VIDEO CONFERENCING - A SOLUTION TO THE MULTI-CAMPUS LARGE CLASSES PROBLEM

Whether due to amalgamation or export education strategies, many unive rsities now face a problem of delivering subjects, programs and course s across more than one campus, There are significant costs to students , staff and faculty of this teaching and administrative duplication, I nformation and communication technologies offer potential to achieve e conomies of scale but the effects on other things like student learnin g are not so clear The objective of this paper is to report the outcom es of a video conferencing trial in an undergraduate mass lecture cont ext, The effects on students and staff, and support issues are highlig hted through a formative and summative evaluation, Surveys, focus grou ps, interviews, video recordings, exam results and reflective diaries provided data for the evaluations. The results will be useful both for decision-makers considering a video conferencing solution to duplicat ion, as well as for staff potentially involved in using the video conf erencing in a mass lecture context.