Utilizing Voice over Internet
Protocol (VoIP) in Synchronous
Web Conferencing Classroom
By
Farnaz Sharifrazi/M.S.
National University/San Diego, CA
Presented at SIGUCCS Conference
Victoria, B.C. April, 2010
Introduction
• Internet has changed the way we were doing
business.
• Web technologies has changed the way we
study, learn and educate.
• Distance learning, or Extended Studies has
evolved by web technologies.
• Students in distance learning are now part of
the main stream of university.
History
• Distance students are not the thing of the past
as correspondence school that educators can
avoid.
• Technology provides real time education to
students’ in their domain.
• Freedom of taking college courses from
anywhere has put the online learning models
on the center of education modalities.
Purpose of the Study
• Examine students perception of their
effectiveness using VoIP for team interaction.
• In addition, the purpose revolves around the
students’ effectiveness in virtual teamwork on
various projects. That included analyzing peer
reviewed relevant articles on team building.
Project Description
• Students formed groups based on an interest
in a particular topic from peer reviewed
literature placed in Doc Sharing course shell by
faculty.
• Students divide the literature among
themselves based on their interest in the topic
and number of pages in the article.
Project Results
• Seven groups formed to analyze seven peer
reviewed articles, re-write their findings and
present their part to the class using VoIP and
Power Point slides.
• Although all par of a team, each student
presented individually and graded based on
their topic, presentation skills, voice, and
technology knowledge.
Question # 1
• Survey contains six likert scale questions.
• Seventeen students from Team Building course
took the survey.
• 77% of students strongly believed, synchronous
voice chat with the instructor and their team
members enhanced their learning.
• 6% of students did not believe synchronous chat
with instructor and the team members enhanced
their learning.
Survey Question # 2
• 82% of students believed that synchronous
voice and web conferencing tools advanced
their team collaborations.
• 11% of students did not believe that
synchronous voice chat and web conferencing
advanced their team collaborations.
Survey Question # 3
• 64% of the students strongly believed that
their presentation skills and their ability to
overcome public speaking fear was resulted in
the practice of presenting with VoIP and Web
Conferencing tools.
• 11% of the students did not believe that their
presentation skills was enhanced nor did they
overcome their fear of with VoIP and Web
Conferencing tools.
Question # 4
• 100% of students strongly agreed that it is
possible to be effective in virtual teams.
Question # 5
• 94% of students strongly agreed that their
hands-on experience in virtual meeting was an
effective way to practice team building skills
using VoIP and Web Conferencing tools.
Question # 6
• 88% of students strongly agreed that power
point slides and multimedia tools increased
the learning of the course materials.
Survey Results & Questions
10
9
8
7
6
Strongly Agree (5)
Agree (4)
5
Neutral (3)
4
Disagree (2)
Strongly Disagree (1)
3
2
1
0
Enhanced My
learning
Enhanced
Teamwork
Enhanced
Presentation
Skills
Effectivenss of
Virtual Teams
Teamwork
Experience
Enhanced
Effectiveness of
PPT &
Multimedia
Implications
• Students practiced multimedia and optimum
of web conferencing tools to present their
materials.
• The effectiveness of using VoIP and Web
Conferencing tools were evident.
• Students utilized other presentation such as a
“YouTube” video on team building and
presenting it to the class.
• This was a proven result of students learning.
Recommendation
• Based on the survey results VoIP and Web
Conferencing tools need to be integral part of the
online learning community.
• Based on the small sample size, the study needs
to be replicated with at least 30 participants.
• The replication needs to be done in the business
courses to obtain a minimum of participants.
• Once the study the replicate with a sufficient
numbers of participants the objective would
include introducing VoIP and Web Conferencing
in various schools at the university level.