Webex Synchronous Environment

Having just completed three online Interactive synchronous classes with eight of my teaching colleagues on the subject of Web 2.0 technology I thought it was time to review the environment from a technical point of view. The online communication tools I.E whiteboard text and drawing tools, innovative pointer tool, text chat and feedback icons have been easily adopted by the participants for use in the session. Video conferencing has not been used, but there is a facility to view 6 webcams at once if desired.

Quality of Audio
The key technical issue is the quality of the audio. Using VOIP the system overall seems to have worked very well. The system limits speaking to seven people at one time, which seems to be better than most competitors. The microphone is passed around to those not in possession of a free microphone who wish to speak. This is achieved easily by the facilitator. The facilitator also has the ability to mute participants which is useful. Participants also have the ability to mute themselves as long as they select their own name first on the participant panel. With regard to muting of participants it was obvious that a lot of background noise could be heard at various times and a much stricter outlining of ground rules to highlight no distractions or using the mute if you are aware of the potential of background noise to interfere with the lesson.

It would seem that everyone could hear me clearly, which was obviously very important especially for those participants that were in the unfortunate position of not being able to be heard. It seems that all those that could not be heard were basically suffering from a problem related to how they initially setup, using the webex audio setup wizard. We will address steps that can be taken to minimise problems in this area later in this article. We seem to be able to get through the sessions ok, if only 1 or 2 had a problem as the participants could still follow the conversation and contribute and communicate via text chat. So most participants once sorted out had no problem with hearing or being heard. Occasionally though people could not hear me for patchy moments of 5-10 seconds or so, maybe longer in some cases. I experienced this myself as a participant in a subsequent session. This would appear to be as a result of the use of VOIP and the way data is transferred over the internet leading to occasional delays in voice data being transmitted across the data networks even though webex use their own private network and most others in this industry use public networks (question for self - is that the Internet only?). So overall it seems that webex does provide an effective application for communicating via audio in using VOIP in a web conferencing environment.
VOIP and Teleconferencing
The actual product that I have been working in is 'training center'. This does come at an extra cost. VOIP usage is charged per person per minute for participation in a session. Teleconferencing linked to the session is also available and I know from having participated in many webex sessions conducted using teleconferencing audio that this is a much more reliable and effective method of audio communication. There is a charge again for this and it is higher than VOIP. Currently I have perceived the use of VOIP as the chosen mode of audio communication because with other companies that use VOIP there are no extra costs involved for students or the institutions and ALSO with a microphone and headset attached to the PC it should be less hassle. As I understand it there are no extra charges for companies that use VOIP over public networks. Although participants will be given a toll-free number to use for teleconferencing my understanding is that most if not all will be charging the institutions for this service. From a participants point of view I think the audio will be clearer and they will need a hands free phone so that they can complete whiteboard and text chat tasks easily. So I don't think teleconferencing option should be dismissed out of hand, but it will be a more expensive option for the institution.

Minimizing Technical Problems
To minimize technical problems related to audio for individual students and to minimize disruptions to classes the following measures will help:
1. An online induction session should be arranged for all students to make sure audio setup works ok. They should not be allowed onto a session until audio setup issues are resolved. If the facilitator cannot help, then the individual student should be directed to webex support (who seem to respond quickly to any queries) to clarify the problem.
2. A document or perhaps a webex recording should be available explaining the step by step process of completing the audio setup wizard, highlighting key points such as
* When indicating the audio equipment to be used make sure you select the correct equipment from the list presented. (Note that if you have 3 or 4 audio devices attached to your machine they may not show up automatically and you need to scroll to find them.
* Headset with microphone is the preferred option for audio quality and if you use them participants need to make sure that during the audio setup wizard process that the option for speaker setup is set to ‘headphones’ and not ‘desktop or laptop speakers’. As a temporary measure in a class – if students have set this up incorrectly the CONTROL key on the keyboard when pressed down can toggle to and from headphones as the preferred choice.
3. Also from the START menu of your machine go to >SETTINGS> CONTROL PANEL>SOUNDS AND AUDIO DEVICES>AUDIO TAB to make sure sound playback and recording are set to the correct devices.
4. Finally if a participant experiences patchy audio during a session they could try leaving the session and then coming back in again to get a better connection.

Adobe Connect Report 2: it ain't happening

Supposed to start delivering a 6 week course online live synchronous course on Monday Nov 5th. In preparation for my course I am massively behind schedule because i was naive enough to assume that adobe connect and the many other products of this ilk were robust enough in the digital age to handle a bit of true interactivity and not just some talking head in a web conferencing system answering a few text chats and ponderously allowing others to speak because the VOIP systems have massive difficulty dealing with multiple speakers. I believe problems are compounded in adobe Connect because of the craziness of having to give presenter rights to participants to access the voice controls and the same problem applies to whiteboards where participants cannot use a whiteboard without presenter rights, meaning that anyone can move onto the next slide or erase text just like that.

during a couple of trial runs with only two people setting aside intermittent patchy audio, there was terrible echo. After investigating i believe problems could stem from the fact that participants can click on all sorts of options, multiple speakers, mute etc and the true host/ presenter is not sure what is going on.

the presenter rights issue aside, all systems seem to struggle with the VOIP bandwidth issue. At might last investigation Webex allow 7 microphones on at once and elluminate 6. I have worked with 5 in a webex environment and it worked fine. As i want to work with 12 at a time it seems that dialing in on a separate teleconference seems to be the best way to ensure that everyone is free to talk freely. I have participated in many sessions of this nature.

The advantage of VOIP in is that there are no additional phone costs to be incurred by either host or user and it's one less technicality to worry about.

Anyhow i have to come up with solutions for a monday start, but all the extra investigation of problems has seriously effected other complimentary preparation for the class, so i am not a happy bunny.

Adobe Connect : Interaction and Collaboration

My initiation to interactive and collaborative live online learning was using the webex environment. My opinions of other synchronous collaboration software is somewhat clouded by what i perceive to have been an excellent schooling in an excellent webex environment. Three significant influences were the use of an individualized pointer tool for each participant that could be moved easily around the screen to indicate contributions to the white board, the use of whiteboard tools without giving presenter control to the participant and the use of phone dial in as opposed to using VOIP for audio connection to the host and other participants.

This blog discusses some of the issues of implementing a synchronous class in Adobe Connect. First of all please note as a great source of reference and help the excellent Adobe Connect Blog.



In anaylysing Adobe connect i make the following observations

1. For participants to access the class a host has to open the class. This is fine as the class can be opened early, up to 12 hours in advance to allow participants to logon early to check initial audio connections. Adobe Connect seems easier in this respect to logon which is a good thing as we need to keep the technology barriers to a minimum.

2. Using Flash and the vector based system 'pods' that contain whiteboard, chat and other tools automatically adjust to the size of the participants computers, which again is good. However if you woork on high resolution screens like i do, it is still better to reduce the size down to 1028x768.

3. The Interface is easy to organize and has a good feel to it.

4. It is easy to add content and Url's, which are stored on the adobe server for easy retrieval next time around.

5. I am working on the basis of a VOIP connection as this is the least troublesome for students, both technically and from possible additional costs that may be incuurred. My experience is that a phone dial up is preferable for quality and allowing a large number of users to participate at once. I hope i can overcome this issue and be proved wrong during my 10-12 strong synchronous classes.

Useful Links: Adobe Connect Tips




POINTS to Note
1. After logging on participants need to be given enhanced rights to use the camera and Voice pod and the 'Share' pods which will allow them whiteboard tools to annotate powerpoint slides which are the backbone of the class. The host needs to ensure that the camera is off and that multiple speakers are allowed to speak. Note that webcams are not used as part of the course. They are not really necessary and will take up bandwidth which could effect the quality of audio that is broadcast.

2. When working with participants off campus best to use a connection speed at DSL level and advise students to set their own connection to their own level (modem or broadband dsl). The connection status of each participant can be checked in the attendance list options. in the top right hand corner the strength of connection is indicated with either green(best), orange (ok) or red (not good). Similarly the same colour indication is used when a participant speaks in the camera and voice pod. greyed out when not speaking, green when good connection and speaking.

3. Once given the rights to speak participants have the choice of pressing the 'talk' button down and holding or use hands free to keep it permanently available to speak. Keeping it hands free is my preferred option, but after a practice session this morning there may still be a possible problem with bandwidth availability as my connection was distinctly patchy. I will try again and change a few settings, but it may be that in order to best proceed we'll have to take the approach of holding the'talk' button down.

4.Another irritating issue is that due to all participants acting as a presenter, if one was to use the erase (clear) whiteboard objects tool, then all screen objects are lost and not just the individuals contribution. The way around this for individuals to delete their own whiteboard contributions is to select for example a text object by using the selector tool and drag it slightly to reveal the border resize handles and then press the delete key on the keyboard. This seems ok, but is not totally natural and sometimes it does not seem to work on some text objects that are drawn. If it does not work then using the pointer tool to surround the object with a large invisible rectangle will select the object, (providing the complete area of the text object is covered) and then again use the delete key on the keyboard.

5. One advantage is that once the selection tool is mastered text objects can be easily moved around the screen. Drawn objects that use a pencil for example work slightly differently and the only way to select a whole drawing that is the result of a few pencil lines is to use the pointer tool to draw an invisible rectangle around it as in the second method described previously.

6. Recordings can be made, but unless things have changed recently they can only be saved and accessed on the adobe server. No downloads to your own computer to save or distribute for offline viewing is available.


To achieve the fluid interaction and collaboration i want, so that the only thing to worry about is the learning and not awkward technology requires a lot of research and experience in using the various synchronous classroom options. Consideration of the points above is essential for institutions interested in solutions that are aimed at improving learning. straightforward connections with low interactions will be easy to achieve, but institutions need to look deeper than that.

Connect is offering some ease of access plus points. I will work with it in the coming month to see if i can get it to act in a matter befitting a group of people that just want to concentrate on the learning.