Collaborative Distance Learning via Desktop Videoconferencing

Desktop videoconferencing (DVC) with fully interactive collaboration software has recently emerged as a viable coirununication medium. These systems incorporate multiple collaboration technologies (e.g., voice, video, a mutually controllable shared software screen via dynarnic data sharing) into a familiar and integrated desktop environment (Le., windows-based personal computer). The designers of this technology are promoting it as a key enabler EO support distributed tearns of knowledge workers in network organizations (Forbes 1993). It is also being promoted as a vehicle to deliver collaborative distance learning (Business Week 1994). We report an w- experiment which assessed the efficacy of DVC for enabling collaborative distance learning. Since collaborative leaming requires rich interaction between learners, it was hypothesized that face-to-face teams would exhibit greater learning arid satisfaction than nonproxhate teams which communicated via DVC