Videoconferencing in its most basic form is the transmission of video and audio back and forth between two or more physically separate locations. This is accomplished through the use of cameras (to capture and send video from your local endpoint), video displays such as TV monitors (to display video received from remote endpoints), microphones (to capture and send audio from your local endpoint), and speakers (to play audio received from remote endpoints). (1)

The brain of this whole operation, or the equipment that actually handles the processing of all this information is called the CODEC (Coder/DECoder). The CODEC takes analog signals from the various pieces of equipment

The newest application of videoconferencing is the widely desired concept of telecommuting. Telecommuting is a fast growing trend in many large urban areas, as companies and employees realize the many benefits to be gained by this. Videoconferencing can provide a natural, productivity-enhancing improvement to telecommuting and can bridge the gap between employees who are at home and those in the office. Currently videoconferencing in the home can be done using ISDN lines. However, the home use of videoconferencing will not become widespread until increased bandwidth to the home is in place, using such technologies as cable modems or DSL. Once the bandwidth is available, videoconferencing will become widely used in the home, especially for document conferencing when two employees must jointly work on one shared document.

Although there are multiple standards relating to videoconferencing, the two "umbrella" standards include H.320 and H.323. H.320 is the ITU standard for videoconferencing over ISDN and fractional T1 lines. This is the earlier of the two standards and currently the most commonly used (2). The newcomer is H.323. It is creating quite a buzz in the market as it is the ITU standard for videoconferencing over IP, or the Internet (3). More and more videoconferencing vendors are concentrating their products on this standard because of a growing demand by the business community. Businesses want to be able to use their already established networks to conduct their videoconferencing on. Why? Because there is an overall notion that it is "free".

In another case, remote participant(s) may be additions to the instruction itself, such as expert speakers, or co-instructors (9). As with any team-teaching, a cooperative balance of instructional duties is required but this can be made more complicated if video presence cannot compete with physical presence. For instance, instructor accessibility in the physical classroom can easily overtake the presence and command of the remote instructor, encouraging side conversations and inattention to remote instruction.

Microphones should be of sufficient quality to pick up the speaker's voice naturally (in terms of volume and physical position) and without excessive background noise. Most systems today feature what is known as "echo cancellation" and "noise suppression" where these issues are easily remedied. Microphones and speakers should be positioned so that they do not cause feedback and interference with each other. Many times, if the volume is too loud, and/or if the microphones are placed to close to the speakers where they pick up the sound from the other site(s), participating sites will hear an echo of themselves because their audio is getting sent back to them. Using directional microphones will also help limit this type of interference. (7)

In one case, remote participants may be additional students that the instructor must now accommodate in terms of instruction and try to integrate with any physically-present participants into one virtual student group. Remote participants should not feel that they are getting less out of the class than the physically-present students and the students who are on-site with the instructor should not feel that the presence of remote students is distracting from their instruction. (8)

In the specific case where more than one location is participating remotely (multi-point meeintgs), several factors affect the success of the remote participation. These include the view participants have of each other, how well participants can hear each other and be heard by each other, and how participants determine who is leading the meeting or "has the floor" at any given time.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Hollywood Squares, CEO VidiSolutions, Microsoft's Netmeeting, IP Internet, IP Secondly, ISDN IP, ISDN Standards, IP ISDN, , H320 ITU, videoconferencing classroom, remote participants, audio video, physical presence, itu standard, travel costs, participants feel, eye contact, remote participants feel, alternative video source, alternative video, ability handle multi-point, remote participation, itu standard videoconferencing, success remote participation,
Approximate Word count = 2646
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)