Video Conferencing Effective or Not

A study by two university professors has raised some doubts about the effectiveness of video conferencing. I politely disagree.

The participation in a video conference, once you get the hang of it, is for me just like having a quick face to face chat with a colleague, and cuts down on driving, carbon emissions and more.

Video conferencing done well, is a very effective business tool and one tha we'll be seeing more of in the near future put into use by companies and families to cut down on travel and upgrade from plain old phone calls.

Comments

[Brian]

Here are the top points of their paper:

--Important decisions may suffer if videoconferencing is used to make them without adjusting the process to take its differences into account

--Videoconferencing may not be appropriate for decision making when some stakeholders are present face-to-face and others attend via video, because these two groups are likely to process information differently.

--Videoconferencing equipment may be improved by the addition of features that reduce cognitive workload, such as support for turn taking, audio localization, and personal distance location.

--Videoconference presenters can use heuristic cues to increase the influence of their message.

Are you really going to disagree with those points? Even video conferencing experts would agree with those.

If you want to criticise the article, it would be for stating the obvious, well-known issues/limitations surrounding videoconferencing, not disagree with them for being incorrect.