Attention by proxy? Issues in audience awareness for webcasts to distributed groups

Instructor/student interaction in e-learning environments can positively impact both student learning and instructor satisfaction. In online webcast lectures, however, interaction can be difficult because instructors lack basic awareness information about their remote students. Our goal is to better understand the kinds of awareness information that instructors should have if they are to interact frequently and effectively with their students in elearning environments. We conducted an exploratory study - via interviews and observations - of instructor attention in face-to-face classrooms at a large university. Our results imply that a webcast system should provide instructors with overview and detailed data about their students, but that this detailed information should not be displayed publicly.