From Stanford to Moscow: iChat and iSight

At 7:00 AM in Room 127, one of the five Advanced Resource Classrooms (ARC) on the first floor of Wallenberg Hall.

Reinhold Steinbeck opens his G4 PowerBook, connects it to the two rear-projection, large display screens of the ARC, plugs in his iSight camera, and starts iChat AV, using Stanford's WiFi network. Only seconds later he is greeted by oohs and aahs and intermittent laughter, all coming from the other side of the world -- Stanford's regional office in Moscow.

Researchers from the Distance Learning Laboratory at the Russian Academy of Education (RAE), as well as several research assistants and course instructors from regional universities in Russia, have gathered for a three-day training session on SCIL's Distance Learning research project (Initiative on Distance Learning (IDL)

This comprehensive program evaluation, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and done in collaboration with Stanford University's Institute for International Studies (IIS) and the Russian Academy of Education, assesses changes in opinion formulation, critical thinking, writing, and attitudes toward social science inquiry. The program includes students enrolled in a Stanford University political science course taught at ten Russian universities. The research team is also evaluating related facets of cross-cultural distance learning initiatives.

Using video conferencing as part of his work is not new for Steinbeck, who has directed globally distributed research projects for the past 13 years.

" As part of the Wallenberg Global Learning Network (WGLN) at SCIL we have been using high-end IP-based video-conferencing systems for several years with researchers and students at the WGLN partner universities in Sweden and Germany," explains Steinbeck. "While these systems are great, they are far too expensive for our Russian partners."

While video conferencing is no guarantee for better learning or improved teamwork, it has tremendous potential in boosting communication and collaboration over distance and across cultures, Steinbeck said.

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