Online Meetings - Tips and Best Practices
Overview
This document contains tips and best practices, to prepare a participant for a positive visual and auditory experience in virtual meeting spaces, where the audio and video will be viewed on a computer or TV screen, and shared with participants over the Internet.
Hardware requirements
You will need a computer connected to the network. Connecting to a Wireless access point will often work, but if a wired connection is available, it will usually be faster and more stable.
You will need speakers or headphones. If you are using a microphone, you should use headphones or ear-buds instead of the computer's internal speakers, in order to prevent the other participants from hearing an echo of their own voice.
You may need a webcam, if you want the other participants to see you. Webcams typically include an internal microphone, which you can turn on or off, regardless of whether the webcam is showing video of you or not.
In some IWU conference rooms, a webcam is provided, and positioned on top of the flat panel TV. Webcams connect to computers by a USB cable, so look for this to plug into the USB jack of your computer. It may take a minute or two for the computer to load the appropriate device drivers, allowing you to use the webcam for both video and audio.
You may select a different microphone. The microphones built into laptops and webcams are typically not of the greatest quality. You may check out a wireless microphone, or a USB microphone from the Media Services desk in the Jackson Library.
You may need the computer's keyboard and mouse to type your questions into the chat section of an online meeting, conference, or webinar, if the meeting host has not enabled the remote participants to speak using their microphones.
In some classrooms on the Marion traditional campus, and the Indianapolis North and Cincinnati education centers, a Video Conferencing Cart (VC cart or Adobe Connect Cart) can be temporarily used in a properly equipped classroom, providing audio and video hardware which is compatible with the delivery options above. The cart functions as a webcam, when connected to the desktop PC in the classroom's teaching station.
Similarly, some classrooms have been designated as video conferencing classrooms by augmenting the teaching station (smart cart) with a pair of wireless microphones, and a document camera which functions as a webcam. Typically, there is one of this type of classroom at each regional education center.
Software requirements
Some of the above listed Delivery Options have their own standalone software application that you must install and launch, whenever you want ot use that tool. Others are browser-based, and allow you to launch them by clicking on a weblink, or by typing them in the address field of any browser.
The Zoom desktop application is available through the IWU application catalog.
Some browsers are incompatible, or cause problems with some of the listed meeting tools. See this page for details on browser compatibility.