Typical uses

• Meetings with more than one or two participants at a site
• Thesis defenses where external reviewer is not able to attend in person
• Distributed education courses where students are able to congregate at a few remote sites.

Advantages

• In general the superior video and audio quality enable you to teach and interact more effectively with a larger single group of remote students.
• Provides the students with a better feeling of "being there in the classroom" than other interactive technologies.
• Both students and instructors generally find videoconferencing technology easier to operate than other interactive technologies.

Disadvantages

• The initial setup and ongoing maintenance of videoconferencing hardware can be intimidating for non-technical users.
• Videoconferencing generally requires students to travel to specifically equipped videoconferencing facilities.
• The initial investment in the technology can be quite expensive.
• Using Videoconferencing technology for tasks outside of presenting audio and video can be complicated by compatibility issues between different models/brands of VCU.

Things to Consider

VCUs can also be used in conjunction with other synchronous technologies such as web conferencing or chat tools to expand the interactivity options available to you and your students.

Teaching using videoconferencing will require more planning on the part of the instructor, as:

• many regular face-to-face classroom technologies such as whiteboards and PowerPoint are either not available or must be specially adapted/connected to be used effectively with video conferencing.
• there IS a possibility of technical failure interrupting the class, so instructors should be prepared with a "Plan B".