A Prototype Live Virtual Classroom for Shared Tertiary Instruction

The Departments of Computer Science and Information Systems at Rhodes University currently share certain honours-level (fourth year) courses with students from the corresponding departments at the previously disadvantaged University of Fort Hare. These lectures are currently delivered using videoconferencing, which was found to present a number of problems. In order to address these problems and to provide an engaging and collaborative learning environment, a customised live virtual classroom (LVC) was developed. An evaluation of the prototype indicated that, although the LVC did not entirely solve the identified problems, it did offer some distinct advantages.