L3: Presenting to a Gathered Audience

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Presenting to a gathered audience generally involves a speaker (or multiple speakers) presenting to users who are gathered remotely in another location, such as a classroom. There may also be an audience gathered face-to-face with the speaker(s). This scenario necessitates more preparation and planning than a small group meeting.

If the audience is "mixed," with some users dispersed (logging in individually) and some gathered together, this scenario is covered in the Complete Mixed Meeting Hosting Guide under Hosting Meetings.

Level of Expertise

Level 3: Advanced (see Level 3: Advanced under Hosting Meetings -> Levels of Expertise)

Examples

Lecture
Guest speaker (see the Faculty Focus recording and materials for more information about using Adobe connect for guest speakers)
Report to large audience

Meeting Activities

Host broadcasts audio and video
Display files in the Share pod
Attendees use Chat pod to communicate and ask questions
Use Poll pod to incorporate interaction with Attendees
Use File Share pod to distribute files

Opportunities

If audience members have access to computers, they can communicate via text chat.
Face-to-face interactions, including discussion and small group work, are possible for those in the classroom.
The session can be recorded for additional uses.

Limitations

If opportunities for discussion and activities are not built into presentation or supported in the classroom, a lengthy presentation can fail to engage an audience.
For active, engaged learning, an experienced moderator should be present in the classroom to facilitate discussion.
In order for the distant Presenter to be aware of what happens in the classroom, someone there should send observations using text chat.
Requires planning and preparation
Moderator in face-to-face room needs to have a strategy to collect and ask questions from the audience
May need special setup of A/V equipment in the face-to-face room
Presenters need wired high speed connections

Roles/Permissions

Meeting Leader: Host
Attendees: Participants and/or Presenters

Connection Speed

Host: high speed, wired Internet connection
Presenters: high speed, wired Internet connection
Participants: dial-up modem, DSL, LAN

Support considerations

Technical support
Text chat monitor
Discussion monitor in face-to-face room

Case Study: Gathered Audience

Jan White teaches an introductory art history course on Impressionist painters. She tries to make the materials more interesting and relevant to students by including information about the culture and country where the works originated as well as information about the current locations of many of the works. Jan would also like to have curators from museums where the works are housed come and speak to the class, but she has a very limited budget and cannot afford to bring guest speakers into the classroom or to take the students on field trips. She has been able to use resources on the Internet to some extent to reach her goal, but this is not as effective as she would like.

Jan has decided to try using the desktop videoconferencing system, Adobe Connect, to economically bring expert guest speakers into her classroom. Jan asked the Adobe Connect contact for her unit to create an Adobe Connect meeting room for her (see Meeting Creator Licenses under Creating/Editing Meetings). In her meeting room she created a custom layout containing the Camera and Voice pod, a Share pod, the Attendee pod, and a Chat pod. She planned to use the Camera and Voice pod to broadcast audio and video; the Share pod to display images and a PowerPoint presentation; the Chat pod just in case something happened to the audio broadcast and she needed to communicate with her guest speaker; and the Attendee pod to see who was in the meeting room.

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Jan's Meeting Room Layout for Guest Speakers

Jan was able to schedule three guest speakers, one for each major portion of the course. She asked each guest speaker to create a PowerPoint presentation for the talk he/she would give and send it to her so she could load it into the meeting room as well as make it available to students prior to the class. She also arranged a time with each guest to meet in the Adobe Connect room to check the guest’s camera and microphone and to practice the presentation. Two of the guests already had Web cameras and headsets with microphones, but Jan had to purchase a set for the third guest to borrow.

Jan sent each guest speaker an e-mail message with directions and the URL for logging on to the Penn State Adobe Connect system. She explained that they would need to go to http://fps.psu.edu/ and get a Friends of Penn State user ID and password prior to logging in to the Adobe Connect meeting. Penn State does not allow anonymous guest accounts in Adobe Connect for security reasons.

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Friends of Penn State Account

On the day scheduled for the first guest speaker’s visit, Jan arrived at her regular classroom ten minutes early to start up the computer and projector, turn on the sound system for the room, open the browser, and connect to the Adobe Connect meeting. Her guest speaker was already in the prearranged Adobe Connect room, so Jan turned on her Web camera and microphone, ran the Audio Setup Wizard, and greeted him. Then she promoted him to be a Presenter and opened the Share pod containing the preloaded PowerPoint presentation. After being promoted to Presenter, the guest speaker ran the Audio Setup Wizard and activated his Web camera. Jan and the guest quickly did a sound check to be sure the audio broadcast was working correctly.

For this special class, in addition to the PowerPoint presentation provided by the guest, students received white index cards as they entered the classroom so they could write down their questions during the presentation and hand them to Jan. Jan arranged with the guest speaker to pause every fifteen minutes or so and ask for questions, at which time Jan would read the cards to him.

When it was time for the class to begin, Jan set the meeting to be recorded and broadcasted her audio to the guest so he could hear her introduce him to the class. After introducing him, Jan muted her microphone, paused her camera, and turned the class over to the guest. Students watched the guest and his presentation projected from the computer and listened to his talk through speakers connected to the podium computer.

As the guest spoke, Jan floated around the classroom collecting index cards with questions. At the prearranged pauses, Jan returned to the front of the classroom and broadcasted her audio, reading the questions to the guest. The students asked some follow-up questions, which Jan repeated for the guest.

Class time passed quickly. Jan broadcasted her audio so the guest could hear the students applaud at the end of the presentation. She thanked the guest, stopped recording the meeting, and logged out of the meeting room. Jan reminded students of their assignment to write a one-page reflective paper containing three things they learned in class that day as well as their opinion of how the class went and whether having guest speakers attend class through Adobe Connect is a good use of class time.

Jan returned to her office, sent the guest speaker a thank you note and then logged on to the Adobe Connect server. Using the Meting Manager Interface, she checked the recording of the meeting and posted the URL for the recording in her ANGEL course space for students to access. Jan is hoping to build a library of guest speaker recordings over the next couple of semesters for use both in class and as a resource for activities and assignments outside of class.