A Critical Review of the Use of Audiographic Conferencing Systems by Selected Educational Institutions.

In the past 5 years educational institutions in North America have begun to incorporate audiographic conferencing technology into their distance education programs. The use of audiographic conferencing is escalating rapidly since this technology offers the potential of serving distant students at a reasonable cost without requiring instructors to radically modify their classroom behavior and without requiring extensive new institutional support systems. The real-time communications environment of the traditional classroom is maintained because these systems allow full interaction among participants. The instructor is free to be spontaneous and to present information both orally and visually; students can participate in classroom discussions, ask questions of the instructor and their peers, and can create, view, and discuss graphic and other visual materials. To understand how this technology is being used and to develop an ideal model of how best to use it for course delivery, the Annenberg/Corporation for Public Broadcasting Project and the University of Maryland University College sponsored a research project. Interviews were conducted with students, faculty members, administrators, and technicians from nine institutions in the United States and Canada which were using audiographic conferencing. The report summarizes the interviews and direct observations and explains what seems to work and what does not. Appendixes include descriptions of audiographic systems; institutional contacts; a project evaluation report for Audio-Plus; two research papers on the instructional effectiveness of audiographic conferencing methods; and professional guidelines for a Teleteaching Project in Pennsylvania. (Author/GL)