8-2 Synchronous Platforms

Most of us have participated in a webinar and perhaps have even hosted one. We know that with the growing ubiquity of Internet access (more bandwidth, more devices with access) and the high cost of travel, webinars are an affordable alternative to live meetings. With some planning and practice, they can be a very engaging and effective alternative as well.

Here are a few tips about producing webinars from Instructional team member, Ronnie Ashline.

Like the LMS industry, webinar tools and platforms are changing constantly, with new players entering the market and others being acquired or just exiting quietly. Synchronous meeting technologies vary greatly in price depending on the sophistication of the tools, the service package, and the number of participants that can be supported; however, if your budget is limited, you can find quite good options, like Big Blue Button, at low or no cost.

To get the latest information about how synchronous platforms are being used in learning environments, visit a couple of the following sites and search for ‘webinar’:

• ATD: Association for Talent Development
• Online Learning Consortium formerly The Sloan Consortium
• EDUCAUSE

How to Prevent Virtual ‘DBP’ – Death by PowerPoint

Anyone who has ever hosted a webinar can tell you that it’s a tad different from delivering a normal presentation. It’s harder to gauge the audience’s reaction, and technology issues can become show-stoppers or at the very least provide some uncomfortable moments. Handling Q&A is easier when you have a co-host to watch the chat box. And perhaps most importantly, keeping the audience engaged, interested, and awake is even trickier when all they have to look at is their computer with a PowerPoint slide on it. The following links provide some best practices and tips and tricks for hosting a successful webinar:

• The Webinar Blog with lots of great articles
• How to Do a Webinar Your Audience Will Love – Updated Nov 2021

Benefits and Challenges

Although complex to set up and manage, a web-based synchronous classroom can do things that a web-based asynchronous classroom cannot, such as provide:

• the ability to respond to one another in real time (one of the chief values of the traditional face-to-face classroom);
• an increased sense of community and ‘realness’ of both the host and the other participants
• the ability to share applications across distance; and
• the motivation of a specific committed time on the schedule where, as in an face-to-face classroom, participants are temporarily shielded from ringing phones and other distractions while they focus dedicated energy on the learning task.

As with all technology-based solutions, there are benefits and limitations. Past participants in this certificate program could tell stories that bear this out. One study group had members located in three different time zones: Seattle, New Mexico, and the Persian Gulf. They coordinated among themselves to use the synchronous tools in a Blackboard classroom to do brainstorming for their project. For the first session, the learner in the Persian Gulf showed up an hour late because classmates in the Seattle area had miscalculated the time differences and told him the wrong hour. They also faced the technical issues of making sure they all had their software properly configured to handle Java applets and cookies. But they found that these real-time sessions were motivating and bonding, and they got the job done much more efficiently than drawn-out email exchanges.