Several strategic documents express high expectations about the potential of technology in teaching and learning online in higher education (Uninett, 2009; Allen & Seaman, 2011; NMC Horizon Project, 2011). The teacher is to be the one who organizes this entire online learning environment. Educational desktop video conferencing systems allow geographically separated learners to participate and work together in an online classroom. We know that todays’ students are part time working and studying (Bates & Sangrà, 2011). Since the end of the 1980s Stord/Haugesund University College (SHUC) has offered in-service courses for teachers on “ICT in learning”. This paper is based on a study which investigates students in net based in-service courses in ICT and learning for teachers and their experiences with desktop video conferencing (DVC). Our approach is a question of educational renewal - to evaluate and refine our online teaching environments. In this paper we present some of our students’ expressions, both challenges and decisive elements based on their participation in this open, distributed and collaborative learning environment.

Since the 1990s, studies on different net based environments have chosen a more socio-cultural learning paradigm as point of departure (Koschmann, 1996; Dillenbourg, Baker, Blaye, & O'Malley, 1995). With this backbone we emphasise the context, environment and culture surrounding the learner. It is a great challenge to create successful active and collaborative situations in a classroom - transferring this methods to an online environment, makes the task even more complex. In such a situation the composition and orchestrating of the entire working environment will, according to Salomon (1992), be more important than the design of the technology. Salomon argues that we are dependent on seeing the totality of the learning session, “the curriculum, the activities that students engage in, students’ perceptions of the learning goals in the classroom, their social interactions, the teacher’s behavior, and more” (Salomon, 1992, s. 63). We agree that this totality of the learning situation plays a decisive role on the educational profit to empower multicultural users in such an educational ecosystem.

The purpose of the study is to evaluate and refine the use of DVC in online courses. Changing the communicative ecology of our daily practices influence the way in which we interact (Säljö, 2010). How is desktop video conferencing changing the scale, scope and the dynamics of teachers and learners’ working days? What new knowledge practices are developing from the use of DVC – ranging from teaching to the active collaboration and sharing of ideas? - ICT influences the life streams of teaching and learning - and is obviously a part of an educational ecosystem. We know that the social construction of pedagogical ICT discourse and design has to be considered to be still ‘under construction’ (Granberg, 2011, s. 5). Through this research we want to develop the quality of our teaching.

More specifically, the research question is: What do students say about DVC and to what extent has DVC enhanced the quality of online teaching and learning?

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