New Adobe Connect Pro Tutorials Will Be Posted in January 2008

During the Fall semester, we have been experimenting with creating modular tutorials for Adobe Connect (Breeze). A preview of these materials was posted on October 26, 2007 at http://meeting.psu.edu/node/292.

Anyone who has tried to teach others to use Adobe Connect can tell you that there is no straight path from where you are to where you want to be. For example, if you want to use the Camera and Voice pod to broadcast audio and video, you have to use many of the options in the Meeting Menu, first.

How to present this maze of options, menus, and pods to people who need to learn to use Adobe Connect was a major stumbling block in developing the tutorials – and I didn’t really start to make progress until I realized that, rather than looking at teaching how to accomplish tasks from within Adobe Connect, I needed to look instead at how to chunk the information about the options, menus, and pods so it could be assembled in any number of ways to provide “just in time” information about how to accomplish a task.

Before beginning to develop the content, I created a list of requirements. Much of this information came from focus groups we held in April, 2007 and includes:

The tutorials need to be short and address a single item (short and to the point)
The materials need to be readily available and easily searchable
The materials need to apply to all audiences, including faculty, staff, and students
The materials need to address all six roles a user can be assigned in Adobe Connect, including Host, Presenter, Participant, Moderator, Meeting Creator, and IT Support
The materials need to be generic so they can be used anywhere by anyone in any unit at Penn State
The materials need to be of high quality and need to be maintained – people looking for help or developing training don’t have time to hunt through a long list of materials to find the ones on the topic they need that are current and correct
When used to develop training, the source files need to be readily available so the materials can be easily customized by trainers throughout the Penn State community depending on the goals of lesson

In addition to the above requirements, I wanted the materials to be flexible enough to be delivered through a variety of methods, including:

Through our CMS, ANGEL
During an Adobe Connect meeting
At a Web site
On CDs
On a streaming video server

We used the following to develop the materials:

MS Word to write the scripts
Captivate to record live full-screen motion with narration
Adobe Connect Presenter to record narrated PowerPoint with embedded .swf full-motion screen captures and .mp3 narration
Adobe Captivate full motion recording (FMR) editor to assemble the Captivate chunks into a single .swf file that can be used in Adobe Connect Presenter and Adobe Connect Pro
Audacity to assemble the .mp3 files exported from Captivate to create a single audio file to import into Adobe Connect Presenter
QuickTime Pro to re-combine the compiled audio and video files into .flv and .mov files for streaming

So far we have created about 45 tutorial objects and modules, which I will begin posting on January 3, 2008. How quickly the files load depends on the speed of your Internet connection. If the audio loads and begins to play before the video, restart the animation as soon as the video appears. Some animations embedded in Adobe Connect Presenter files are fairly large and do require extra time to load.

Following is the schedule for posting:

January 3, 2008:
Participants’ Guide to Pods (https://breeze.psu.edu/participantpods/)
Create a Friends of Penn State Account (https://breeze.psu.edu/createfpsacct/)
Test Connection (https://breeze.psu.edu/testconnectlo/)
Test Connection Module (https://breeze.psu.edu/testconnectmo/)
Enter a Meeting Room Using a URL (https://breeze.psu.edu/enterurl/)
Installing the Sharing Add-in (https://breeze.psu.edu/shareaddin/)
Selecting Attendee Connection Speed (https://breeze.psu.edu/selectconnectspeed/)

January 4, 2008
Audio Setup Wizard Basics (https://breeze.psu.edu/audiowizard/)
Audio Wizard Advanced Settings (https://breeze.psu.edu/audioadvanced/)
Audio Setup Wizard Module (https://breeze.psu.edu/audiowizardmo/)
Selecting a Camera (https://breeze.psu.edu/selectcamera/)
Flash Player Settings Window (https://breeze.psu.edu/flashsettings/)
Select Camera and Flash Player Settings Module (https://breeze.psu.edu/selectcameramo/)

January 7, 2008:
Creating a Meeting Room (https://breeze.psu.edu/createroom/)
Creating a New Meeting Room Module (https://breeze.psu.edu/createroommo/)
Meeting Manager Interface – Edit Participants (https://breeze.psu.edu/mmieditparts/)
Auto-Promote Option (https://breeze.psu.edu/autopromote/)

January 8, 2008:
Attendee List Pod (https://breeze.psu.edu/attendeelist/)
Camera and Voice Pod (https://breeze.psu.edu/cameravoice/)
Camera and Voice Options (https://breeze.psu.edu/cameraoptions/)
Chat Pod Introduction (https://breeze.psu.edu/chatintrolo/)
Chat Pod Options (https://breeze.psu.edu/chatoptionslo/)
Clear Chat and Save Chat (https://breeze.psu.edu/chatclearsavelo/)

January 10, 2008:
The Present Menu (Host) (https://breeze.psu.edu/presentmenu/)
Activating Preparing Mode (https://breeze.psu.edu/preparemode/)
Using Preparing Mode (https://breeze.psu.edu/preparemodemo/)
Setting Roles (https://breeze.psu.edu/setuserroles/)
Using, Creating, and Editing Meeting Room Layouts (https://breeze.psu.edu/layoutslo/)

The Share pod tutorials are still under development. Share pod Learning Objects completed to date:

Please post questions and comments here or send them to breeze@psu.edu.

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