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The idea of virtual meetings is far from new, with the first video phone released by AT&T in the 70’s, making it possible to conduct business with remote colleagues, reducing travel costs and environmental aggravation. Recently, videoconferencing has become part of long-distance learning environments. Professionals, educators and students use online meetings to enhance their collaboration from different parts of the world, as well as the learning experience. This paper explores a set of online meetings produced by the FlashMeeting videoconferencing system, based on the analysis of samples of virtual meetings held by different communities of practice. We report on communication patterns emerging from various models of online meetings, such as social and technical meetings, teachers-learners meetings, project meetings, peer-to-peer meetings and seminars, over a three-year experimental period. FlashMeeting is a light-weight video conferencing tool in a web-browser applet, transmitting video and audio of the broadcaster and regularly updating thumbnail images of the other participants, adopting a turn-taking approach with only one person talking at a time (see http://www.flashmeeting.com/). Other interaction channels are provided via text chat, emoticons, as well as a voting system. The analysis shows the diverse use of audio and video, emoticons, voting and chat messages to achieve different communicative goals; emoticons are mostly used for social support and building a community, whilst audiovisual interaction is mostly used for actual work collaboration. The choice of these communication channels also varies according to the meeting type. The results also indicate that the exploitation of these communication channels may vary according to the nature of individuals; others prefer predominantly the audiovisual channel to make their point, whilst others remain silent contributing a great amount of text to convey their views and underline their participation in the event.

Stream: Technology in Community

Paper: Shape of Live On-line Meetings, The

Dr Peter J. Scott is the Head of the Centre for New Media at the Knowledge Media Institute of the Open University. Peter's research group prototypes the application of new technologies and media to learning at all levels. Peter’s current research interests range widely across knowledge and media research. Three key threads at the moment are: tele-presence; streaming media systems; and ubiquity. He has a BA (1983) and PhD (1987) in Psychology. Before joining the Open University in 1995, Dr Scott lectured in Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Sheffield. He joined the OU to help launch the innovative Knowledge Media research agenda. In this new field he has over 15 recent major research grants from the UK EPSRC. Recent EU grants include the successful EU Network of Excellence, Prolearn, where he serves on the executive board. The Prolearn network also supports two of Peter’s hottest current technology developments: Hexagon and FlashMeeting. The FlashMeeting research into effective live and online events is also now a core element of the Open University’s OpenLearn LabSpace which was launched in October 2006. He has a strong portfolio of over 40 conventional research publications in this field.

Eleftheria Tomadaki is a research fellow in the Knowledge Media Institute (Open University, UK), focusing on collaborative media, e-Learning and social software. Her role involves the integration of the video conferencing tool FlashMeeting with the Moodle e-learning environment and the development of a theory and analytical framework to underpin the study of large-scale synchronous collaborative media, in the context of the Open Content Initiative. She received her PhD in information extraction by the University of Surrey. Her PhD research investigated the merging of information from texts describing video content for video annotation by employing cross-document coreference techniques and introduced a new and challenging scenario - film and the variety of collateral text genres narrating its content, including unrestricted sets of events.

Kevin Quick is a Research Fellow in the Knowledge Media Institute at the Open University, UK. His work focuses on the development and research into new collaborative multimedia tools, and their application into various types of online communities. His current works forms part of the ProLearn European Network of Excellence. Current areas of investigation include the FlashMeeting video conferencing tool, FlashVlog video blogging tool and Hexagon video presence tool. In addition to his knowledge in new media systems Kevin also has a background in electronics and a PhD in new material technologies from Imperial College, London.

Jon Linney is a research project officer in the Centre for New Media, at the Knowledge Media Institute (Open University, UK). His research interests focus on collaborative media and social software. He has extensive experience in Macromedia Flash based technologies and a background in design and art. His recent work involves the research and development of new collaborative multimedia tools including the FlashMeeting video conferencing tool, FlashVlog video blogging tool and the Hexagon ambient video awareness and presence tool. He is involved in a number of projects, investigating open sensemaking communities, re-usable learning objects, webcasting large-scale live events, educational games and radio frequency identification.