Rather than trying to fit this into a series of Twitters, here are a few off-the-top notes about Elluminate (and other synchronous online classroom tools) based on my experience with them.

We (at the University of Alaska) chose Elluminate as our statewide application only after a long and voluminous evaluation of what was out there and pilots and small-scale use of two major competitors (Macromedia Breeze/Adobe Connect and Horizon Live).

Our number one concern was that we wanted an application that worked well over low-bandwidth connections, including satellite latency– many of our students are in remote Alaskan locations with consumer satellite or distributed satellite connections. In this respect, although Adobe Connects asynchronous tools were attractive, and had a following, it simply could not compete. Elluminate Live is front-heavy (the initial download of the Java application the first time a user connects to a server, but only the first time) is quite large (in some areas we distribute the client on CD) but the stability and ability to deal with low-quality connections is unequalled. To my knowledge no other platform has the same kind of caching/store and forward ability that Elluminate does.

A few other features that tended to be lacking in other competitors:

• authentication through Blackboard is possible (but NOT required– perhaps 30% of our users come through Bb, 40% through another proprietary system, and 30% at large)
• structured recordings available through a single URL (from the recordings link students can browse the calendar to replay sessions), ability to handle 50+ users (obviously, classes are not typically that large… but for us, other uses of Elluminate have been key to getting reluctant users in– we’ve had working groups of 50-75 admin/staff/faculty before, and presentations and guest presentations can reach over 100)
• Presence indicators — the ability to “see” more of what is happening in the classroom. Not just emoticons and hand-raising, but the halos that show who is typing in the chat, who is loading images, etc. makes time management and understanding of the class activities *much* easier
• Granular control of tools– there are times when it is very useful to be able to control what tools are available… not just for control, but because instructors can streamline and not be distracted with tools they won’t be paying attention to
• Breakout rooms and multiple moderators– our philosophy is all about getting students to “do” and instructors to lecture less… the ability to use breakout rooms with multiple “moderators” in each room and easily move students and/or material back and forth is a key to facilitating student activities
• Half-duplex audio– although Elluminate can be set to allow up to four people to talk at once, the vast majority of our instructors prefer the single-speaker model, where one person at a time “has the floor,” and they leave it that way even now
• Instant polling tools, which make it easy to “sense” the room and be more flexible and spontaneous when teaching.

That’s some of the good stuff that separated Elluminate (at the time) from others. Some of the more touted Elluminate features for education, particularly video and the quiz tools, see almost no use at all. Part of that is philosophical– as an organization we don’t really believe that the video capability available in these applications (even with good connections) adds significantly to courses; part is operational– the quiz tool is simply clunky and it’s just easier to use other tools.

Support has generally been quite good– the biggest issues almost always involve lack of Java on student computers and/or lack of privileges to allow the Elluminate system to install it if it isn’t– but support is still needed!

And Elluminate is expensive. They do offer steep discounts (we run Elluminate on our own servers, I assume they are flexible in their hosted offerings as well), but it isn’t free. However, as much as I gravitate towards free and small tools to fill needs (the personal living network), this is an area where we really felt that paying for a commercial system provided significant advantages.

In my opinion, playing the part of Captain Obvious, it depends on an organization’s needs. Is the sync classroom service mission critical and aimed at significant adoption or is it an ancillary tool or is it just another arrow in the quiver? Will the system also be used to serve internal, admin, staff, or external presentation needs, where large populations of users need to be accommodated?

The real issue with any of these tools isn’t finding one that works, it is learning– and then teaching colleagues– how to teach in a way that takes advantage of the capabilities and doesn’t merely replicate the lecture mode in a distributed format. That’s deadly. As I always say, the only thing more deadly than the PowerPoint drone and lecture model is that same model through a mediating tool like Elluminate…