Retrospective Analysis of a Virtual Worldwide Conference for eLearning

Abstract

The TCC Worldwide Online Conference was launched in 1996 as an alternative to a traditional face-to-face conference. Travel costs to and from Hawaii and travel time to the middle of the Pacific Ocean would prohibit many from attending a technology conference. As advances in ICT improved the quality of the virtual conference experience and as travel budgets continued to shrink, the number of participants attending TCC increased five-fold over 15 years. The concern by TCC was to maintain a high level of satisfaction with the virtual conference with increasing attendance. An analysis of 5 years of conference evaluation data shows that the ratings for key conference indicators: content, theme, community, interaction and face-to-face comparison were consistently high. Key themes emerged from open-ended and interview questions and recommendations were made for conference organizers to maintain a high participant satisfaction.