A seminar is more like a class, in which a topic is discussed by a teacher, invited experts (together called seminar faculty) and a small group of participants and a webinar is the on-line version of a seminar. A webinar is a well designed small discussion-based courses of 1 to 3 days. To make a webinar an effective tool of learning, some readings and assignments are e-mailed before the webinar class and to make discussion relevant to cover the course content.
Currently webinars have become the main online learning tools, however, if one reviews some recent webinars on the topics related to general education and special education, they look poorer versions of face-to-face seminars since the resource persons are involved without a common thread running through the topics covered through the webinar.
"With hardly any proper designing and lack of orientation of resource persons or webinar faculty to acquire common vision on the topics, the webinars have become a checklist of covering topics by plugging in some identified resource persons to merely engage participants. Every, webinar has three phases, namely, pre-active or readiness phase; interactive or webinar transnational phase; and post-active phase or formative evaluation phase. The webinar organizers acts more like event managers. The pre-active phase is very importance, if it is one-day webinar, the readiness phase of 5 days is required to create a cohesive webinar faculty for well connected sessions," said Jaipur based Dr Lalit Kishore when contacted.
He was of the view that first of all a concept note on the topic of the webinar should be written and a framework of sessions' titles and outlines should be prepared by the organizers. This becomes the intial part of the pre-active phase and allows the webinar developed and transacted properly
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