Principles for Designing Modern Digital Classrooms Supporting Virtual e-Learning Environments

Visual communication and collaboration mediated training creates an educational environment offering several geographically separated end-user groups a taste of presence by introducing virtual mobility for teachers and/or students. That is, the communication technology offers real time learning experiences though teachers and students work and collaborate together without being physically at the same geographical location. Distance learning exploring such learning environments use a blend of technologies mixing for instance face-to-face training, virtual e-learning through Learning Management Systems, video streaming and inclusion of state of the art videoconferencing solutions. Effective deployment of high quality learning experiences and on the fly produced digital content require convenient design of the physical audio, video and data infrastructure, i.e. digital classrooms using proper state of the art AV-solutions. This article describes important features, as well as pedagogical and technical principles for how to design digital classrooms. Properly designed digital classrooms offer teachers and tutors dedicated facilities for effective use of videoconferencing as a convenient synchronous communication channel towards remote groups of distributed students. The following points are included: i) inclusion of balanced presentation modes during a teaching session, ii) vivid presentations require satisfactory eye contact between the teacher/tutor and the remote student groups, iii) the broadcasting phase, iv) selection and adaptation of video projectors, and v) construction of the steering system. Pedagogical concerns targeting the size of various end-user groups as well as the distribution of them are included.