Teaching with Real Time Communications Technologies

Abstract

Real time communications technologies are just that: technologies that facilitate real time or synchronous communications. An example that springs rapidly to mind is the telephone. The real time communications technologies (RTCs) that are commonly found in educational contexts include text-based examples such as text chat, and rich media examples such as video chat, videoconference, and Access Grid. Teaching with RTCs is not the same as face-to-face teaching due to the imposition the technology makes on the learning, thus limiting some activities. Full definitions of videoconference and video chat and recommendations for teaching with videoconference and video chat are discussed in detail in Chapter XIII. Likewise, teaching with Access Grid plus a description and a definition of it are provided in Chapter XIV. In this chapter some general approaches to teaching that are common to all RTCs are discussed and contrasts are drawn between other approaches that clearly highlight the differences in the RTCs.