Online Course Support

Expectations for online course support, understood as of 2013/03/08, are:

Video

Only the instructor will be involved; students will only be heard. That implies we don't need more than a single camera. Unless an automatic motion tracking camera is used, we'll assume that a TA (Teaching Assistant for the course) will do camera management [1].

Audio

Microphones will be required for the instructor, and the audience. The room is preferably mic'd so that students can be heard from wherever they sit.

Remote students (i.e. watching in realtime) should be able to participate via audio. No provision will be made for telephone participation [2].

Interaction

• with the classroom, hence the mics
• live streaming
• email - presumably after the class

Display to Students

Any combination of the instructor and "slides" should be viewable by students. At least projector and laptop output constitutes "slides".

When Viewable

Courses will be live and/or viewed later (typically next day); likely unedited.

Location

It will be done in DC2585.

Online technology

We will be using Adobe Connect as the classroom/attendee presentation system.

Footnotes

1. IST's practical experience is that instructors moving around causes at least two problems:
   • it looks dizzying to the students when seen on a small display
   • the video quality can be poor when lots of motion is involved (Flash can handle only so much).
   They strongly recommend against it.
2. It's understood that in some cases audio quality is compromised by a poor (student) Internet connection, and that with extra technology it's possible to allow students use a telephone.