Online Conferencing in the Era of the 24/7 Global Digital Society

Simon KearBeyond Distance Research Alliance

European Foundation for Quality in e-Learning UNIQUe Award

Learning Technologist ofthe Year 2009: Team Award

Beyond DistanceRESEARCH ALLIANCE

www.le.ac.uk/beyonddistance

Can we talk?

• What do we mean by– online conferencing

– 24-hour society

• Leicester’s Learning Futures Festivals

• Did delegates take advantage of 24-hour?

• Were relationships formed because of 24-hour?

Photo courtesy of cowfish on Flickr

Online conferencing

1990sEmail,

Bulletin Boards

June 2003eGen Conference

March 2006JISC Innovating

E-learning Conference

Online Conference

Asynchronous wrapper (VLE)

Synchronous

Online Conference

Asynchronous wrapper (VLE)

Synchronous

12

2

1

4

3

6

57

10

8

9

11

24-hour society

Photo courtesy of DrareG on Flickr

24-hour society & technology for the developing world

• Eliminating time barriers

• Eliminating geographical barriers

• Target disadvantaged groups

• Help balancing family and work life

• Enhances international dimension of education (Iqbal and Ahmad, 2010)

Follow the Sun 2011Learning Futures Festival 5

27/02/2013 9

Follow the Sun 2011

• 48 hours non-stop

• 280 participants

• Hosted from 3 timezones

• 25 countries

• Up to 80 delegates each session

Japan (delegate)

“I managed to participate in selected presentations from Asia/Australia and UK. The USA time zone was too late/early. The 24-hour format meant I could plan participation and fit into my work schedule.”

Australia (delegate)

“Not in either destination and thus would not have attended had it not been via the online community and technology”

USA (speaker)

“I learned from the comments of the other participants in my session. I have referred to this session in my LinkedIn groups.”

Evidence of 24-hour-type use

Leicester UK

Brighton UK

Canada

USA

Caveats

“I saved travel time but I ended up working almost 16 hour days as I had to listen to talks late at night as well as during the day and still do my day job. If I attended a f2f conference, I’m not expected to be in two places at the same time.

“Having said that, I still prefer attending online as I can eat or fidget or do anything I like during a session at home and still be at a conference.”

New relationships

http://beyonddistance.wordpress.com/

New relationships

New links

England (delegate)

“It has given me some new ideas and links to people and work that potentially are very useful for me. I like the chat during the session as participants can make comments while they listen which can be picked up at the end, in many ways more interactive than a traditional conference.”

Follow The Sun 201228-30 March 2012

tinyurl.com/followthesun

References

Bird, T., Kear, S., Mobbs, R., Davies, E. ( 2010) Why waste a good crisis? Delivering an exclusively online, international academic conference. Unpublished paper presented at ALT-C 2010, Nottingham, UK

Iqbal, M.J., Ahmad, M. (2010) Enhancing Quality of Education through E-Learning: The Case Study of Allama Iqbal Open University. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education-TOJDE January 2010 Volume: 11 Number: 1 Article 5

Salmon, G. (2010) Follow the Sun. Unpublished paper presented at Online Educa2010, Berlin, Germany