Jan wrote: > One of the biggest challenges is the lack of mic muting. Any rustle > of paper or kid coming in or door slam or toilet flush can cause > total disruption. > Although cumbersome, the best option is a push to talk mic. Maybe I'm > just old fashioned. I doubt they exist any more.
Using Zoom: the meeting convenor can tick "Mute participants upon entry". A participant can hold down the spacebar whilst whilst talking. Simple and effective Push to Talk without modified hardware. I'd strongly recommend this approach for tutorials and other group meetings. Zoom has already dialled back the bandwidth (HD requires a option to be selected) and chooses datarates depending on detected available bandwidth. The aggregated bandwidth from many simultaneous Zoom sessions is large. I expect there to be considerable traffic between the home-serving ISPs and the videoconference server farms of AARNet, Google, Microsoft, etc. Everyone in the industry is working on this right now. NBN users can expect to see slightly reduced performance when someone in the house is using videoconferencing. That's the result of the narrow upstream bandwidth use forcing Acks from other applications to queue. The effect is not large, but it is noticeable to a networking professional :-) -glen PS: Other useful Zoom settings for tutes: - Audio type: computer audio (allowing the option for phone audio just gets confusing. If you have lots of tech failures then you might need to turn this option on, but remind people it will use their prepay minutes). - Join before host: allow (gives students the chance to shake-down their gear, I suggest you encourage people to join 10m early the first time they try this) - Screen sharing. Who can share? Host only - Embed password in meeting link: yes - Disable desktop/screen share for users: only allow sharing of selected applications (forces you to share just the PowerPoint or whatever, saving embarrassment from other desktop content appearing) - Remote control: off (prevent students from controlling your PowerPoint) - Allow removed participants to rejoin: no (or yes if it's a nice class, as sometime booting someone and having them rejoin is the easiest way to solve tech issues) If you do need HD, such as for a medical tute, then - Group HD video: Full HD although note that colour registration on home computing equipment is poor, so describing the colour of what you are showing is important. If you are hosting a videoconference with lots of students then please give them a good experience: - the time on your computer is usually right, so use that to start your videoconference exactly on time. Being even two minutes late is really annoying to videoconference participants, as it makes them start to question their settings, if they are in the right place. The number of people joined will start to quickly fall off after five minutes of the meeting convenor not being present. - mute when not talking. - light your face. The simplest way to do this is to put a domestic lamp behind your monitor, angled upwards to shine upon the wall. The soft reflected light from the wall does good face-fill lighting - don't aim the camera into a window in the background. The automated light adjustment in the webcam will under-expose your face. - use a headset. A lot of the trendy noise-cancelling Bluetooth headsets have good mics. Set the videoconference mic setting to use the headset's mic. If you have to use the laptop mic then acoustically isolate the laptop from the desk, say by sitting it on top of a few journals (don't block the laptop's airflow). If using the laptop mic then all typing will be heard by students unless you remember to mute. USB-connected headsets tend to work with less setup hassle than traditional 1/8th inch tip-ring analog headsets. But any headset is usually better than none. If using a mobile phone headset then watch the rustle from clothing, use a paperclip to fasten the mic's cable to the clothing. - the camera goes at face level or higher. Your face should be 2/3rds of the screen. That might mean putting the laptop on a few books. Most uni-issued laptops (aka "enterprise-range laptops") will have good webcams, so unless you can source a good-quality glass-lens webcam (eg, Logitech C920) then use the one in the laptop. - take a moment to look at your own video, look at the background. If areas of blank wall shimmer then that's the "power line frequency" automated detection failing. Find the device settings for the webcam, set the power line frequency to "50Hz". The automation is probably biased towards choosing 60Hz, the USA setting. - if you can, use wired ethernet cabling from the laptop to the home router. Wifi glitches will be seen by many people and can be annoying if frequent. If you have to use wifi, see if the 5GHz setting exists and gives more solid performance than the 2.4GHz setting. If you are using the 2.4GHz band then don't use the microwave oven during the videoconference. Most other equipment in the 2.4GHz band should be WLAN-compatible these days. - treat it as a television production, so tape a running sheet to the wall, make points punchy, tell stories rather than read slides. If you run a flipped classroom you're about to win big time. - have and use a backchannel. You need some chat which reaches out to everyone. Zoom has a basic chat system. Or use the webchat in your LMS. Whichever you use, state in the videoconference invitation what the backchannel will be. Don't get too fancy on day one -- unless people are already using Slack or Discord then you're asking them to successfully set up another bit of software. Announce the official backchannel into the other available backchannels at the start of the videoconference. - get experience. Rehearse the class with a co-worker, ask their feedback. Hope the above is useful. _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
