On Tuesday, February 8, 2011 the Educational Technologies Committee, a committee of faculty representatives from RHCHP and the Learning Technologies Department held its monthly meeting. The meeting should have taken place the week before, but was postponed due to the threat of inclement weather. As you may recall Tues., Feb. 8 was also pretty nasty with blowing snow and temps barely rising above single digits. With advanced warning of impending weather certain to create the typical poor driving experience in Denver under such circumstances, the committee decided to hold the meeting in virtual space to ensure that everyone could attend. We used Adobe Connect.
This image shows our actual meeting space.
Within this meeting, we were able to accomplish everything on our agenda just as quickly as if we were together, maybe even quicker as discussions were concise and less apt to stray off topic. Much of the credit for this success was due to the organization efforts put forth by Nicole Marcisz who set up the meeting room and managed it while Diane Ernst, the committee chair, stayed right on top of attendee participation keeping the meeting moving on task.
Communicating in an online can occur several different ways. We all had microphones that enabled us to use audio similarly to a conference call, but with ten people in the room ten live mics it could have been havoc. Nicole and Diane established a useful protocol in which we used the “hands up” symbol, easily toggled on and off, to indicate that we had a question. We would then be granted permission to turn our microphones on and state our question or discussion point.
The microphone connection for several attendees was problematic. Rather then spending a lot of time trying to correct it they opted to use the Chat pod to post their questions and comments. Again, Nicole and Diane were right on top of the posts and this attendee was completely involved with the conversation.
One of our tasks required that we discuss and vote on an agenda issue. We used another function of the Attendee List, which allowed us to vote up a topic, by using a green check mark. A vote against would have been indicated with a red mark.
During the meeting one of the presenters needed to demonstrate a website. this was easily brought into a share pod so that attendees could see exactly what the presenter was talking about.
By employing technology readily available, our committee meeting went off without a hitch. The use of this technology is accessible by all Regis employees and staff. Currently it used by online and ground-based instructors for students presentations and guest lecturers, committees like ours who anticipate members not being able to be physically present, meetings which require presentations from distant experts who lack the time or budget to travel to campus, meetings which need to be recorded for later review, and... Well you get the idea. Many options.
If you are interested in using Connect or want to get more use tips, come to the Learning Technologies Technology Fair Tuesday, March 22 in the Mt. View Room. Health Services Administration Faculty Maureen McGuire will share her expertise with Connect, along with Richard Jenkins, a Connect Engineer with Adobe. Also be watching for Connect training sessions held on campus by staff of the Learning Technologies Dept. Have immediate need for training? Send an email to rhadmin@regis.edu
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