A first time user’s hints and tips

I was interested in the experiences of web conferencing beginners Devon County Council as reported on the Towards Maturity site – see Devon County Council improves efficiency with web conferencing. In particular I thought I’d share their hints and tips:

• If you are conducting a programme for over 16, you need to have 2 of you supporting learners, one leading the event and the other supporting individuals via the chat room.
• We found that a half day workshop could be compressed into a 1 hour webinar.
• If you are asking staff to interact with the content (through note taking, mind maps etc) then an hour on the end of a telephone is quite a lot – it’s better to make a small investment in headphones that can be loaned to staff on the programme which leaves their hands free.
• Make sure you have a quiet venue to conduct the session from – an open plan office isn’t the best.
• PC’s in the council are timed to shut down if inactive for a certain period – we had to be proactive in introducing time for ‘mouse wiggle’ into the programme – a bit of fun that kept both staff and their machines engaged!
• Without the face-to-face contact, we found that we had to concentrate on varying style and content within the webinar to engage staff.

About Clive Shepherd

Clive Shepherd has written 206 post in this blog.

Clive is a consultant specialising in the application of technology to learning and business communications. He was previously Director of Training and Creative Services for a multinational corporation and co-founder of a major multimedia development company. For four years he was chair of the eLearning Network.

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