Webinar Development for Learning Technologists

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Webinar

Development

for Learning

Technologists

Description of methods and proposed best practice when deploying a webinar.

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Section 1: Context

This report is aimed at eLearning technologists planning to implement a Webinar. It is intended to aid the selection of a webinar service and to provide a guide to good practice when running an online event. The University of Manchester Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences eLearning Team was asked to implement a pilot webinar for a seminar featuring several presenters and an interactive workshop. The event was held to examine the use of Social Media in teaching (STEM) on April 4th 2012. The implementation of the pilot and all communication had to be achieved within a 2 week window.

The aim of the pilot was to establish primary methods and best practice in the deployment of web conferencing solutions, with a view to adding web conferencing to the services offered by the EPS eLearning team.

Choosing which webinar service to use

The different types of service available

There are a large number of services on offer. Price points vary as do the features offered by the different services. The products on offer can be split into three categories:

1) High End: Adobe Connect, Saba, Cisco WebEx. Rated superior to ‘mid range’

products by virtue of the fact that they are premium cost services targeted at organisational integration.

2) Mid-Range: a plethora of web based services are on offer from companies such as FuzeMeeting, MegaMeeting, GoTo Meeting, Blackboard Collaborate – the list goes on. 3) Open Source: Big Blue Button is an open source platform for the educational market. During the evaluation phase of the project it quickly became apparent the High End

packages are expensive. Adobe Connect has all of the features and design quality you would expect from Adobe but it is priced accordingly. Using Adobe’s online quotation tool, the cost of using Connect based on 50 participants for 3 hours came out at circa £13,000. On this basis the high end option was dismissed for the purposes of the trial.

The mid range services are competing heavily to gain market share and pitch based on ease

“Webinar: short for Web-based seminar, a presentation, lecture, workshop or seminar that is transmitted over the Web.” - Webopedia

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Comparison chart

A comparison of feature availability for a selection of the most popular services is shown below:

Chat Video Browser Desktop Ap VoIP Conf Call Recordable Doc share Mobile /tablet Adobe Connect

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Fuze Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Collaborate Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

WebEx Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Saba Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Yugma Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

GoTo meeting

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Vyew Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Big blue Button

Yes Yes Yes Yes

(Source: TJ Thomander, TechChange, 2011)

Top features that influenced decision

Cost

During the course of researching the most popular webinar services two full accounts for two of the leading mid-range products were made available for evaluation. Since these were available immediately and at no cost it was decided to use one of the two products for the webinar and to make them the subject of the evaluation. The two products were

Blackboard Collaborate and FuzeMeeting. Ease of Use

Both services were relatively straightforward to set up. Being browser based (with a ‘launch as application’ option) they both use Java and Flash.

The only problem encountered launching either of the services was when first launching Collaborate on a Windows (Vista 64) machine – the program failed to load. A solution was found online, which advised updating ActiveX (by updating Flash from within

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Audio quality

Since the webinar featured face to face presentations it was necessary to be able to connect external radio microphones to the webinar service. Both products were successful in

connecting to an external mic in testing, however this area did cause problems on the day (see event log). Audio quality for both products was good.

Video Quality

In order to create a sense of presence for the online participants and the face to face audience it was the intention to include video streams of the

presentations and the workshop.

The initial plan was for a camera operator to provide close up shots of the

presenters using a tripod-mounted HD camera, to create a sense of intimacy and engagement with the online audience.

It was also intended to provide a video stream of the workshop audience to the online participants in order to further facilitate the sense of presence.

Each of the services was tested using a MacBook Pro connected via Firewire 800 to a Sony fx1000 HD 1080i video camera. Blackboard Collaborate was able to connect to the camera but FuzeMeeting unfortunately was not. This was particularly disappointing since Fuze offered high bandwidth connectivity - up to HD resolutions, albeit at a low frame rates. After raising a support request and submitting logs the response from Fuze technical support was that the ‘camera was incompatible’. USB Webcams were then tried as an alternative. Logitech 1.3 MP Webcams worked with both systems without any issues, although they would produce lower quality images and, more importantly, could not provide close-up shot capability.

The video technology used in FuzeMeeting allowed for up to 10 concurrent video

connections and Collaborate only one; FuzeMeeting also offered higher resolution streams (for the event a 640x480, 30 frames per second setting was chosen) than were available in Collaborate, therefore it was decided to use USB webcams with FuzeMeeting and to abandon the plan to use an external HD camera.

Tools

After the event it became apparent that the number of tools available for participants (e.g. emoticon buttons, audience polling, hand (flag) raising and more sophisticated activity tools such as brain storming, putting things in order, interactions with slides (pointers and post

“Media that provides both audio and visual stimuli is said to produce a greater sense of presence than audio-only (or video-only) media.” [Lombard. Ditton 1995]

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Aesthetics

The visual design of both products was subjectively assessed on clarity of the interface, usability, aesthetic appeal.

Whilst Collaborate offered a clean black and white schema the modern styling and simplicity of FuzeMeeting was preferred.

Section 2: Report of the event

Pre-event testing

In order to establish whether any recurrent technical difficulties connecting to FuzeMeeting were going to be experienced by webinar participants, they were invited to connect to the meeting room prior to the event.

Two time slots were offered to the participants to test their configuration. They were asked to run a diagnostic program that FuzeMeeting provides prior to connecting, so that prompts to install Java, Flash, etc. would be managed by the diagnostic software.

https://www.fuzemeeting.com/files/ookla/PROD/Detector.html

In pre–event, testing several participants reported failing the ‘Packet Loss’ part of the test. They were advised to go ahead with connecting to the meeting anyway, and all managed to connect successfully (including audio/video).

Equipment configuration used

Presenter’s computer:  MacBook Pro

 Sony Radio Microphone

 Logitech Webcam (directed at the room)  VGA link to presentation screens

 Fuzemeeting running  ScreenFlow running. Facilitator 1:

MacBook

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Screenshot showing Fuze Meeting during the webinar

Summary of the event

After the equipment was set up, online participants were allowed into the FuzeMeeting ‘room’. It became apparent that they were not receiving audio from the microphone on the presentation machine. The majority of participants were attempting to connect using VOIP but none were reporting success.

The radio microphone settings were checked and appeared normal, so a test call to Skype was placed to establish if the microphone was working. No audio was being recorded by the Skype test call so further fault tracing was necessary.

The audio input settings for the MacBook Pro were discovered to be set to the default internal microphone. When the input was changed a successful Skype call was made.

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The presentation computer was reconnected to FuzeMeeting and the audio connection was successfully established for some but not all participants.

Since it wasn’t known if the VoIP connection was working, the decision was made to request all online participants experiencing difficulties connecting to change their connection type from VoIP to Skype. This caused some confusion for the participants, as some required instructions on how to connect via Skype.

It now appeared that the audio connectivity was fully functioning and the first presenter began. However, the input setting in Skype was set to default so the onboard microphone was giving a false positive during the audio check. This resulted in very poor audio quality for the first presentation. The settings were updated before the next presentation took place and the audio quality was reported to be ‘loud and clear’ By the online participants. During the following presentation, a YouTube video was shown. To achieve this, desktop sharing was turned on so that the online participants could watch the video. This worked for the duration of the video, but after the video had finished playing and desktop sharing was switched off, the Fuze client crashed and froze. It was necessary to restart the browser and re-enter the meeting. No further technical issues were encountered.

Section 3: Advice on setting up and running a a combined

seminar/webinar event

Roles

In order to manage the online participants, the face to face event and the interface between the two, it was found that a number of specialist roles are required.

 Online Host Facilitator: The online host is responsible for welcoming the participants, running activities and answering questions relating to the event.  Room to online facilitator: responsible for monitoring what’s being said in the room

and by the online participants. Choosing opportunities to interface the two; e.g. fielding questions from online to the room and vice-versa.

 AV and technical support: responsible for setting up the equipment, running the pre-event testing, monitoring AV feeds, managing the use of Microphones in the room, setting up between presentations.

 Out of room helpline: to provide telephone support helping with log in issues and fielding technical questions.

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Considerations for developing a combined seminar/webinar event

The following is a check list of issues to consider:

 When scheduling the event, minimise the time between presentations. If there are face to face interactive sessions make sure there are equivalent activities being run for the online participants. If there are no online activities arranged to run during any face to face activities then schedule presentations first, followed by Q&A, followed by activities.

 If you are planning to capture an event, include notifications in the marketing material that the event will be recorded.

 Include an image rights waiver mechanism in the terms and conditions of the ticket booking process.

 Provide online users with a ‘how to’ guide for key parts of login/set up for the session.

 Design warm-up activities for when the participants are arriving. Consider activities which will introduce the online participants to the room and vice versa.

 Design specific online activities for the online audience to coincide with in-room activities.

 Provide descriptions of the online activities to the face to face presenters prior to the event.

 Provide online participants with an information ‘pack’ containing presentation files, online resources etc. prior to the event.

 Consider using Twitter for text feed and notify the face to face audience of the hash tag.

Technical considerations.

It is critical that all testing is done using the actual equipment configuration, and preferably the same connectivity as the actual event.

 Be careful not to close the meeting room fully, since the unique I.D. will be lost, requiring a new room I.D. to be generated and communicated to the participants.  If possible set up equipment and conduct a load test.

 Design a fault tracing flow chart using the actual equipment configuration for use as quick reference. Include all possible locations for setting audio and video inputs (e.g. system, webinar software preferences, Skype preferences).

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Suggested sequence of events

Set up as early as possible on the day, to give enough time for problem solving before making the meeting space available. Beginning with the Microphone (using Skype’s voice test), test each component of the AV system.

 Conduct a Live test minimum 45-60mins before the start of the event with several testers connecting simultaneously. If possible, test on as many different connection types as possible: local, remote, wifi etc. If problems occur, refer to the fault tracing flow chart designed prior to the event.

 Launch the actual meeting room and do not allow participants into the webinar room until the scheduled ‘doors to open’; as soon as participants are in the room, the facilitators will have to begin managing the participants rather than helping with testing/setup.

 30 minutes prior to the event launching, allow the participants in to the webinar room. Facilitators can then begin discussions and run warm up activities.

 If possible in a separate room provide a technical support service via telephone and connection to the webinar room. Recommended equipment configuration

Set up AV equipment on a separate machine to the presenter so that settings and fault tracing can be monitored/changed without interrupting the presenters.

Presenter’s Lectern  MacBook Pro  VGA to screens

 Webcam facing the room/audience  Radio Microphone

Technical Facilitator  MacBook

 Webcam on tripod facing the presenters  Radio Mic receiver

 Laptop

References.

Lombard, M, & Ditton, T. (1997). At the Heart of It All: The Concept of Presence. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 3.2 September 1997.