Use of Elluminate for conducting online
office hours (Matt Haley)
For the past three semesters, we have used an elearning
and web-conferencing tool called Elluminate to
conduct office hours. This program has already seen widespread adoption among
online divisions of universities, but we believe it has a place in the
on-ground class as well. Based on our experience teaching with Elluminate, we see its key strengths as portability and
interactivity.
Any computer platform with the Java Runtime Environment (JRE)
installed can easily access the online office by going to the appropriate web url in the browser. This means
that students on and off campus can visit our office hours, so long as they have
an internet connection. This has allowed us to schedule office hours at more
convenient times for instructors and students alike--often in the evenings or
on weekends--leading to greatly increased student participation. The
portability of Elluminate is especially helpful for
students with busy schedules during the day or who live far away from campus,
many of whom have enthusiastically told us that online office hours were their
only viable source of getting help in the course.
The interactive aspects of Elluminate
are best conveyed through a demonstration:
Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfZdtf-J9U8
Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV1bhbjd794
(Please view in full screen and in 1080p resolution.)
This video, which was made by recording the screen during one of
our class's online office hours, uses several programs in conjunction with Elluminate. The three windows that appear continuously are
the main Elluminate window (left), a WYSIWIG Latex
editor for writing equations (top right), and a webcam feed (bottom right). Elluminate has the capability of sharing desktop
applications, allowing all of the students to see the contents of the upper
right equation pane in real time. Several auxiliary programs are used as well,
such as the browser, from which images of homework problems are snapshotted onto the Elluminate
whiteboard, and a calculator such as Mathematica, Matlab, or Maple.
The basic flow of office hours is as follows: students sign into
the classroom and click the “raise hand” button to establish a queue by which
the instructor answers their questions in order. Next, a student is called upon
to ask a question (either conceptual or from homework), after which the text of
this question is copied onto the central whiteboard using the Elluminate “snapshot” feature. Then, using text or voice,
the instructor interacts with the students, prompting them for possible
solutions to the problem and writing equations or explaining concepts as
necessary. At times the instructor will use a calculator program to solve
problems or check a student's work when he is stuck. During this process,
students can communicate with each other in private channels or with the entire
room, facilitating cooperative work even though the participants may be far
away from each other in physical location.