While the author was at the United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs;
Colorado, the author taught an Introduction to Aviation course at the School of
Engineering and Information Technology located at the University of New South Wales at
the Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra. This paper describes the method of
teaching this course via video conference. In this instance, teaching via video conference is
markedly different to the techniques employed in distance education. This paper will
describe the experience of teaching via video conference as well as some of the perceived
shortcomings and pitfalls of being a ‘talking head’. The paper also describes some of the
techniques developed in order to ameliorate some of the perceived difficulties of teaching
via video conference. The results of a student questionnaire and overall learning outcomes
will be discussed with reference to University of New South Wales graduate attributes.
