• Value of being present "in person" compared to Teleconferencing: the exam takes place in person, and nothing can duplicate that face-to-face experience. But Teleconferencing is a reasonable alternative, and is certainly far better than just a telephone conversation. My personal feeling is that I prefer to work with candidates in person at least once, either before or after Teleconferencing -- there is enormous value to an interpersonal interaction at a range of five feet, especially for oral board preparation. Having that personal contact makes subsequent Teleconferencing an even more effective modality.

   • Quality of Video and Audio: poor quality audio or video, or lack of lip synchronization between audio and video, are very distracting and make Teleconferencing more tiring or even ineffective. Good teleconferencing connections require fast computer processors, significant allocations of memory, good software and fast internet connection speeds. In my experience, iChat on the Mac has higher and more consistent quality than Skype on the Mac or Windows PC. Since the hardware and software requirements are fairly easy to achieve these days, the current limitation in producing good quality teleconferences appears to be sufficient upload connection speeds on cable internet.

   • Effectiveness of Teleconferencing: I've used Teleconferencing with candidates for several years now, and the candidates and I have been very pleased with the results of the preparation. The convenience of not having to travel has also allowed some candidates with serious time constraints to work with me when they otherwise would have been unable to, and they have therefore viewed the Teleconferencing option as even more effective.

Teleconferencing Hardware, Software and Connection Requirements

    Determining internet connection speed:

  Minimum download speed: 300 KBps (kilobites per second)
    Minimum upload speed: 22 KBps

    You must test the speed of your cable connection to insure good results with the Teleconference. What the cable company tells you is the maximum speed of your system -- actual connection speed depends on serveral variables.
If you do a search on Yahoo or Google using the term "connection speed," you will find a wide variety of sites that will calculate your connection speed. (I've used http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ with quick and easy to interpret results.)
If you don't have good connection speed, many cable providers offer a "Business" high speed version of cable, which has much faster connection speeds, especially upload. You could get a 30 day "trial" version of the higher speed connection from your cable company and use it for the Teleconference, then decide if you want to keep the higher speed option.