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Web meetings, webinars and virtual classrooms compared

August 21, 2009 By 4 Comments

Unless I’ve missed something important, there seem to be three distinct uses for real-time online commmunications. The following table represents a first attempt at clarifying the discriminating characteristics of these three:

  Web meetings Webinars Virtual classrooms
Primary purpose To solve problems and make decisions To share ideas and experiences To facilitate learning
Secondary purposes To provide updates To promote the speaker or organiser None
Face-to-face equivalent A short business meeting A session at a seminar or conference A classroom session
Who’s in charge? The chair of the meeting The host and/or presenter The teacher / trainer
Typical activities Presentation of situation updates and proposals; discussion of proposals; decision-making; action planning Presentation of ideas and experiences; demonstrations; polling of audience opinion; Q&A; discussion; participant-to-participant text chat (back channel) Ice  breakers; presentation of formal content; software demos (for IT training); group exercises and activities; discussion; formative and summative assessment
Visual focus Participant webcams; shared documents; slides Slides; presenter webcam; text chat; polls; website tours Slides; electronic whiteboard; questions/polls; shared applications; website tours; text chat
Auditory focus Participants’ vocal contributions Host / presenters’ voices; possibly also participants’ vocal contributions Teacher/trainer’s voice and participants’ vocal contributions
Most frequently used interactive devices Voice; text chat Voice; text chat; polls Voice; text chat; electronic whiteboard; questions/polls; application sharing; break-out rooms
Tangible outputs Agreed actions / minutes Recordings; participant feedback Recordings; participant feedback; assessment scores

If you believe there are other, distinct forms, or feel you could refine or add to this table, I’d love to hear from you.

About Clive Shepherd

Clive Shepherd has written 206 post in this blog.

Clive is a consultant specialising in the application of technology to learning and business communications. He was previously Director of Training and Creative Services for a multinational corporation and co-founder of a major multimedia development company. For four years he was chair of the eLearning Network.


Related posts:

  1. The problem of hybrid meetings
  2. Virtual Meetings With Slideshare
  3. White-Boardom, a Litmus Test for Virtual Classrooms
  4. We can’t go on meeting like this – Part 7 Interactive Meetings
  5. Learning and Skills Group webinars: a success story
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Comments

  1. Matt Lingard says:
    August 21, 2009 at 3:23 pm

    Hi Clive,

    I think it does need another form which is a more learner focused / collaborative / discursive use. It includes elements from virtual classroom (e.g. Purpose: to facilitate learning) & from Meetings (e.g. visual focus). A good example would be a virtual study group. What do you think?

    Matt

  2. clive says:
    August 21, 2009 at 5:55 pm

    Thanks Matt. You’ve found a weakness in my ‘virtual classroom’ analysis, in that it sort of assumes an instructional approach. Of course the medium is suitable for any pedagogy.

  3. Phil Green says:
    September 21, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    You might add “Virtual Action Learning Sets” (Reg Revans style, but online) to the category Matt has proposed.

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