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This page describes various tools in a web-conferencing/meeting room that help you conduct a Web-based meeting or seminar.

Most of these instructions also apply to any Adobe Acrobat Connect meeting. You can set up a free trial account at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnectpro/ if you do not have access to the FHWA resources mentioned here.

These instructions assume you have already logged-in to a meeting room and are a Host. The interface will change over time, so these instructions are generalized to concepts of arranging a meeting room. Refer to Adobe Acrobat Connect documentation for information on specific interface features.

Video

• The built-in audio and video can provide a very rich meeting experience, but be sure you have a redundant audio connection and be prepared to sacrifice your video feed to improve overall performance.

The Camera and Voice Pod ("Pod" is the Adobe term for "window" or interface) is only useful if you and your students have high-speed broadband connections (greater than 1 megabit/second UPLOAD speeds), which most home connections do not offer in 2007. You will also need a video camera (webcam) attached to your computer. You can add a substantial feeling of "presence" to your web-based meeting if you can offer video of yourself and your students, but in our experience, the technical difficulties and quality issues of using live video in a meeting have severely limited this tool's usefulness. Acrobat Connect Video help.

Audio connection

• The audio connection may be your most important communications channel. Students had a high tolerance to poor visual performance, but a very low tolerance to poor audio performance.

The audio connection is very important to the overall success of your meeting. When a meeting's visuals are distorted or of reduced quality, the overall impact on the meeting is not severe, but poor audio quality always generates complaints. Most web-based meeting tools offer built-in audio using Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) technology, but we have consistently experienced very low real-world performance of this technology. Our classes have been much more successful and well-received when we used a telephone-based audio link in addition to the web-based visual communications channel. If the web-based connection fails, we could continue to use the telepone based audio connection to continue the class and troubleshoot student problems with the web-based portion. Even if the web-based audio is functioning well for your students, the instructors should have a telephone number available for students to call if they have technical problems. In several instances we have successfully used a separate web-based audio connection such as Skype, but the attendees must be prepared for interruptions and lower fidelity (interestingly, we have had relatively good audio conversations using Skype WHILE using the web-based meeting interface, even when we could not use the audio tools in the web-based meeting interface). Your choice of audio conferencing must take into account your and your audience's expectations, needs, infrastructure, and technical abilities, and in all cases, you should secure the best audio conferencing services available to you. Acrobat Connect built-in audio help.

Chat

• The chat pod gives all attendees a chance to spontaneously interact. Attendees can send messages to individuals or groups.

The Chat Pod is a crucial component of most meetings. The faster you and your audience can learn to use this tool, the better, as it affords a very reliable, very flexible means of communicating with your audience. With this tool, the audience members and instructors can also communicate among themselves without distracting others, and it allows a level of spontaneous interaction that is difficult to arrange even in a face-to-face classroom environment. Users who are familiar with instant messaging systems should be able to quickly understand and use this tool. The tool's text-based interface also provides alternatives to audio and visual communication to those with impaired vision and/or hearing (the text-based system is adaptable to tactile reading and writing interfaces). Adobe Acrobat Connect chat help.

Quiz/Polling Tool

• The polling tool is easy to use and a good way to get meeting participants to start giving you feedback.

Not all the tools we tested had built-in quizzing, testing, and polling tools. The polling tools in Acrobat Connect proved to be very useful for encouraging feedback and gathering performance and evaluation data. Students who did not give feedback in the chat window or verbally would frequently use the polling feature. Polling and quiz questions can be prepared ahead of time or on-the-fly, and results can be presented in real-time, post response, or not at all. Some individually-identifiable responses can be recorded for future evaluation, which is useful for student evaluation. Keep in mind that the only way to make these polling tools completely anonymous is for students to use pseudonyms when they log on to the system. Adobe Acrobat Connect Quiz/Polling Pod help.

Notes

• Think of the Note Pod as a sticky note to keep persistant information available to conference attendees.

The Note Pods are similar "sticky notes" you might use in the real world. You can place static information in a note window and place it in front of other items on the screen to draw attention or cover up certain elements. The note might contain static information such as a call-in number that will be visible throughout a meeting. Adobe Acrobat Connect Whiteboard help.

Sharing Window

• The sharing pod is where most of the action takes place in a typical meeting.

The Sharing Pod is the central visual information presentation area for most meetings. The typical application of the sharing pod is to display PowerPoint presentations. You can share many other document types and even applications through the sharing pod, and gain or give access to applications running on a remote computer. This is the shortest description, but this function has the most options. You should practice using this function extensively, including all of its interface features and controls, before running a live meeting. Help sharing documents, sharing your screen or an application, and with the sharing interface features.

Whiteboard

• The whiteboard and whiteboard overlay tools give participants a good set of tools to make spontaneous annotation and brainstorming.

The whiteboard function allows instructors and students the ability to draw on screen and paste in images in real time. Some whiteboard features also work in an "overlay" mode to mark up and annotate documents on-screen. We found the overlay function to be useful as a way to draw attention to specific areas of our shared documents. Using a mouse and keyboard to draw on the whiteboard interface was not nearly as convenient as a true whiteboard or slate, but with a digitizing tablet, the virtual whiteboard could be very similar to the ones found in physical classrooms. Adobe Acrobat Connect Whiteboard help.

Attendee List

• The attendee pod displays all of the participants and their roles, and Hosts can change roles and edit attendee information.

The Attendee Pod allows the audience and instructors to see a list of who is attending, but to take advantage of its full functionality, you need to use the full learning management system and integrated user management features of your system. The user management features of the full Acrobat Connect system allow the system administrator to manage room attendance based on group membership, individual identification, and user roles, but in our meetings, the students and most of the instructors can enter the room anonymously. When used with all the features enabled, an instructor can also manage audio and video connections with any or all of the attendees. Adobe Acrobat Connect Attendee Pod help.