Again, it will be situational– our students are very dispersed and the commodity internet to them isn’t reliable enough to route video… asking them to travel significant distances to sit in a room and deal with the intense transactional distance (search for that term for research) of videoconference just doesn’t work well.

I do like that the shininess of videoconferencing, which is like a jewelled bauble in the eyes of administrators, often leads to significant bandwidth upgrades to remote sites

In the first case, I don’t believe the talking head video adds significantly compared to the resources, etc. consumed (except, perhaps, in elementary school situations). Simple audioconference, in that situation, is cheaper and much more accessible.

In the second case, I again wonder why bother with all the machinery? It’s like fitting out all the gear needed for a six-week trek through Africa to stay the night at a park down the street.

The minute one starts talking about adding whiteboard activities or the presence indicators or a backchannel, etc. to the lecture, then of course it is a different story!

When I say I don’t have a problem with lecture mode, I mean it… there have been great teachers for thousands of years. But I also mean lecture to involve give and take with students, dialogue, dialectic, etc.

In any case, I/we have no desire to force different modes on instructors… if they are not inclined to change or desire to do something that they aren’t yet able to do, I just don’t see the POINT in forcing them into Elluminate.