Why WebEx?
WebEx Meeting Centre provides on-demand, real-time, collaborative web meetings and conferencing. As part of the U of S campus-wide license, faculty and staff can schedule meetings in which anyone may participate or present.
- Teach to remote students
- Blended Seminar or Classroom
- Remote lecturer/Guest Presenter
- Virtual office hours
- Ad hoc collaboration
- Webinar
- Troubleshooting
The ICT Service Desk provides WebEx support. For assistance please visit the help and services portal, email it.support@usask.ca or in-person support on the first floor of the Murray Library.
Cisco provides 24-hour support via ticket or phone. To contact Cisco directly please call toll-free 1 866 229 3239 (for WebEx specific questions ; not Blackboard Integration)
Visit help.webex.com for FAQs, documentation and video tutorials.
Additional video tutorials are available on LinkedIn Learning.
For use in teaching, teaching.usask.ca
How does it work?
WebEx available inside and outside Blackboard
1. Inside: Tools > WebEx Meetings (enabled by default in Blackboard Courses at the U of S)
Integrated with class list; provides list of scheduled sessions; access to view/download recordings; attendance within classes/sessions; controlled access for students
2. Outside: http://webex.usask.ca
Schedule using the WebEx interface; invite via email; recording links can be emailed
Both give you access to Meeting Centre. If you need Training Centre, contact ICT Service Desk and they can enable it.
Four Different Pieces
- Personal Meeting Room
- Meeting Centre
- Training Centre
- WebEx for Students
- Always there, just for you
- Quickly available from http://webex.usask.ca
- Personalized link to access meeting https://usask.webex.com/join/abc123 or https://usask.webex.com/join/firstname.lastname (depends on your preferred email address)
- Quick place to have informal meetings or one-on-one sessions
- Very similar to Personal Meeting Room except:
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- More participants (up to 500, typically 30-40 )
- Can be scheduled ahead of time
- Better options for inviting users
- Integrated with Blackboard for use in courses
- Use for small classes, seminars, interviews, guest speakers
- Relatively “informal”
Different interface from Meeting Centre, more complex to set up as there are more choices.
More focused on formal training sessions for large numbers:
- Up to 500+ participants
- More control over what tools are available to participants, what privileges they have (eg. mic muting on login)
- Breakout Rooms
Roles in WebEx
- Host, Presenter, Attendees
- Only one host and one presenter (at a time) in any WebEx session
- Usually, meeting owner is both host and presenter. “Pass the Ball” or “Assign Privileges” to make someone else a presenter
- Requires some extra planning when working with blended classes
How to Use it When Teaching
- wired, high-speed internet connection (wireless connections are often saturated by conference participants)
- a connection to the house sound system to capture presenter audio
- a video/webcam feed of presenter (often difficult to arrange with the conference tech support).
- WebEx audio output to the house sound system (if you want remote participants to be heard in the room)
Note: Be aware that your classroom must be equipped with a microphone and speakers connected to the classroom computer in order for you to teach using WebEx. If the room is not equipped with a microphone, you can either bring your own external USB microphone or headset to use or, (where appropriate), contact your College or Department support staff to see if they have any available for loan.
Some classrooms on campus are equipped with a microphone on the instructor computer console. Consider checking out the room assigned to you prior to your session.
Course Rooms
- Scheduling multiple sessions
- Giving Host Key/Meeting Number to people if you cannot be there to host
- Adding Substitute Hosts
Recording
- Can record a session however this is not a great recording and has to be converted to distribute and uploaded somewhere for students to access
- Users can record to the Network Recorder, but there is very limited space (95 gigs for entire campus), so don’t keep recordings there for long. There are no user quotas, so one person could accidentally fill that up.
- Records as an .arf file, viewable within the WebEx viewer. This link can be sent to participants/students. To put this recording anywhere else, it has to be converted from .arf and the converter is only available for Windows
- Automatic conversion to M4V
- Links within the integration to view/download recordings (note: for students too)
- Even less space (20 gigs) for recordings on the integrated tool… So, move them somewhere quick before deleted by our blackboard admin team