Videoconferencing for Throntons - Assignment Example

VIDEOCONFERENCING FOR THRONTON’S DISCUSSION OF CURRENT BUSINESS ISSUES From the contemporary perspective, the deployment of audio and video communication technologies has become a major instrument for widening the reach of training and staff development in organizations. Practically, collaborative meetings became a frequent and necessary aspect of work in most companies and as identified by Bell, Martin, and Clarke (2004), the opportunities presented by technology for developing and delivering learning and training are outstripping the ability of the organizations to assimilate and exploit them. In 1999 Verizon white paper indicated that 37% of employee time in the United States is spent attending meetings (Verizon, 1999). Overall, it is estimated over 11 million business meeting occurring on a daily basis (Verizon, 1999). However, similar study in 2003 indicated that the majority of face-to-face meeting participants believe that meetings are a waste of time (Verizon, 2003). This situation reveals two organizational problems. First, the amount of time that people spend in meetings makes it difficult for them to participate in most of them. Second, it can be difficult to remember what was said or accomplished in each one. These problems arise primarily from how participants attend meetings and how archives of meetings are created for later remembering and information retrieval. As participants are frequently traveling to attend face-to-face meetings, the cost-benefit ratio of attending meetings is also soaring. This in turn gives rise to a feeling of “wasted time.” Similar situation when too much time, efforts and finances are spent ineffectively occurs with corporate training of personnel at Thronton’s company. Practically, for Thronton’s company yearly cost of corporate personnel training exceeds a million dollars due to traveling and accommodation expenses for hundreds managers. Global trainers are brought to Thronton’s training center in Kentucky two times per year to ensure that qualifications of company’s employees are current and adequately correspond to Thronton’s business needs. The training and development at Thronton’s is conducted in the several areas that are critical for any type of business, particularly: (1) New employee orientation, including an introduction to personnel and workplace practices and overall college policies. (2) Management skills in supervising employees and implementing employment practices, such as selection and hiring practices, employee appraisals, and conflict resolution. (3) Administrative support, such as data entry, filing, business correspondence, and administrative record keeping, including budget and payroll. (4) Computer use skills in computer literacy, security, and Human Resource Management (HRM) software. (5) Customer relations, dispute resolution, information dissemination. (6) Employee policies and practices, including Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) practices, affirmative action, workplace diversity, and sexual harassment awareness. In addressing the need to provide wider access to professional development and offer a more flexible form of training, Thronton’s company should develop a three-year training and development strategy addressed entirely through videoconferencing technology, particularly desktop video conference (DVC) as a main method on delivering training session and business knowledge. The globally-based trainers will be providing their usual training sessions through videoconferencing, which in the long run is definitely will be a great benefits and investment of time and funds. During the next 3 years, it is expected that videoconferencing technologies not only enhance training and development strategy of Thronton’s but support overall remote participation and group collaboration in the company. DISSCUSSION OF VIDEOCONFERENCING AS PROPOSED SOLUTION Digital revolution transformed forever the conventional workspace, “wiring” it with Blackberries and iPhones, instant messaging, and Bluetooth connections. Modern employees are now more connected with their colleagues, subordinates and supervisors than ever before. According to survey conducted by Junco and Mastrodicasa (2007), 97% of the college students of the “millennial” generation (those born between 1983 and 1994) own a computer and 94% own a cell phone. Practically, it means that this generation responds positively to latest technological innovations transforming contemporary workplace. Videoconferencing is one of the newer forms of distance learning; it allows real-time communication between groups or individuals in different places using synchronous two-way connections of two or more locations through audio and video equipment (Rayler, 2010). Videoconferencing and its wide applications in companies, from daily meetings and collaborations to real-time consultations and training sessions, is one of the most effective methods to deliver information and share knowledge. According to Merrick (2005) a videoconference facilitated by an expert in a given field can provide novel, motivating, and rich content that could never be presented in the same amount of time in a traditional manner by an instructor. In her discussion of training delivery methods, Donna Abernathy (1997) admitting that lecture and videotapes are still used to deliver information, the Internet, videoconferencing and corporate networks have been tapped as successful ways of educating employees. Certainly one factor in this shift to video conferencing is cost. Abernathy pointed out, “Quite frankly, distance learning enables companies to reach more employees at a lower cost” (p.40). More specifically technology-based training cuts training expenses, improves productivity, reduces trainee backlogs, increases access to subject matter experts, makes training more flexible and accesses alternative instructional resources. One ingredient that has been found absolutely mandatory in utilizing this technique by othersand by Abernathy (1997) is building in the element of interactivity into each distance learning course. According to Abernathy (1997), the business rule of thumb is to add creative and engaging interactive activities every five to seven minutes. In order to accomplish this, a compressed video is often displayed with the opportunity for participants at remote sites to interact with it either among themselves or between remote sites. The activities are often short, intense, well planned and meaningful. It is also important that these experiences match the objectives of the training experience. Another technique that should be considered in planning such an activity is incorporation the process of “humanizing” into the experience. Abernathy (1997) defines “humanizing” as focusing on the importance of each individual and at the same time generating group rapport. It lets the participants know that although they are separated from the trainer by distance their needs are important and met. She feels the first few minutes of a video conference session are critical since that is when the participants get acquainted with the instructor, other trainees, equipment and ground rules. Videoconferencing technology allows real-time communication between groups or individuals in different places using synchronous two-way connections of two or more locations through audio and video equipment (Rayler, 2010). Numerous computer applications such as PowerPoint, Adobe, text messaging and various media are incorporated into videoconferencing, complimenting the latter significantly as additional instructional materials. One advantage of videoconferencing during corporate training is that it enhances the experiences of employees through its ability to allow them to interact remotely with other colleagues and trainers (Gyorke, 2006; Wainfan and Davis, 2005). In addition videoconferencing provides access to information and resources offered by training companies and facilities that one might not have otherwise been able to obtain or participate in due to distance and cost (Wainfan and Davis, 2005; Rayler, 2010). In addition, due to its nature videoconferencing provides multicultural and diversity approaches to corporate training because in many cases it connects participants, trainers and guest speakers from different geographic locations (Townes-Young & Ewing, 2005). Under some circumstances, videoconferencing assists employees with disabilities by improving their access to both other participants and necessary training resources and procedures as well as facilitating support networks, increasing the flexibility of the learning and reducing isolation (Rayler, 2010). Practically, this rich communication technology offers new possibilities for both companies and training centers and other institutions including connection with guest speakers, participation in round tables, and inter-department or multi-company project collaborations. From the financial viewpoint, the application of videoconferencing as a main training medium significantly facilitates attendance at training sessions. For training sessions that include face-to-face communication, modern videoconferencing is capable to become competitive alternative to actual physical presence of remote employees. Besides videoconferencing reduces travel costs, travel time and transforms any training session attendance into a more convenient process, making regular training meeting likely to occur. Regular training that might not have been approved due to travel costs and time constraints can be attained through videoconferencing. Furthermore, videoconferencing constitutes a rather inexpensive technology to implement with the now relatively budget friendly computer video cameras and microphones. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR COMMITEE In order to become a realistic alternative to face-to-face communication, video conferences must be capable of revealing subtle level activities of participants. The most basic video conferencing systems use a single camera to capture the scene at the local site and send that single view to the remote site. Due to its simplicity and low cost, this setup is also the most commonly used setup (Polycom, 2010). This is also known as the “talking head” form of video conferencing. Fish et al. used this common setup to explore informal communication across a distance in the VideoWindow system (Fish et al, 1990). By capturing a high aspect ratio video from a specially designed camera and displaying it at the remote site on a large display (8 feet wide and 3 feet high) they realized a sense of co-presence without physical proximity. This was one of the first video conferencing systems to show strong evidence that “technology can provide, to a degree, an increased sense of shared space between remote coworkers” (Fish et al, 1990, p.9). Single static or pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) camera based systems fail to provide peripheral information and do not scale well to multiple users. Therefore, some systems use two cameras: a static camera for a wide view and a controllable camera for close-ups (Yamaashi, et al 1996). In this case, the remote user is shown both of these views either in a picture-in-picture format or separately with links (Yamaashi et al, 1996; Liu et al, 2002). Foote et al. engineered a panoramic video camera, called FlyCam, by combining various inexpensive video cameras in an array (Foote and Kimber, 2000). They also proposed methods to correct lens distortion and merge videos to create a panoramic video. The FlySpec system used this camera in combination with a PTZ camera to show both wide and detailed views of meetings to remote participants (Liu et al, 2002). The system shows a fixed wide view of the scene and allows users to select any circular or rectangular region in that view. Once selected, the PTZ camera moves and zooms to show the detail of the selected region below the overview window as shown on Figure 1 (see Appendix). A large body of research has shown that several limitations of videoconferencing can potentially be addressed through better understanding of the task at hand, technological advancements, and innovative designs for a range of tasks. For instance, multiple camera-views could possibly convey peripheral information more effectively (Yamaashi et al, 1996) or a head-orientation based camera could support subtle communication using eye gaze (Takemae et al, 2005). Researchers have expressed mixed opinion about the role of videoconferencing in communication. However, there is growing evidence in support of utility of video. It is believed that visual information from collaborative meetings if captured more effectively can lead to very effective training and collaborating strategies within organizations, like Thronton’s. APPENDIX Figure 1. Left-top: Panoramic video camera FlyCam, Left-bottom: FlySpec system consisting of a PTZ camera and a FlyCam, Right-top: A wide view captured by FlyCam with rectangular region selected by a user, Right-bottom: A zoomedin view of the rectangular region captured by the PTZ camera (Foote and Kimber, 2000, Liu et al, 2002). REFERENCES Abemathy, D. (1997). A start-up guide to distance learning. Training & Development, 57(12), 39-47. Bell, M., Martin, G., & Clarke, T. (2004). Engaging in the future of e-learning: scenarios-based approach. In G. Martin (Ed.), International developments in e-learning. Bradford, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. R. S. Fish, R. E. Kraut, and B. L. Chalfonte. 1990. The videowindow system in informal communication. ACM CSCW, pages 1–11. J. Foote and D. Kimber. 2000. Flycam: practical panoramic video. ACM Multimedia, pages 487–488. Gyorke, A. 2006. Faculty guide to teaching through videoconferencing [White Paper]. Retrieved Sept 28, 2010, from Junco, R., & Mastrodicasa, J. 2007. Connecting to the net.generation: What higher education professionals need to know about today’s students. Washington, DC: NASPA. Q. Liu, D. Kimber, J. Foote, L. Wilcox, and J Boreczky. 2002. Flyspec: a multi-user video camera system with hybrid human and automatic control. ACM Multimedia, pages 484–492. Polycom. 2010. Polycom, Retrieved May 22, 2010 from Rayler A.C. 2010. Videoconferencing: Technology, Impact and Applications. Media and Communications - Technologies, Policies and Challenges, Nova Science Pub Inc Takemae, K. Otsuka, and J. Yamato. 2005. Automatic video editing system using stereo based head tracking for multiparty conversation. ACM CHI, pages 1817–1820 Townes-Young, K. & Ewing, V. (2005). NASA LIVE creating a global classroom. THE Journal, 33(4), 43-45. Verizon. 1999. Meetings in America: a study of trends, costs, and attitudes toward business travel and teleconferencing, and their impact on productivity. Retrieved Sept 22, 2010 from K. Yamaashi, J. R. Cooperstock, T. Narine, and W. A. S. Buxton. 1996. Beating the limitations of camera-monitor mediated telepresence with extra eyes. ACM CHI, pages 50–57. Wainfan L., Davis P.K. 2005. Challenges in virtual collaboration: videoconferencing, audioconferencing, and computer-mediated communications, Rand Corporation. Read More