Teacher Distance Training in Educational Robotics through Synchronous Audiographic Conferencing: towards a learner-centered approach

This paper presents a practical use of Synchronous Audio graphic Conferencing (SAC) based on the platform Centra in teacher distance training context realized. The topic of the SAC sessions was educational robotics and especially the technology Lego Mindstorms NXT as a tool for constructionist learning. The learners participated in brainstorming activity, communicated with the trainer and other trainees, shared software applications, participated in opinion polls and were invited to use programming software available only in the trainer’s computer in order to program a robot being on the trainer’s desk. Then they could send their program to the remote robot and watch through a video-camera the reaction of the robot while executing their commands sent distantly. The paper reports the technical and pedagogical setting, explores the potential of the pedagogic strategies and training techniques used to support a learner-centered approach and presents preliminary evaluation results. Theoretical Framework, Technological and Pedagogical Setting Synchronous Audiographic Conferencing (SAC) includes technologies offering a combination of multiple media and modes for real-time communication and interaction. When SAC is used for synchronous on-line teaching, teacher and students are connected by videoconferencing, audio conferencing or both, communicating as if they were physically co-present. Teacher and students are geographically independent located in a remote location. However they are temporally dependent, which means that they must be present in their virtual class at the same time. The most often used tools include video conferencing, audio conferencing, whiteboards and application sharing (Murphy et al. 2010). These tools are accessible through real-time communication and collaboration software such as Saba Centra (http://www.saba.com/products/centra). During the last few years a continuously increasing institutional interest in SAC has brought in the fore the problem of linking the multiple media used in SAC with learning theories in order to support a pedagogically sound use of the tools. Freitas & Neumann (2009), Murphy et al. (2010) have emphasized the importance of pedagogy as opposed to media. Bernard et al (2004) concluded that quality in the design of the distance course is more important than the characteristics of media. They found that synchronous distance education offers spontaneous guidance and feedback for students and prompt answers for students’ questions and troubleshooting; however it represented a poorer-quality replication of classroom instruction. They questioned the effectiveness of teleconferencing, citing instructors’ tendency for lecture-based, instructor-oriented strategies (Bernard et al, 2004). Murphy et al. (2010) also found that synchronous online teaching relies on teacherrather than student-centered approaches. Hrastinski (2007) argues that synchronous communication may induce increased motivation and decreased ambiguity because of possibilities for immediate feedback. According to Murphy & Coffin (2003) online synchronous activities can support more student-centred forms of interaction and suggest that synchronous collaboration tools such as the whiteboard could be used, not for the delivery of content, but as a support to student-to-student communication. This paper aspires to contribute to the existing literature on this emerging field of SAC and distance education. More specifically the paper reports on the two first sessions of a scheduled series of SAC-based distance training activities lasting for 2 hours each and realized by the School of Pedagogical and Technological Education (Greece, academic year 2009-10). 26 student-teachers participated in the sessions being in the branches of the School in Athens and Volos while the trainer was in Patras. The reported training activities are integrated in an ongoing design-based research project which attempts to address the problem of the