constructivist language learning. His article describes the use of one such virtual world with advanced students of English.

 

Reference:

Lamy, Marie-Noelle and Hampel, Regine. 2007. Online Communication in Language Learning and Teaching : Audiographic Environments and Virtual Worlds. Australia: Palgrave macmillan

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ASSESSMENT OF CMCL

A.    Different understandings of ‘online assessment’

      Assessing learning that has taken place interactively and online requires, we submit, an interactive online form of assessment delivery. Teachers may indeed decide to assess the interactive quality of an individual’s performance. Yet as the performance of a group is more than the sum of its individual members’ performances, a strategy of individual assessment, if used alone, would remove the possibility of assessing the quality of an entire group’s work.        Finally, given the emphasis on ‘concerns’, we should point out for balance that online assessment also has clear advantages over its offline variety, among which are:

    A good match between delivery modes (because if teaching is online, assessment should be online too, according to current consensus);

  Easier reviewing and revision of test items owing to electronic storage and duplication facilities;

      Easier re-usability of items, also owing to electronic facilities;

      Administrative convenience;

      Availability of permanent electronic traces of learner actions.

      However, bearing in mind the CMCL community’s reluctance to adopt online assessment, unresolved issues seem to predominate. We now give them a closer scrutiny.

1.      Formative–summative and process–product assessment

2.      Process and product of collaborative learning online

3.      Process and the measurement of participation

4.      Self-, peer and tutor-led assessment

5.      Mentoring and monitoring the e-assessors

B.     Designing assignments for CMCL

      Listing the possible electronic functions that can support CMC assessment schemes, Lam and McNaught warn that ‘no one single e-learning design can employ all these possibilities’ (2006: 214). They prefer to look at different combinations of design factors, a strategy we endorse as likely to be useful to assignment designers.

      The four main features of the assessment are show in capitals. Clockwise from top left, they are:

      Formative vs. summative assessment;

      Process-based vs. product-based assessment;

      Self-, peer and tutor assessment;

      Individual and collaborative assessment.

C.    The student’s experience of CMC assessment

      The student’s experience may be approached from two perspectives: appropriacy of the experience in relation to the final result; and quality of the experience as a lived educational event.

    In the first category are included considerations of fairness, stress online, learner choice and   appropriacy of the medium.

    In the second category come questions about collaboration inducing emotions and feelings of responsibility – sometimes even of guilt – in relation to others: e g. each learner feeling responsible for the success of the group.

Reference:

Lamy, Marie-Noelle and Hampel, Regine. 2007. Online Communication in Language Learning and Teaching : Assessment of CMCL. Australia: Palgrave macmillan
winahrefa01@gmail.com