Using Telepresence to Bridge the Gulf in Distance Learning
http://www.telepresenceworld.net/articles/16/1/Using-Telepresence-to-Bridge-the-Gulf-in-Distance-Learning/Page1.html
Anne Meltzer
Anne Meltzer is the Editorial Director of the TelepresenceWorld.net Web Portal. Early in her career, she served as Managing Editor for BioScience Magazineand was Manager of Editorial Operations for the AMA publication Archives of Ophthalmology. Anne has a BS degree in anthropology from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA and received her Masters degree in environmental science from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. As Manager of Computer and Network Services at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins for many years, Anne has substantial experience in computer, networking, and software technologies.
By Anne Meltzer
Published on 05/29/2007
With the advent of telepresence, remote learning can now offer experiences never before possible.
Using Telepresence to Bridge the Gulf in Distance Learning
When selecting preferred educational delivery methods, distance learning used to be considered a remote second choice to live, in-classroom training. With the advent of telepresence, however, remote learning can now offer experiences and interactions never before possible, even with traditional teaching modalities. This value-added aspect of telepresence has already led to a number of very creative and successful collaborative educational programs that have been designed to bring students and teachers from all over the
world into the same virtual classroom.
Effective distance teaching and learning
Any parent, teacher, professor, or tutor will tell you that the key to
successful teaching is engaging and motivating your students. A passive classroom model in which delivery of concepts and information is one-sided rarely produces a level of interest that excites and stimulates a student to think about a subject any more than necessary. Even on-campus lecture classes held in cavernous auditoriums seldom result in anything more than a good nap. Intimate colloquia and hands-on laboratory sessions where students can interact with teachers and other classmates can make impressions on people that will last the rest of their lives.
Distance learning, although noble in its attempt to bring knowledge to those who do not have convenient access, has traditionally been somewhat static in its delivery. On-line courses generally consist of slide-like graphics (some with sound) or asynchronous streaming media or video/audio presentations. Many schools make use of collaborative websites such as Blackboard and real-time video conferencing using small displays and phone technology, but the nature of these technologies often leads to students feeling isolated and disconnected.
Telepresence technology, with its high-definition, life-sized images, clear audio, and real-time, interactive functionality, promises to breath some life into the standard distance learning models, perhaps even surpassing in-class teaching with its ability to allow students to experience situations far beyond the range of local field trips. Many virtual reality researchers believe that the level of telepresence experienced by participants is linked to several factors:
• Vividness
• Degree of interaction, social as well as sensory
• Number of other persons present/shared sense of space
• Transportation/sense of being in another place or having elements from a remote site present in your own
surroundings
Although it is possible to provide worthwhile interactive distance learning without expensive tools, displays, and networks, the more real-time perceptual cues exchanged between locations and participants, the higher the immersive quality of the experience.
Usability
Ease of use is key to a high-quality telepresence encounter and this is especially so when dealing with learning environments. Navigating the system should not be so difficult that it overshadows the educational experience. User interfaces should be tailored to the expertise level of the student and teacher. If a student has difficultly using the equipment, it may lead to feelings of embarrassment or inadequacy, causing them to become reluctant to participate.
The technology behind the telepresence session should be fairly transparent so that participants do not feel self-conscious when interacting with remote locations. The screen positions and size, the locations of the cameras and microphones, and the position of the students and teachers relative to one another should be natural and comfortable so that the topic at hand is the most important aspect, not the facilities or interface.
As in any educational setting, behavioral protocols and guidelines should be established by the instructors so that students can participate in an orderly and organized fashion. The experience should be all-inclusive so that each student has a chance to interact with the remote environment. Students should know what to expect prior to the start of an activity so they do not focus so much on the process as they do on the experience.
Educational programs that use telepresence
Many organizations already use telepresence to facilitate aspects of their educational offerings. Our goal here is not to determine which installations are the most successful or use the best technology but to highlight the variety and creativity of such programs. Several examples are explored below.
Research divers survey the USS Monitor at the Monitor National Marine Sancuary off the coast of North Carolina. Photo reprinted courtesy of NOAA.
OceansLive—The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Marine
Sanctuary Program, in conjunction with the JASON Foundation for Education, The Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration, and the Mote Marine Laboratory established OceansLive with the intent of increasing public awareness, appreciation, and understanding of the 14 federally protected marine areas spanning the United States. The program began in 2001 with Mystic Aquarium’s “Immersion Theater,” which allowed visitors to the Connecticut facility the opportunity to see and control, in real-time, a remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) located in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary’s kelp forest. Signals are transmitted over fiber optic cable and Internet2 to large format video displays to an estimated 100,000 people a year.
OceansLive is being expanded to other marine sanctuaries, including the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary off of California, the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of North Carolina, and the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. The program is also working to expand the number of centers where visitors can view live images of marine habitats and control onsite cameras. OceansLive currently maintains a telepresence education web portal at www.oceanslive.org/portal, which carries a live camera feed from Monterey Bay Aquarium, along with other activities, recordings, and materials.
MedPresence—The MedPresence Corporation (Tel 937.832.6900), located in Dayton, Ohio, specializes in products for the medical/surgical arena. MedPresence offers several products designed to facilitate medical education ranging from mobile units to entire lecture halls. Students are able to view surgeries and exams via an array of high-definition displays as large as 16 feet by 4 feet. Corresponding units are located within clinics or operating rooms so that medical staff can view and interact with students just as if they were in the same room. MedPresence systems can integrate collaborative tools such as electronic white boards and document cameras and can even interface with some medical instruments so readouts can be viewed on screen in association with the exam, case review, or surgery.
MedPresence remote operating room/classroom installation. Photo reprinted courtesy of the MedPresence Corporation.
The system, which was first installed at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, in February of 2006, has the potential to allow medical students from all over the world to participate in rare or high-risk procedures they might not see within their local medical community.
The Pebbles™ Project (Providing Education By Bringing Learning Environments to Students)—is a unique telepresence solution to an educational problem that affects over 600,000 children annually who require longterm hospitalization or home care and cannot attend school. The PEBBLES Project uses two child-sized robots linked by a high-speed internet connection--one in the classroom and one at the child’s location—to transmit audio, video, and even documents to both locations. The in-class robot, which has a swivel monitor, camera, and robotic arm, is controlled by the student, who can even raise its hand to participate in classroom activities.
Traditionally, home or hospital-bound children have kept up with schooling via hospital classrooms or tutors. However, the two Connecticut-based organizations that administer the PEBBLES Project––the Learning Collaborative, Inc, a not-for-profit education organization, and The National Center for Electronically Mediated Learning (NCEML)—estimate that the majority of these students do not finish high school on schedule and that almost all experience educational and social re-adjustment problems when returning to the classroom after long periods of isolation. The PEBBLES Project’s use of telepresence lets recuperating students preserve relationships with familiar teachers, friends, and classroom venues during what might normally be a lonely and uncomfortable period of time. Maintaining these connections has been shown to positively impact a student’s s
ocialization, education, and even physical well-being.
Pebbles units await deployment. Photo reprinted courtesy of Telbotics, Inc.
The PEBBLES unit was developed by Telbotics, a company located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in conjunction with IBM, Ryerson University, and the University of Toronto. It was first introduced to the United States in 2001 through a Department of Education grant and has been deployed at several sites, including the Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital in Connecticut, the Miami Children’s Hospital in Florida, and a handful of private homeschool partnerships.
thereNow—Initially explored as “Project thereNow,” part of the dissertation research of Dr. R. Shawn Edmondson at the Utah State University, this program utilizes telepresence to deliver professional development to teachers through the use of classroom-based coaching. Dr. Edmondson found that traditional professional development offerings consisted mostly of short teacher workshops outside the classroom. These infrequent and “ex-situ” practicum usually resulted in the minimal transfer of newly-learned skills and methodologies to the actual classroom setting.
thereNow and Digital Video Enterprises (DVE) have partnered to develop a telepresence model that facilitates individualized coaching on a regular basis. Core to the program is the Telepresence Center, an interactive conferencing installation that facilitates meetings of one to several people; the Virtual Teacher, which creates the impression of an instructor at a podium; and the Virtual Observer, a mobile unit that can be positioned in the back of a classroom to capture a record of an instructor’s performance. This equipment allows trainers to interact with both students and teachers in order to develop better and more effective teaching strategies. All installations make use of DVE’s mutual eye gaze technology to establish a more intimate rapport with remote participants.
The Virtual Teacher. Photo reprinted courtesy of Spectrum Consulting and thereNow.
In 2005, the Weber School District in Ogden, Utah, with the assistance of thereNow and the Spectrum Education Group, received funding from the US Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement to investigate the efficacy of using this system to coach faculty and teach students, with more research projects scheduled to follow.
Does telepresence get a passing grade?
Telepresence and the virtual university may never totally replace conventional in-classroom teaching but it is evident that this technology will play a major role in educational models of the future. Whether affording easy access to a medical authority across the continent or providing a window to an ecosystem far away, telepresence has the potential to bring remote resources and experiences to students and educators in an efficient, easy, and relatively cost-effective manner. NASA’s Educational Enterprise division even has plans to incorporate telepresence technology into its programs so that students can conduct their own experiments and direct their own observations of other worlds from an earth-based classroom. However, while telepresence has the potential to bring exotic destinations, specialized speakers, and normally inaccessible events to the schoolroom, the key to providing a quality educational experience with telepresence is the same as it has always been with conventional teaching: thoughtful planning and exploration of academic topics so that every student is engaged and motivated.
Selected bibliography
thereNow Web site, www.therenow.net Digital Video Enterprises Web site, “Distance Learning Telepresence,” www.dvetelepresence.com/solutions/distanceLearning.asp
The Pebbles Project Web site, www.pebblesproject.org
The Telbotics Web site, http://www.telbotics.org
Karen Campbell, “iStudent,” The Boston Globe, January 22, 2007, www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/01/22/istudent
OceansLive Web site, www.oceanslive.org/portal
NOAA Research Web site, “Marine Education in Urban Setting,” www.research.noaa.gov/spotlite/archive/spot_usc.html
National Marine Sanctuaries Web site, http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/education
Mitchiko J. Martin, Tom Dudchick, David Bizot, Dawn Hayes, Cathy Sakas, Andrea McCurdy, Oceans to Classrooms with National Marine Sanctuaries,” American Meteorological Society Web site, http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/103873.pdf
The MedPresence Website, www.medpresence.com
Nils Enlund, “The Production of Presence-Distance Techniques in Education, Publishing and Art,” www.learninglab.kth.se/documents/ Enlund.Prod.presence.pdf (accessed February 1, 2007: site now
discontinued)
world into the same virtual classroom.
Effective distance teaching and learning
Any parent, teacher, professor, or tutor will tell you that the key to
successful teaching is engaging and motivating your students. A passive classroom model in which delivery of concepts and information is one-sided rarely produces a level of interest that excites and stimulates a student to think about a subject any more than necessary. Even on-campus lecture classes held in cavernous auditoriums seldom result in anything more than a good nap. Intimate colloquia and hands-on laboratory sessions where students can interact with teachers and other classmates can make impressions on people that will last the rest of their lives. Distance learning, although noble in its attempt to bring knowledge to those who do not have convenient access, has traditionally been somewhat static in its delivery. On-line courses generally consist of slide-like graphics (some with sound) or asynchronous streaming media or video/audio presentations. Many schools make use of collaborative websites such as Blackboard and real-time video conferencing using small displays and phone technology, but the nature of these technologies often leads to students feeling isolated and disconnected.
Telepresence technology, with its high-definition, life-sized images, clear audio, and real-time, interactive functionality, promises to breath some life into the standard distance learning models, perhaps even surpassing in-class teaching with its ability to allow students to experience situations far beyond the range of local field trips. Many virtual reality researchers believe that the level of telepresence experienced by participants is linked to several factors:
• Vividness
• Degree of interaction, social as well as sensory
• Number of other persons present/shared sense of space
• Transportation/sense of being in another place or having elements from a remote site present in your own
surroundings
Although it is possible to provide worthwhile interactive distance learning without expensive tools, displays, and networks, the more real-time perceptual cues exchanged between locations and participants, the higher the immersive quality of the experience.
Usability
Ease of use is key to a high-quality telepresence encounter and this is especially so when dealing with learning environments. Navigating the system should not be so difficult that it overshadows the educational experience. User interfaces should be tailored to the expertise level of the student and teacher. If a student has difficultly using the equipment, it may lead to feelings of embarrassment or inadequacy, causing them to become reluctant to participate.
The technology behind the telepresence session should be fairly transparent so that participants do not feel self-conscious when interacting with remote locations. The screen positions and size, the locations of the cameras and microphones, and the position of the students and teachers relative to one another should be natural and comfortable so that the topic at hand is the most important aspect, not the facilities or interface.
As in any educational setting, behavioral protocols and guidelines should be established by the instructors so that students can participate in an orderly and organized fashion. The experience should be all-inclusive so that each student has a chance to interact with the remote environment. Students should know what to expect prior to the start of an activity so they do not focus so much on the process as they do on the experience.
Educational programs that use telepresence
Many organizations already use telepresence to facilitate aspects of their educational offerings. Our goal here is not to determine which installations are the most successful or use the best technology but to highlight the variety and creativity of such programs. Several examples are explored below.
Research divers survey the USS Monitor at the Monitor National Marine Sancuary off the coast of North Carolina. Photo reprinted courtesy of NOAA.OceansLive—The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Marine
Sanctuary Program, in conjunction with the JASON Foundation for Education, The Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration, and the Mote Marine Laboratory established OceansLive with the intent of increasing public awareness, appreciation, and understanding of the 14 federally protected marine areas spanning the United States. The program began in 2001 with Mystic Aquarium’s “Immersion Theater,” which allowed visitors to the Connecticut facility the opportunity to see and control, in real-time, a remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) located in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary’s kelp forest. Signals are transmitted over fiber optic cable and Internet2 to large format video displays to an estimated 100,000 people a year.
OceansLive is being expanded to other marine sanctuaries, including the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary off of California, the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of North Carolina, and the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. The program is also working to expand the number of centers where visitors can view live images of marine habitats and control onsite cameras. OceansLive currently maintains a telepresence education web portal at www.oceanslive.org/portal, which carries a live camera feed from Monterey Bay Aquarium, along with other activities, recordings, and materials.
MedPresence—The MedPresence Corporation (Tel 937.832.6900), located in Dayton, Ohio, specializes in products for the medical/surgical arena. MedPresence offers several products designed to facilitate medical education ranging from mobile units to entire lecture halls. Students are able to view surgeries and exams via an array of high-definition displays as large as 16 feet by 4 feet. Corresponding units are located within clinics or operating rooms so that medical staff can view and interact with students just as if they were in the same room. MedPresence systems can integrate collaborative tools such as electronic white boards and document cameras and can even interface with some medical instruments so readouts can be viewed on screen in association with the exam, case review, or surgery.
MedPresence remote operating room/classroom installation. Photo reprinted courtesy of the MedPresence Corporation.
The system, which was first installed at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, in February of 2006, has the potential to allow medical students from all over the world to participate in rare or high-risk procedures they might not see within their local medical community.
The Pebbles™ Project (Providing Education By Bringing Learning Environments to Students)—is a unique telepresence solution to an educational problem that affects over 600,000 children annually who require longterm hospitalization or home care and cannot attend school. The PEBBLES Project uses two child-sized robots linked by a high-speed internet connection--one in the classroom and one at the child’s location—to transmit audio, video, and even documents to both locations. The in-class robot, which has a swivel monitor, camera, and robotic arm, is controlled by the student, who can even raise its hand to participate in classroom activities.
Traditionally, home or hospital-bound children have kept up with schooling via hospital classrooms or tutors. However, the two Connecticut-based organizations that administer the PEBBLES Project––the Learning Collaborative, Inc, a not-for-profit education organization, and The National Center for Electronically Mediated Learning (NCEML)—estimate that the majority of these students do not finish high school on schedule and that almost all experience educational and social re-adjustment problems when returning to the classroom after long periods of isolation. The PEBBLES Project’s use of telepresence lets recuperating students preserve relationships with familiar teachers, friends, and classroom venues during what might normally be a lonely and uncomfortable period of time. Maintaining these connections has been shown to positively impact a student’s s
ocialization, education, and even physical well-being. Pebbles units await deployment. Photo reprinted courtesy of Telbotics, Inc.
The PEBBLES unit was developed by Telbotics, a company located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in conjunction with IBM, Ryerson University, and the University of Toronto. It was first introduced to the United States in 2001 through a Department of Education grant and has been deployed at several sites, including the Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital in Connecticut, the Miami Children’s Hospital in Florida, and a handful of private homeschool partnerships.
thereNow—Initially explored as “Project thereNow,” part of the dissertation research of Dr. R. Shawn Edmondson at the Utah State University, this program utilizes telepresence to deliver professional development to teachers through the use of classroom-based coaching. Dr. Edmondson found that traditional professional development offerings consisted mostly of short teacher workshops outside the classroom. These infrequent and “ex-situ” practicum usually resulted in the minimal transfer of newly-learned skills and methodologies to the actual classroom setting.
thereNow and Digital Video Enterprises (DVE) have partnered to develop a telepresence model that facilitates individualized coaching on a regular basis. Core to the program is the Telepresence Center, an interactive conferencing installation that facilitates meetings of one to several people; the Virtual Teacher, which creates the impression of an instructor at a podium; and the Virtual Observer, a mobile unit that can be positioned in the back of a classroom to capture a record of an instructor’s performance. This equipment allows trainers to interact with both students and teachers in order to develop better and more effective teaching strategies. All installations make use of DVE’s mutual eye gaze technology to establish a more intimate rapport with remote participants.
The Virtual Teacher. Photo reprinted courtesy of Spectrum Consulting and thereNow.
In 2005, the Weber School District in Ogden, Utah, with the assistance of thereNow and the Spectrum Education Group, received funding from the US Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement to investigate the efficacy of using this system to coach faculty and teach students, with more research projects scheduled to follow.
Does telepresence get a passing grade?
Telepresence and the virtual university may never totally replace conventional in-classroom teaching but it is evident that this technology will play a major role in educational models of the future. Whether affording easy access to a medical authority across the continent or providing a window to an ecosystem far away, telepresence has the potential to bring remote resources and experiences to students and educators in an efficient, easy, and relatively cost-effective manner. NASA’s Educational Enterprise division even has plans to incorporate telepresence technology into its programs so that students can conduct their own experiments and direct their own observations of other worlds from an earth-based classroom. However, while telepresence has the potential to bring exotic destinations, specialized speakers, and normally inaccessible events to the schoolroom, the key to providing a quality educational experience with telepresence is the same as it has always been with conventional teaching: thoughtful planning and exploration of academic topics so that every student is engaged and motivated.
Selected bibliography
thereNow Web site, www.therenow.net Digital Video Enterprises Web site, “Distance Learning Telepresence,” www.dvetelepresence.com/solutions/distanceLearning.asp
The Pebbles Project Web site, www.pebblesproject.org
The Telbotics Web site, http://www.telbotics.org
Karen Campbell, “iStudent,” The Boston Globe, January 22, 2007, www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/01/22/istudent
OceansLive Web site, www.oceanslive.org/portal
NOAA Research Web site, “Marine Education in Urban Setting,” www.research.noaa.gov/spotlite/archive/spot_usc.html
National Marine Sanctuaries Web site, http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/education
Mitchiko J. Martin, Tom Dudchick, David Bizot, Dawn Hayes, Cathy Sakas, Andrea McCurdy, Oceans to Classrooms with National Marine Sanctuaries,” American Meteorological Society Web site, http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/103873.pdf
The MedPresence Website, www.medpresence.com
Nils Enlund, “The Production of Presence-Distance Techniques in Education, Publishing and Art,” www.learninglab.kth.se/documents/ Enlund.Prod.presence.pdf (accessed February 1, 2007: site now
discontinued)