There’s been a great deal of discussion on the ILT champs list recently about which video conferencing systems work best, and Graham Boxwell at City of Sunderland highlighted a cracking list comparing the features on wikipedia:
I’ve also noted a recent announcement that slideshare the popular presentation service with academics have launched a conferencing solution http://blog.slideshare.net/2011/02/16/announcing-zipcast-changing-the-way-the-world-conducts-web-meetings/
which may be a useful solution for some of those situations that have locked down systems which prevent users from accessing services that
require a client file to be run each time, like Elluminate with its jnlp file, and the citrix offerings with their ica file.
JISCmail dev team have been investigating whether the open source offering “BigBlueButton” is a viable solution for a JISC community offering.
All of this makes it rather timely that the Jewel and Esk college are investigating how BigBlueButton can be integrated into their moodle based learning platform, to provide alternative routes to engage with some of their time poor, remote learners.
The project aims to investigate how Remote Synchronous learning can improve the quality of the learning experience, and provide a cost benefit analysis to identify any economic benefits.
Details can be found on the JISC website [http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/swaniltig/sweet.aspx]
