I have been part of several webferences in the course of working on my masters program including the most recent one by Kathy Attaway on 3-24. I can see the potential benefits of using these conferences in several situations. By having the students in a conference in a long distance situation with a professional involved in research with the topic we are covering can make the topic more relevant and interesting to the students and help them to stay engaged.
The main problem I have seen in the conferences we have had has been the off-topic conversations. In the webconference with Ms. Attaway there was no topic and so it was understood to be a learning experience in just becoming familiar with the system. In other conferences in other courses however there has been no main topic and the conversations become very unstructured and social very quickly making it difficult to gain any real information. I believe one of the keys to keeping a webconference useful is to start with a main topic, for example the current weeks assignment, and keep the questions focused within that topic.
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