Live Webcasting

In this section:

Overview

Live webcasting supports blended distance learning, where the Instructor teaches some students in a traditional classroom environment and other students are outside of the classroom, either all of the time or some of the time. The remote students are each logged in to the presentation on their own computers, watching the rich multimedia presentation as it occurs. Of course, the presentation can also be recorded and published in multiple formats so that every student can view it later.

Live webcasting can also be used for special events (commencements, graduations, guest speakers), with participants both inside and outside of the university. Live webcasts (because of their moderate bandwidth requirement) can be viewed by PC and Mac users with a broadband Internet connection. You can also establish an agreement with a CDN (Content Delivery Network) provider to reach a large and geographically diverse audience.

Live webcasting can be used for classroom overflow situations, where another classroom is set up to seat students who cannot be accommodated in the main classroom. An overflow classroom typically uses a large screen, which requires high bandwidth and large resolutions. Live webcasting is optimized for the individual student, who is viewing on a laptop browser. This means that classroom overflow webcasts may look coarse and grainy on the large screen.

More information on setting up and administering live webcasting can be found on the following pages:

Non-Jetty Web Servers and Live Chat

If you use an external Apache or IIS web server and you will be using live webcasting with the chat feature enabled, see External Web Server Configuration for Live Chat for a configuration change that may be required.

Live Webcasting for Academic Staff

Live webcasting does not change the classroom experience much for an Instructor, but it does place two additional demands on an Instructor or Teaching Assistant (TA):

Monitoring at the beginning of the live webcast to ensure that remote students are seeing the webcast properly. See Monitor the Webcast.
Managing chat. During a live webcast, remote students can submit questions to the Instructor and communicate with other students using the chat feature. See Manage Chat.

See Live Webcasting for Academic Staff for these sections and further details.

Live Webcasting for Students

The student experience of watching a live webcast is nearly identical to viewing an Echo, except that students are viewing the class in real-time. If chat is available for the webcast, remote students can participate in the classroom discussion or ask questions. Their experience is similar to the experience of being present in the classroom.

For more information, see Live Webcasting for Students.