Adobe Connect Community

We upgraded the production Adobe Connect servers to Service Pack 3 this morning. No problems so far. I will be interested to see if anything is improved with this service pack, or if we will have to wait for the next version to see any noticeable improvements.

Summer 5/18-7/9/2009, MTWR 9:00-10:30am
Dr. Eugene Boman, Associate Professor of Math, ecb5@psu.edu
Janice Smith, Learning Center Coordinator, jes57@psu.edu
Carol McQuiggan, Instructional Designer, cam240@psu.edu

This MATH 110 course was taught synchronously online using Adobe Connect Pro with an intention to teach it exactly as it is taught face-to-face.

Whiteboard use: A new whiteboard was opened each day, preserving the whiteboards from previous classes so students could revisit them. The whiteboard was used by the instructor to work through problems as he taught that day’s new concept.

Recording: Each class session was recorded, and the link to each recorded session was provided to students who reported accessing them. Nine out of the eleven students attended regularly. However, after attendance started to drop off, the instructor suggested that he would eliminate the provision of recorded sessions unless attendance improved (which it did).

WebWorks: WebWorks was used for homework. This is a free web-based application that needs to run from a Linux server. The immediate feedback provided by WebWorks as students submitted an answer that was confirmed as correct or incorrect was an essential part of the student success in this course. It prevented the students from having the illusion that they understood the content because it made sense to them as the instructor worked through an example. WebWorks allowed multiple tries to get the correct answer, and students kept working through a problem until they were successful. Dr. Boman was able to be more flexible with homework deadlines since WeBWorks does all of the grading. Dr. Boman has been using WebWorks for a number of years, and has a server that he’s using to provide this application to a number of colleagues. It has a bit of a learning curve for the instructor, but not too steep. It can support many more courses.

Concessions made in the move to online: Instead of requiring a proctor, Dr. Boman used online exams and suspects that one student might have had someone else take the exam for her since her work was not consistent with her quiz and homework grades. However, with the online exams, quizzes, and homework, there is no verification of who is actually doing the work. The instructor can see who is logged on, but who is supplying the answers or what resources are being used is not verifiable. The course was quite interactive and Dr. Boman had a reasonable assessment of the skill level of each student from the class interaction. Another concession made is that Dr. Boman feels he was more generous in his grading.

Students’ learning: The instructor feels that the students’ learning was no different than students’ learning in his face-to-face classes. It is not known if this method would have the same result in a class which is more introductory, larger, or where the students are more math adverse. The immediate feedback in the design of the WebWorks assignments was a major factor in the students’ learning.

Online tutor: This seemed to be an essential element in the online course’s success. The tutor participated in most of the classes for at least part of the session. It was essential that Dr. Boman provided time for the tutor to introduce herself to the class and also made it possible for her to post Learning Center services and contact information within the ANGEL course. Four of the eleven students used the online tutoring services – three for one session each. These requests and sessions were early in the semester and mainly required review of algebra techniques or a bit of clarification of the calculus content from class. The fourth student met with the tutor about five times, four in the first weeks of the semester and then once near the end. This student had previously failed the course.

The tutor was a novice at the use of the whiteboard and Adobe Connect for tutoring, but found the technology to become mostly invisible with continued use. It required a pen mouse for ease of writing on the whiteboard. By the end of the course, the tutor was using the online math tutoring as a convenience for a student in another math course. The use of the audio was essential. In order to keep the tutoring session from becoming another problem demonstration and in order to keep the student in the foreground as an active learner, even though the tutor could easily write on the whiteboard and the student could not, she simply asked the student to tell her what to write and then listened carefully. This was a good strategy for finding the misconceptions or knowledge gap of the student. The students could communicate on the whiteboard using the traditional mouse, but it was awkward and time-consuming to do so.

Issues with Adobe Connect Pro: Dr. Boman found Adobe Connect to be a bit clumsy. There were several issues with Adobe Connect’s whiteboard. When the pen is set to size 1 and you switch to the highlighter set at a size 5, when you switch back to the pen, the size remains at 5 rather than reverting back to the size the pen was set at previously (size 1). As you write on the whiteboard, the user can see what is being written but the participants cannot see the writing until the pen is lifted off the whiteboard. If you start writing again before Adobe is done processing the previous writing, it flips a line out to the 0:0 position on the screen. So, you need to be cautious not to write too quickly. Even with these issues, and having to practice and learn how to use it prior to the beginning of the course, after a week or two, Dr. Boman feels that the technology became invisible.

Future: Dr. Boman plans to teach math synchronously online again. For now, he would like to have the math instructors from around the University meet regularly within Adobe Connect to share their research and teaching practices. He is also interested in submitting a proposal to the 2010 TLT Symposium to share how he is teaching MATH 110 online. He would also like to investigate the possibility of using a tool better suited to teaching math online. For example, another math professor, Dr. Stan Smith uses Eluminate Live, and Dr. Boman used to use Centra. Would either of those tools be better for this use or is there something else?

There as are currently 2 important updates to Adobe Presenter Version 7.0 that affects both Windows platforms and Macintosh with parallels installed. They include audio enhancements and fixes, better performance with PowerPoint .pptx files and quizzing features. To properly install the updates they must be installed in the correct order. First install the Adobe Presenter 7.0.1 update, then the Adobe Presenter 7.0.2 update.

Note: I found that it may be necessary to reboot the after each update installation.

Licensed Adobe Presenter users can install the updates from the following URL.
http://tinyurl.com/PresenterUpdate or
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=153&platform=...

Use the following links to review a full description of each update.

Important issues resolved in Adobe Presenter 7.0.1 update
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404919.html

Important issues resolved in Adobe Presenter 7.0.2 update
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/407/kb407169.html

Yes it is possible to share information created in pods with the main room. For more information on how to go about sharing the infromaton please visit our section on breakout rooms at http://meeting.psu.edu/node/596

If you are seeing poor performance from your computer when connected to an Adobe Connect meeting, there maybe some corrupted information stored in your browser cache. The ITS Knowledge base has detailed information on how to clear your browser cache. You can find this at the following link: http://kb.its.psu.edu/psu-all/hd/deleteing-the-cache-all-browsers/
Please note that if have multiple browsers installed you will need to clear the cache for all of them.

A recording of the Breakout Room Best Practices User Group Meeting today as well as Randah's slides, and links to some introductory tutorials on using breakout rooms has been posted.

All of these resources are available on the User Group homepage:
http://www.connectusers.com/groups/bestpractices/
John

Has anyone done any indepth editing of Connect recordings? AgIT has done the editing within Connect but has not taken a recording offline to edit? If anyone has, what software do you use to edit? Does ITS offer any classes on editing?

Peg Shuffy

We record many of our AC meetings and post them on our website for our clients to view.

Is there a way I can see how many people have accessed those recordings?

thanks, jacki, AG IT

Are you having problems with your Friends of Penn State (FPS) Account?

To reset your Friends of Penn State (FPS) account, please visit the Friends of Penn State Website at http://fps.psu.edu. You will need to click on the ‘Reset Password’ button immediately below the graphic.

If you need assistance changing your password and/or updating your FPS account information, please contact the ITS Help Desk at helpdesk@psu.edu. We recommend that you put “FPS Password” in the subject line of your email message. You can also access answers to questions by using the ITS Knowledge Base at http://kb.its.psu.edu. Just enter “FPS” into the Search box and press Search.

We also recommend that you visit the Adobe Connect Quick Start Checklist at http://meeting.psu.edu/checklist for additional information, requirements, and tips for using Adobe Connect here at Penn State.

Where can I host a meeting from a large room (lecture hall/conference room) while making the meeting available via Adobe Connect? This is a popular question for those of us who consult and support Adobe Connect. There are so many variables involved that it's sometimes hard to know where Adobe Connect will work from the podium of a large classroom, lecture hall, auditorium, or conference room. Below is a list of rooms where we’ve used Adobe Connect successfully.

*141 Computer Building
*223 Computer Building
*Foster Auditorium - Pattee Library
*101 Ag Science and Industries Building
*112 Kern
*100 Life Sciences
*117 Osmond
*100, 101, and 102 Thomas
*60, 62, 158, 160, 162, 262, 358, 360 Willard
*112 Chambers
*112 Forest Resources Bldg
*113 IST
*118 Katz
*189 MRL
*110 Struthers Family Auditorium, Business Bldg

One requirement to allow Adobe Connect to work properly is to make sure the presentation is conducted within Adobe Connect meeting room and performed from a hard-wired high speed network connection. Normally, we suggest this connection be the podium computer since that is normally where the presentation is conducted.

An additional hard-wired network connection (mobility port) is needed if you plan for a moderator in the same room. Most of the technology classrooms have an additional network connection available for use at the podium.

Some sort of stand alone microphone is needed. The mic needs to feed into the podium computer for Adobe Connect (the in house microphone will not work with Adobe Connect). One of the microphones that we've used is the Logitech Desktop USB microphone for PC/Mac. This works well, but you need to stay close to the microphone so the Connect attendees can hear.

If you have other equipment or rooms that work well with Adobe Connect, can you please post through this forum?