During a virtual classroom, online briefing or lecture it may happen that technology fails as in the question posted today (the presenter was thrown out from the session).
How often has this happened to you? What else than technology could be a reason for an unhappy online experience?
It has happened to me. Because I distrust our internet connection I always have a plan B: somebody to take over if the presenter gets thrown out.
Hi Vesa
I have had a few, one only a week ago when starting the Online course,. For some reason my computer would not login into VoP program and all my NEW participants were waiting.
So first action.. PANIC...
Fortunately I had a standby computer on hand and after a few minutes I could logon.. but have a back up plan .Very important..
Kathy-Ann
Vilma, Kathy-Ann,
thanks for sharing...
- Backup Computer
- Backup Presenter
What else can we do to minimise the technical risks? Anyone else wants to continue the list?
Thank you all for interesting contributions. So recapping the list:
- Backup Computer
- Backup Presenter
- Reboot Computer
- Backup technology for communication like email (or telephone?)
Vesa, it sounds like a game where you need to remember items mentioned by the others, list them and add one item from yourself. We play it in Poland to exercise the memory, not sure if it is international though.:)
As we talk about technology here, I will add to the list: "Close all the applications, or at least those that can conflict the audio system of the web-conferencing tool". I have a very recent case from the EUMETSAT Conference, when the presenter's audio entered in loop and caused a very disturbing effect. We were using Voice over IP for audio, not a telephone. It happens sometimes that another software which uses the audio input can provoke interruptions, or take a bandwidth and slow down the system. I learned a lot from that experience!
BTW Monica, google translate is always open in my browser ;)
Hi,
To add to the list, at Vesa's request... reboot.
The perennial suggestion by IT support, but also do it BEFORE a session.
On the first day of CALMet Online, my shiny new wireless headset ran out of power, and I think I could have recovered quickly, but I had been doing so much work on computer all day long, and had so many browser tabs and programs open, there was no quick recovery to be had.
Fortunately, the next speaker was ready to go, and fortunately my microphone died only at the very end of the talk. But my suggestion is to reboot and start with a clean session, with only those programs open you will need to be using.
Patrick
Hi, sorry my english is a google translation, not mastered the language, but I want to participate.
I made virtual classes and have also been a student, in both cases I always connect in advance of the scheduled time, to minimize problems and audio connection. Should this ocur, I think immediately send mass email to students, explaining the problemand presenting a solution or plan B. an example of what I witnessed, my boss had to defend his thesis on line (Chile to Spain), yesterday tested the connection, audio and video. The next day, minutes defore the scheduled time, we entered the virtual classroom and denied access, and came back to try the same thing again, then told him to send an email to his tutor, he replied that the should go to another room and solved the problem. We were with two computers, he told you as technical support an so we do not panic he could defend his thesis, finally.
Monica, brilliant to use the translation. Hope your google will translate this back to your language ok ..
Your example is an extreme one: high importance event, and last minute problem. Again, backup PC and system helped. And most of all, good nerves were needed!
Hi there,
Vesa, you asked at the start of this thread what else apart from tehnology could lead to an unhappy online experience... I think the presenter needs to have their head "in the right space" before an online session. They need to be focussed on the topic, comfortable, and have minimised any mental or physical distractions.
This will also help them cope with any technological problems!
Regards,
Chris
Hi guys,
so far you have been focusing on the topic from the perspective of the lecturer: was it the meaning?
I think that a succesful online lecture shall also aim to accommodate all the participants without any problem and make the technology work as well as possible also on their hand.
I believe a technical facilitator, in addition to the lecturer, is assential to achieve this. He/she should spend lots of efforts in delivering technical tutorials to the online participants in advance to the lesson (in case of an online course) or at least provide technical assistance during the most critical times, i.e. one hour before the lesson and especially during it. Technical assistance can be given, most often, by email, but also through chat (Moodle, skype), telephone (?) and also within the online lesson itself with chat, but this might distract other people and insofar affect the rythm of the lecture.
Cheers,
Alessandro
Hi Alessandro,
Nice to see you here! I am sure you can give us many tips about web-conferencing, as you did when I joined EUMETSAT.
Thank you for introducing different perspectives in your post. You are absolutely correct, a lecturer point of view is for some of us the best-known, but we should take into consideration everybody involved in an online event. A real-time event is delivered for a reason, is done for attendees. That is why we need to make certain, as you said, that the audience feel comfortable with the technology. A role of technical facilitator or support is essential, especially when this form of collaboration or lecturing is new to the audience. How much attention, also in a classroom, can an instructor give to things other than content and audience? Surely it depends also on how experience and skilled that person is. However it is unlikely to ask an instructor to jump on the table and adjust beamer in a classroom? OK, it maybe happens but only sometimes. :)
You mentioned presenter, participants, technical assistant. Would you be able to recognize any other roles in an online event?
And a very good tip about using backup communication technologies!
Maja
Chris,
good that you took up this non-technological part on online learning.
I reply by sharing one unhappy online experience:
we had once an emergency situation with missing on-site presenter at one course, but the presenter suggested to give the talk online. We happily accepted and technologically everything worked fine. But participants in the classroom remained disengaged and towards the end of the presentation paid less and less attention to the screen. As a facilitator I felt painful to see this happening.
In the feedback discussion we touched upon what went wrong, and people gave feedback:
- one-way lecturing, no interaction
- nobody connecting the presenter and the audience
- the presenter did not check the audience and adapt the talk accordingly
But in the end it was a good learning experience!
Hello Everyone :-)
Firstly, I am impressed by how the participants in this forum is called "CALMeters". Wow, Vesa, Maja, it is so cool :-). Also, I join Monica for the usefulness of google translate, since ENglish is not my mother language..
Secondly, I thank for all previous comments, in lecturer's point of view, about how technology fails could frustrated the lecturer. It is really give me a wider perspective on how it influence the lecturer much. As far as I understand, become a presenter itself already bring nervous and other uncomfortable feeling..moreover, the OL presenter..but sometimes, I doubt this opinion, because all the OL presenters (at least in the forum I already attended so far), never showed the panic up (Kathy-Ann, I witnessed your survival in your presentation on supporting Aeronautical Forecaster Competency, and how Liz supported in the gap time.. that was great..).
In the other hand, I couldn't agree more to Alessandro on how the OL lecture also aim to accommodate all the participants without any problem and make the technology work as well as possible. as the participant, I struggle all the time with the technology and internet connectivity. Sometimes became frustrated, when the internet was in poor condition, just in the beginning of the session, or something problem like the session could not launch in my PC . As the "stutter" person in technology, I almost gave up, and doubtly sent email to the facilitator, and asked whether they could asist me to fixed the problem. And out of my thought, they patiently gave their asisstance while doing their task in running the session. And if it didnt work, then they sent me back an email and said "sorry, Roro. we couldnt make it. But you could still have the playback after the session is finished". Couldnt believe if they do this paralelly in their hectic moment.. It was so precious thing that I DO appreciate so much to them. And another cool thing, one ever added the message "Dont worry, we plan to put it also in youtube". And they DID that! I am happy, cause I can easily played it over and over again, especially in the part that I could not really understand (and of course - google translate is my friend again...hehe). That was some of the reason that finally make me willing to join the OL session again and again :-). Hoping this long share not give you boring. have a good week, everyone. Cheers from Indonesia :-)
roro yuliana
Thank you for your precious input Roro, highlighting again participant point of view. It is not boring at all and it is our daily practice to use, benefit from but also struggle with technology. I am happy to hear that you were given a good support from technical staff. Sometimes behaviour of a supporting person can change our attitude towards a tool.
Good that you mention recordings. They might be a very valuable backup for who could not attend a session.
Dear colleagues,
As a presenter, I attended only 3 online sessions (Eumetrain weeks).So my experience is poor. But I noticed that I felt confused when I gave time 2-3 minutes to audience to choose the correct answer and I couldn't feel if I was still online or not during this silent time.Somehow moderator should show presenter that evrth is OK:)
Welcome Izolda!
I totally agree that lack of contact, even if it is only a voice or a chat message may be disturbing online. It seems that we need more assurance that everything is really going fine in a virtual classroom, much more than we would expect in a traditional classroom.
Virtual seconds feel really long, when you dont know what is happening.
But in fact I have learnt to like the silence and the "offline action" take place - the presenters should not be afraid to let the microphone go and give the participants time to reflect, analyse and evaluate, and after a while return back.
Sometimes that lengthy silence can be frustrating. Not being able to see your audience and whether or not they are engaged in whatever activity you've asked them to do, it is helpful to ask folks to give a signal that all is well. Most webinar software have tools to 'raise your hand' or indicate your mood. Asking folks to use those to let you know that all is well helps to gauge how things are going during those quiet activiites.
Another good tool for activitiies where your users are asked to do something on their own, is a timer. Some webinar software have timers available but there are lots of timer apps that you can download for free. If you ask your participants to, for instance, analyze a dataloop and answer a related question that you then want to discuss, setting a time and showing a count down timer on screen gives everyone a clear indication of when they should be ready to move on. It is important to make it comfortable for folks to let you know if they need more time, especially in a multi-lingual setting, where it may take a bit longer for some folks to read and formulate answers.
BTW: great to see so much engagement in this forum! Webcasting is obviously becoming a primary tool for all of us. Great to have the opportunity to share bast practice!
Dear Bruce,
I like your idea about timer.It would really help to keep computer screen active-time is running and you could feel it:) Unfortunatelly, I've never seen it during online sessions...It would be great to glance how it looks like...
Izolda
Hi Izolda,
Tsvet used a timer in his live session on assessment: https://classroom.eumetsat.int/mod/resource/view.php?id=4458
The first question takes place around the 5mi mark in the recording. In the recording, a part of the screen is cropped out and the timer is only partially visible.
Izolda,
I remember we had a timer available in old Elluminate (nowadays Blackboard). It was easy to use, but as Bruce said, there are many online timers around... I found this Flash timer (in attachment) that can be used for countdown and elapsed time purposes easily.
If I think of good presentations I attended, there are things in them, mainly connected to the affective aspects of learning, which online sessions cannot reproduce. For instance:
-Imagine the best technological environment, cameras for teacher and students, infinite bandwidth, almost a real classroom... You still cannot get eye-contact with your students or teacher. You cannot feel the rumours and how bored students are, to react to that with exercises. You cannot read lips or help a student produce an answer by looking at his face.
-There is a part of theater in a lesson (Or is it only with Jeff Wilson?) At least I enjoy the pleasure of performing a bit. It entails tricks to keep attention, short jokes based on a gesture, walking around to relax, or room experiments to help capture a new concept where space, light, sound or movement play a role.
-Myself, from a southern culture, miss a lot, during onlines, the use of arms and hands to explain. Most concepts link to space or speed. Hands are not implemented (yet) in e-learning, but it is starting (wii station).
-(this is for you to fill)...
Online learning is still very much information transmission. For learning you need to start emotions, and that is difficult from a distance of 5000 km.
Saludos cordiales
To add to this thread about being comfortable with a remote audience in online learning,
I am reading a book called, "Conversations with Woody Allen," which comes from a collection of interviews from throughout his career. One thing he said reminded me about an issue that has been a constant in my work with reluctant subject matter experts throughout my career as an instructional designer.
He says that making movies is incredibly harder than doing stand-up comedy, which he did for many years before becoming a filmmaker. Even after all his years of experience, he just doesn't know whether a joke is going to work or not in a film. In a nightclub, he says he could "get the feel" of an audience during an act, and know in advance whether the next planned joke was going to work or not. He could adjust his act as the presentation went on, relying only on the sound of the laughs (or lack of laughs). In making a film, he worries that he may sometimes be cutting his best jokes, or keeping the duds, and while he still agonizes over this, he is resigned to it and succeeds most of the time.
I don't think we are entertainers in doing training, but I do agree with Jose that there are some similarities, and that we have to engage our learners in similar ways. I've mostly developed self-paced learning, and it can be painstakingly slow to make good material, because you are having to anticipate how each sentence will be read, how each graphic will be viewed, and how the sequence will work. It is similar with live online sessions, but not quite so bad, but you have a live connection.
The secret is to interact frequently. If you are training, and not just presenting, asking questions can help you gauge your learners to see if they are keeping up, and you can change what you plan to present you if you need to.
I don't know how many of you saw Tsvet's presentation a week or so ago in CALMet Online, about Crafting Multiple Choice Questions, but it made excellent use of very frequent interactions to not just keep people engaged, but to gauge us. He found we were such good students that he even skipped part of his content. :) You can find a recording of that session at https://classroom.eumetsat.int/mod/resource/view.php?id=4458.
Pat
Jose, Pat, thank you for inspiring conversation.
I must admit that nowadays I have as much online laugh :) as a face-to-face one. Moreover, I have a feeling that some jokes work exclusively in a synchronous text communication, but do not have a theoretical proof for that :)
Perhaps sometimes we focus too much on negative examples when talking about online communication, like hiding behind a nickname, spamming, flaming, missing personal contact etc. But maybe an online communication can be advantageous too? Or perhaps for some people? Probably not everybody likes to be in a center of a classroom to present her/his work.
How many of you did prefer a regular but calm asynchrounous peace of the CALMet session about simulation? Rather than an immediate, personal face-to-face conversation? I like to have time for reflection before I answer. How many of you have used the 1 minute time for questions after a presentation in a conference to actually ask a question? I would happily do it but on the next day using forum.
There are multiple interpersonal communication theories exploring the computer mediated communication, somwhat related to oline training. Who would like to investigate on that aspect can look up for instance for Lea e Spears (1992, 1994) hyperpersonal or hypersocial behaviours or Walther (1996). I am not an expert on this topic, but maybe somebody else reading my post is and could help?
I definitely agree with Patrick and Jose that instruction and acting have something in common. But not all the students like to play a main character. Online learning is often in a way favorable for supporting actors.
Jose is talking in his post about lack of immediate feedback in a virtual classroom, a smily faces of an audience. The students look like they understand. How much trustworthy a smily students faces are? More than a quick poll or a multiple choice question asked in a virtual classroom?
I am mixing a little online asynchronous, online synchronous and face-to-face communication here. Do we necessarily have to replace one with the other? Maybe we could think when one works better than the other?
BTW, great example by Tsvet, worth checking!
Maja
Hi, I remember Vesa's advice before my first presentation online."Better to use 2 computers-one personal,as usually, another laptop as additional.In case your general internet is discontinued you will have another way-to use wireless internet".
Of course, I agree with Pat.It is necessary to make better preparation in advance- you never know what could happen during online session. People from many countries are online, they stopped their business and you can't dissapoint them due to your inadvertence.Very very big responsibility!
Izolda,
your posting makes me think how much we need to spend energy for preparing a presentation just because of prepraing for technological problems.
Roro said very well in her posting, that the participants have the same problems.
If technology has worked perfectly for you, have you still had unhappy moments and why? Anyone wants to share?
Ha All,
My advice is start in time with logging into the systems for your online presentation. It helps you to tackle all the technology problems like Pat is saying but it will also set your mind to the meeting you are having. If you have to do your talk or meeting in an other language than your mother tongue setting your mind to the meeting you are going to have will prevent you from talking your mother tongue style language (English in most cases). This way the things you want bring across will be more understandable for the listeners.
To be honest this is my main pitfall.
Hartelijke groet,
Heleen
Hi to All,
Usually we create meeting rooms in Centra some days, even weeks before real session is on (Vesa and Maja would know that). So good advice would be to log in to the meeting room, upload your agenda and play with all the features and possibilities of the running software (e.g. Saaba Centra), before there is audience, even few days before. There is also option to record one 'testing presentation' where you can pretend that you have audience and where you do your presentation as you want for the real session. In this way you can see what kind of problems you can encounter and what could be helpful for you during session (e.g. drawing tools). Usually you can ask TSO (tecnical support officer) to be there for you and to help you along (Maja and me have a good expirience of acting like a 'virtual audience':)
I have seen many many on-line session and, believe me, lot of presenters think they can handle this or that on-line software - but only those who do some testing on their own before real presentation, can have pretty decent presentation and can say everything they intended to say (if there is no, let's say higher force like server drop down of such..). This implies specially to presenters that are new to presenting software and I would encourage these presenters to do that for sure. - It's always a shame when presenter is having something really interesting to say to us, and then he spends his 30 or 45min struggling with his microphone, drawing tools, text chat... - So, be smart!:)
thanks to everyone for the interesting posts. I have been traveling at thee moment and i keep meeting people who are not posting to these discussions but also finding them very valuable.
one of the areas where i ahve questions is when we use a web conferencing technology to work with both a room full of people and a group online.
I think this increases the technological problem, the room might have speakers and a microphone so there are feedback issues, or more than one microphone, or the room only have one session and the chat box is hidden.
Is it possible to have a single audience/group with such asymmetry? I tend to imagine two audiences when i work in this way, with slightly differing needs and ways if engaging.
there is also the situation where the presenter is online and the is a group listening in a room - and that group may have a discussion in their room that others do not participate in.
The dynamics become quite complex, and we can't control what is going on. Maybe cntrol is a myth anyway ...
but, having said it raises problems ...
it makes this possible that otherwise would not happen so is the difficulty and asymetry worth it?
I think so,
I think i have noticed in the sessions i have taken part in a real sense of positive attitude / care towards others in different participation modes /connection.
Mark
Mark, thanks for finding time to share your ideas, especially in such a busy travelling time.
Fortunately or not (?), this type of sessions are becoming a reality. We had a similar situation during the EUMETSAT Conference. It was a challenge consisting of remote, on-site presenters and audience. We used web-conferencing and live streaming. I was happy to hear that it is an experiment, as I was one of people responsible for it. I felt a silent permission to make a small explosion. And we did have one :) Now I know even better how much experience and practice is valuable.
Technology is an important factor, in this case adding even more stress and equipment to handle. But there are technical people who can usually help. Testing and backups usually work. Except those few times they don’t... As there are more gears in this machine, surely there are more possibilities that something will break.
Anyway I would be more cautious about the learning aspect, audience, different pace (or delay), interaction and communication channels, accommodating presenter's need for feedback from two audiences, on-site and remote moderators, than technology itself. For sure one-way presentations are easier to handle but they have a limited use too.
Two tiny almost real examples combining interaction with on-site and remote attendees. With a little more preparation they would have been excellent.
REMOTE PRESENTER. One is a question by a remote presenter to both audiences, where people have to raise the hand (virtually and physically) in order to answer YES. A moderator is supposed to count on-site YESes and forward message to the remote presenter. But with a good webcam (or camcorder) the presenter would be able to count it himself.
ON-SITE PRESENTER. Or another presenter distributed handouts/images on-site, and followed up with a simple exercise. With some planning ahead the same could be done simultaneously online? Digital copy of the image followed up with a poll.
I am not saying it is easy, or that it always work, or that we have a recipe already, but it is an area worth exploring as you said.
I like to use the word control mostly when referring to the CTRL key, perhaps that is why I am not an elementary school teacher :)
Hi All, It has been interesting listening in to the dialogue. I finally had a little time to comment:
I have been with a focus group that has been running monthly sessions for about 8.5 years. They are not seminars in a strict sense, but this falls under real-time learning. They do have a leader - Mike Davison, who is fluent in Spanish and English - so the sessions are bi-lingual, and Kathy-Ann and Vilma, who have already posted are regular organizers and contributors. Some like that the sessions are bi-lingual because as the information is being translated, it gives you time to contemplate what has been said. We utilize real-time imagery and products to highlight synoptic and localized weather and climate indices as well as imagery that highlight a recent feature such as "Where is convection in relation to the axis of the tropical wave". Often the participants are asked to draw on the imagery or provide comments for their region so they are engaged. In all that time, I remember that we have had to cancel a session on the spot once because of technology problems - no voice. At the minimum, we have 2 people for each session: one that is a lead and one that monitors the session including how long it takes for people to download the 4-6 images in a loop. We have many countries join in that have poor bandwidth and they can benefit greatly from the session, so my response to the question of what do you do if the lead drops out for 5 minutes? It is no big deal, we wait patiently or someone else contributes. On the other hand, what do you do when it is 5 minutes before the session and the lead tells you that the fire alarm is going off and he needs to evacuate the building because there has been an earthquake? In our case, I was able to enlist the community to contribute. I started calling on the people in attendance and asking them what was interesting, and they had something to say. Vilma was there for simultaneous translation. The images we use are produced automatically so from month to month the preparation time is minimal - usually to add a recent example. One morning, a few hours before the session, we had problems with external access to the server. At that time, I was able to copy source code and imagery to a different server and still run the session. I don't know if I would be able to do that today.
Because we have done this together for so long, most of the time the sessions go smoothly. When a problem comes up, you take a deep breath and figure out what to do next.
Hi Bernadette,
I am happy to see that you found time to reply to our questions and share your experience. Even if there are some other things planned for WEEK 2, they are just a continuation of what we started last week, thus I encourage everybody to post comments to this forum.
I would like to highlight some useful hints you give us.
Some like that the sessions are bi-lingual because as the information is being translated, it gives you time to contemplate what has been said.
We started to talk about the time experience in a synchronous session, sounds very philosophical :), and that we as moderators or presenters get impatient because there is no feedback from the audience for one minute or so. We would not feel it in a classroom perhaps. We talked about using timer to give the virtual classroom a clear pace. Then you add to it the language skills that could be an issue in a synchronous session, so it is worth to give more time for reflection to non-native speakers. As far as time is concern, I would add to it my impression that keeping the schedule and planning a duration of virtual event carefully is even more important than in an on-site event. What do you think could be an optimal time for an online synchronous activity? Probably there is no one universal pattern but maybe we are able to set some frames?
You mention how you engage your audience by asking them to draw or give comments. I am curious to know if they rather use a microphone to answer? Or chat? Other tools?
Then another important issue you notice is a poor bandwidth and how to deal with it. In the system we use there is a possibility to select an audio codec decreasing the audio quality, but making the session more friendly for users with a slow Internet connection. What else can you do to be prepared for attendees with poor bandwidth? If you have some tips, you can post them here or directly to the "Emergency Checklist" wiki:
https://classroom.eumetsat.int/mod/lti/view.php?id=4431
Maja