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Telepresence in Synchronous Distance Education Sessions

We have developed an application to explore the use of Telepresence in synchronous Distance Education sessions. The professor and the remote group of students share three forms of collaboration that are seamlessly integrated in the application: 1) Streamed live Audio and Video 2) A tool that allows the instructor to present slides to the remote students and 3) A networked virtual environment that allows the instructors and the students to interact around a virtual object in a collaborative manner. In order to asses the pedagogical impact of the tool, an experiment is being conducted using the application in an actual Computer Graphics course at Eafit University. Half of the students meet the instructor in traditional face-to-face sessions using blackboard and PowerPoint presentations. The other half take part of distance sessions using the telepresence application. The Teaching for Understanding framework, developed by a group of researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is being used to asses the level of understanding of the students in both groups. A panel of experts grades the students levels of understanding (naive, novice, apprentice or master) in the different dimensions of understanding (method, purpose, contents and form). We aim at showing how the combination of new technologies (multimedia plus virtual reality) and an appropriate pedagogical framework (Teaching for Understanding) support synchronous distance education sessions. This paper presents preliminary results of the experiment and our conclusions after using the tool. TOPICS +