Academic Virtual Meetings Management with a Synthesis Builder

Abstract

In this paper, we propose asynchronous virtual meeting (AVM) as a tool that can be integrated to virtual campuses, university Web sites or e-learning platforms. It is a way for participants from academics and students to discuss for a defined period, one or more topics. The AVM participants have to give, respectively, objective and punctual interventions as opinions, responses chosen from a proposed list and/or suggestions. In real time, specific processes for data analysis give a progressive synthesis of the discussions visible for all participants. The proposed tool can avoid different problems and constraints that the higher education meetings organizers are faced to. We developed a prototype for the tool that was tested with a group of participants from our university. The results were interesting and showed contribution to enhance communication and decision making in higher education.