Adobe Connect Community

Henry Lion’s introductory meteorology course depends heavily on students working together in small groups. Henry knows it is important for students to learn to work together and collaborate, but he gets tired of constantly being bombarded by e-mail from students complaining about not being able to arrange a time when everyone in their assigned group is free to meet. Henry has found that as tuition increases, more and more students have to work part time, which makes it much more difficult for them to meet with group members outside of class. However, Henry is not willing to give up his precious instruction time for students to hold their meetings during class, so he decides to try desktop Web-based videoconferencing to solve some of the problems.

One assignment that Henry usually gives the class is for each small group (usually three to four students) to develop a two-minute presentation explaining one of the concepts in the current chapter. The group then has to give their presentation to the class on the day that their topic is discussed. Henry decides that this assignment will be a good test for the Adobe Connect system.

A Meeting Room for Each Student Group

He creates an Adobe Connect meeting room for each small student group, appointing one student in each group as the group leader for the room and adding that student as a Host to the Participant List in the Connect Central Web interface. Having a Host for each room allows the students complete access to all of the tools in the Adobe Connect meeting room. Henry also sets the rooms so that rest of the students will automatically be promoted to Presenters when they enter the room. Henry notifies students of their group meeting room URL through e-mail. In the e-mail message, he also includes the address for the documentation and tutorials at the Penn State Adobe Connect Community.

Promoting Team Leaders to Hosts

The first part of the Adobe Connect assignment that Henry gives the students is to hold a group meeting in their Adobe Connect rooms and choose a topic for their next presentations, then write a short, one-page group paper about what their topic will be and which tools they used during the Adobe Connect meeting to facilitate their discussion. Some of the students have Web cameras and microphones, but most do not. Henry wants to see if having to communicate by typing in the Chat and Note pods will be a problem.

Small Group Meeting Room Layout

The papers Henry receives from the students show that the Adobe Connect test is an overwhelming success. Students who did not have Web cameras or microphones used their cell phones as well as the Chat pod, Note pod, and Whiteboard to communicate with their teammates. Many cite their experience with IM and text messaging as good practice for using text to communicate in Adobe Connect. Students used the Whiteboard and Note pods to record their ideas as they talked and chatted. Most students especially liked not having to spend time traveling to a common location to meet face-to-face. The exception to this was students who live within a block of each other who would have preferred to meet face-to-face instead of having to go through a technology interface. Students also felt that they wasted less time by meeting in Adobe Connect, were more focused, and spent more time working on the topic at hand.

Students said they thought the Adobe Connect tools were easy to understand and use. Many did access the documentation at the Web site, but only read enough to get started using Adobe Connect (see Getting Started under the top menu). None of the students indicated that they had read all of the documentation. Many of the students also said that they would like to attend Adobe Connect training sessions focused specifically on student uses of the resource.

The second part of the assignment is to meet in the Adobe Connect rooms and create a presentation based on the concept the group has chosen. One of the rules Henry has set for this assignment is that everyone has to play a role in creating and giving the presentation. He has allowed four hours for students to complete this activity and has made necessary adjustments in other assignments to accommodate this new assignment. In addition to grading the students on their presentation in the face-to-face class, Henry has asked students to evaluate each other within their groups on how well they each participated in the group activity. (For more information on collaborative learning, please see the iStudy for Success! module at http://istudy.psu.edu/FirstYearModules/CooperativeLearn/Materials.html.)

Student evaluations of the assignment are again overwhelmingly positive. Henry not only had fewer problems coping with the logistics of getting students to meet in their groups, but the students also self-reported spending more time on task and working better together.