Desktop Conferencing

The following is an outcome of a recent conversation with Sian Coxhall in the School for Health.

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We used megameeting for a poster presentation for 2nd year Healthcare Information
Governance students.  We had a staff member based in Bath acting as the host of the
meeting.

It was decided that the Bath host would upload and share the posters with the other
students to reduce the technical demands on the students – however this is something that
the students could have done themselves. One powerpoint slide per poster.

We started with a technical test (to make sure everyone was online and could hear each
other) then an explanation of the ground rules and how the meeting would run.

The meeting ran by the “host” making each poster available in turn and the student then
giving a 5 minute presentation on it.  There were then approximately 5 minutes of
questions.  The Host chaired the meeting to make sure everyone didn’t try to speak at
once, by going around the attendees in turn to ask if they have any questions.

This worked well and following the first meetings the students commented that they
thought the meeting was well managed.

The second meeting went equally well, but there were some problems with sound for some
students – I think this was just due to their computer set up.  But these did not spoil
the meeting.  The meeting did feel slightly rushed with 4 participants and 3 tutors so I
think it would have been better to stick to a maximum of 3 per hour.  Again the students
stated they enjoyed the meeting and that they found it worthwhile.

We then used megameeting for a presentation for a student in Singapore. This worked, but
there were issues with sound – the student couldn’t hear us at the end of the meeting,
and the host in Bath displayed the student’s slides and moved them on, but there was a
delay for the student seeing them, which meant the presentation did not run smoothly.Â
This may have been due to the student’s Internet connection speed.

Staff awareness on megameeting is like buses, nothing for ages and then lots back to back. I’ve covered 4 individuals. Two from English Language Centre about assessing people over distance for language skills, one from Biology about supporting the development of a pan-European research community, and one from International Development on the use within a CPD / Distance Learning course.

Yesterday, I set up a MegaMeeting session for Geraldine’s e-moderating group and was the technical help desk. I got a call from one of the would-be participants – a lady in the Department of Chemistry – who was trying to work through the setup wizard, without success. I couldn’t solve her problem on the spot, so as a pragmatic solution she came to my desk to join in the session. I now know more about potential technical solutions, so here’s a description of her problem and possible ways forward. (Geraldine has kindly mentioned she’ll contact someone in Chemistry who might be able to help with this.)

The user’s local storage settings for Flash Player were set too low, said a warning box. See the first screenshot on this wiki page:

http://wiki.megameeting.com/index.php?title=Local_storage_settings

The page also details 3 solutions to try one after the other:

[1] Increase local storage settings using the slider – this didn’t work.

[2] Creating the desktop folder – untested so far.

[3] Allowing permissions – again, untested so far.

The fact that users don’t have admin rights for their PCs may be the reason why solution [1] didn’t work, and why IT admin assistance may be required to test solutions [2] and/or [3].

Whatever works, it would be great for the answer to be posted here so that we know what to do in case this happens with another user.

Elluminate is a proprietary desktop conferencing system, and one which the Open University have recently rolled out across the instution for learning and teaching purposes. A presentation about this was given to the sigma-SW group meeting here at Bath last week.

You can, for free, create a room in Elluminate and invite up to 2 others, through

www.elluminate.com/vroom/

Well, it is done, we ran 4 coffee break sessions using Megameeting, on a range of topics. The attendance was OK – I think we averaged about 2 staff members per session. On the slight negative side, we still hadn’t managed to consistently record the sessions. This is a big shame as the plan was to deliver the session, record it, and stream this into the eLPF Moodle Course, the e-learning web site, and (if appropriate the individual service blog). So it can be re-used all over the place

A tip I’d suggest based on the last session is to include in the set up instructions information on how to ensure the powerpoint is displayed to fit the viewers screen.

Anyway, I’m very interested in capturing peoples ideas about how to improve these sessions, in terms of management, effectiveness etc.,

The current process should be … book the software, book a room (in calendar, and on megameeting), people reserve places via ASD, send invite a few days before the session, deliver the session (live), upload and supporting material in the eLPF Moodle Course, create a discussion board space for further discussion, email thanks to those who attended.

So people … how was it for you? What might we improve? Please leave comments …

Last Wednesday saw the second of our Megameeting-delivered ‘Coffee Break’ sessions.

The subject matter was very interesting once again – ‘How can I use Moodle for Diagnostic Assessment’ by Kevin Renfrew (for further info on this topic, see the case study at: http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/casestudies/2009/01/21/using-the-moodle-quiz-for-diagnostic-assessment/). Its nice as a behind-the-scenes developer to see another example of Moodle’s potential being realised so effectively at Bath.

Technically, things were adequate for participants – the sound could have been better (which was most likely down to microphone issues in this instance). The format of the meeting seemed to work well, with participants asking some questions via text chat afterwards and a supporting Moodle resource being created for further discussion.

Unfortunately we had problems with recording of the session – Camtasia on the host machine was unable to capture sound and the deskshare application provided by MegaMeeting, installed on a participant laptop suffered very poor sound quality.

These issues may have occured for a number of reasons and are unlikely to have been due to the MegaMeeting application itself (especially in the latter case). We did discover and try to solve these an hour or so before the session started but had to admit defeat due to running out of time (although because of the subject matter, this recording was being made as a test and for the speakers reference anyway rather than for public dissemination).

There are a number of things I’ll be looking at to try and solve these issues including going through the computers configuration again when there isn’t a session about to start. Some problems such as poor audio quality were likely due to poor microphone quality and/or audio hardware. This is a known issue and we’ll be looking at the possibility of USB microphones which are relatively cheap and generally resolve those issues (on this occasion we were using an analogue external mic, which was an improvement over that particular laptops internal one but probably still not optimum…).

The additional degradation in audio recording quality may be down to the type/specification of machines we were attempting to record on. I’ll be trying it with ‘full spec’ av laptops for recording and broadcasting, the latter with a high quality microphone and if the results are ok, will work back from there. I am surprised by the difference in what I could hear through my headphones ‘live’ and the quality through the same headphones on the same machine when playing the recording, so maybe there are some configuration tweaks that would help (although the live quality wasn’t great, so this probably won’t prove to be a complete solution if successful).

This ties in with looking at our meeting room setup for audio/video-conferencing in general. Common issues I’ve encountered when doing AV broadcast/conferencing in the past include things like acoustics and residual building noise (due to people and things like heating systems etc. making noise/causing electrical interference). Lisa mentioned that in a previous incarnation of the meeting room (it use to be larger and used as a studio) there were some issues with electrical noise. There are then the hardware issues such as quality of equipment and positioning of speakers/microphones to look at (to avoid/minimise feedback and pickup of background noise). We’re also using the laptop’s integral webcam which is pretty good quality, but attaching an external one would make our lives easier when re-positioning rather than dragging the laptop and its assortment of cables around the table.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be creating a list of setup tips, plus a suggested hardware list to scrape together if we’re able…

I ran the session today. From my perspective I thought it went well. Outside of the e-learning team, there were 2 people, and one that couldn’t access it for technical reasons. There seems to be an issue with the image used on machines in the Library. They are looking into it.

I tried to give the session an obvious exit point. In particular to encourage them to visit the eLPF for more info, such as links, accessing the files and continue the dialogue within the e-learning practitioners Forum. I set up a coffee break area, a forum and some links (including to the presentation). Unfortunately, the camtasia recording didn’t work as the audio must have conflicted with the audio on Megameeting. So it is a silent movie I’ll need to think why, and canvas the team … Dom, any ideas?

The approach was the same as outlined in an earlier post by me. It would be really useful if people modified the post and the page (coffee break) as they try the approach. Lots of opportunity to share experiences and build a consensus.

I did encourage them all to turn off their video links.

This is our first try at this type of staff development session. We’ve another three in planned. It is very much an iterative process, so the questions I’d like the participants to answer are;

• How did they find it as a learning activity?
• Was it too short or too long?
• How might it be improved?

Since my previous post, I’ve had ‘host’ training from Carrie and a support call from James at Megameeting.

In theory (and in practice with other customers), the system should easily be able to handle the number of participants we tried to throw at it, all with simultaneous video feeds, so we discussed issues around:

• our equipment setup (confirmed ok for at least some participants e.g. me)
• available network bandwidth (again, should have been fine for at least most people)
• possible issues their end (nothing he’s aware of, but will check with the relevant peeps at MM)

I just attended a QR codes Megameeting session (very interesting!), which had poor audio quality at the start (long periods where I and others couldn’t hear people, frequent audio break-up, webcam feeds freezing).

These largely seemed to disappear when we reduced the number of video feeds (via ‘Turn Video Off’ in the bottom-left corner of the screen). As they crept back up, so audio deteriorated again (for me at least). The critical breakpoint on this occasion seemed to be more than 4 simultaneous feeds (this could probably do more conclusive testing though!)

So, from this experience a pre-emptive solution seems to be that everyone has their video turned off except when talking. Assuming that people have got audio turned off as well (so speak via ‘push to talk’ or ‘lock’), it’s a slight pain as there are two things to click on/off at the start/finsish.

I suspect that a useful strategy for future meetings would be to have a maximum of 2 (e.g. Chair and whoever’s currently speaking) active video windows at once. I’ve got Megameeting training with James this afternoon so will pass this experience on and find out if it’s a common issue/there was something happening their end etc…

As the previous post (thanks Joe) indicated I ran the WEETHE Occasional Online Seminar today using Megameeting. This is a regional group of e-learning Teams in the West (South West) of England. We had representatives from Bath, Bristol, Exeter, and Gloucestershire. The session included two presentations, one by Hilary Griffiths (Bristol) who discussed the outcomes of user requirements for an online submission system, and Andy Ramsden (Bath) on an Introduction to QR Codes.

In this posting I’d like to focus on the technology and approach, and not the content (which I must say was excellent).

There was a number of lessons to learn to improve the session, and an anxiety about the software. My main concern was that for some people the audio was poor or dropped out. However, there didn’t appear to be a pattern. In one case they tested the audio using the wizard, then accessed the room and their audio stopped working ! While Hilary was presenting, I asked a question which she answered. All heard but me !! I think we need to look into this, and have some strategy to deal with this during a session. I felt slightly powerless as the only advice I could give was log out and in again (it did work, but it felt rather a dramatic approach). So I’ll be seeking advice from Megameeting.

Something I was very pleased was the way that Hilary logged in, and ran her session. She had no prep. It is this ad hoc presentational style that I’m keen to encourage and hoped the software would offer compared to some other systems.

In terms of managing the session I think we need to use a second person (as discussed post session with members of the team). This person could take responsibility to help others in terms of technical support. I’d not argue that this person is essential or needs to be from the e-learning team. It could simply be a more experienced person on the softare tool. This person could also help the presenter in terms of monitoring the back channel of the chat box. A real problem I had was when I shared my desktop (settings outlined in a previous posting) I couldn’t monitor the chat room. This is very annoying, I think I must be missing something !! Another reason to dust of the manual

So many lessons learnt. I’ve another session with 6 UK HE / FE institutes on Thursday. So I’ll try to implement a few of these ideas.