Learning by Observing

Last week was the first time I have been involved in a real time meeting online. I found it very interesting, first coming to terms with the process and the use of the technology, then once I was comfortable with that I had the opportunity to observe online facilitation. Certainly the application that was used was reasonably intuitive and it provided an insight into how I could improve community with such a tool in my Moodle pages. At present I rely on forums for questions and comments but entries are text based and asynchronise. I also observed the facilitation process and the way Sarah made us all feel comfortable then encouraged us to join the discussion with focused questions and activities. I think I read somewhere there is a free to download equivalent to Elluminate but can't recollect where I saw it or indeed what the name was. Perhaps someone could provide me with that detail. The questions I am asking myself are: How would including synchronised communication benefit students learning and improve my role as a learning advisor? How can I implement it to ensure students participate as there is no assessment requirement in my pages?