V-ROOM: Virtual meeting system trial

Virtual meeting environments are providing a viable alternative for conventional meetings bringing benefits of reduced costs and better use of time by removing the need for attendees to travel to national, international or global locations in order to attend meetings. This paper builds on the work of previous papers which discussed the functional and technical requirements for a virtual meeting system, reporting on a user trial and evaluating the prototype system. The trial was performed by students as users deploying the prototype for collaboration in group work focussed on the design of a computer system as part of the final year of their undergraduate study. The users were asked to comment on the features of the prototype as well as offering suggestions on useful features that should be included in a virtual meeting system. A summary of their comments and suggestions and the results of the evaluation are included in the paper. Security aspects of virtual meeting systems are also considered in some detail.