Replies

• stella collins September 9, 2020 at 1:38pm

  Hi there are definitely some people you can talk to.  I was lucky enough to interview Michael Ioffe who uses text messaging for learning in difficult situations https://blog.stellarlabs.eu/why-buy-an-expensive-lms-when-you-can-u...

   

  

  Why buy an expensive LMS when you can use text messaging?

  Why buy an expensive LMS when you can use text messaging? Listen to Michael Ioffe's podcast & find out why to buy an expensive LMS.
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  Michael Cook September 10, 2020 at 12:13pm

  Hi Ally,

  We recently ran a series of interactive, training webinars for a client of ours. Many of the attendees were joining from Africa, here are some of things we noticed that might help you.

  As you mentioned in your post. We noticed a far larger number of attendees using mobile devices, this had a few different implications on the session.

  We were using the client's Zoom account and they had setup it so as attendees joined, they would have their webcam on by default. In our own platforms we make sure this is off by default and with attendees joining on mobile phones it is even more important.

  Mostly this was just a distraction as attendees joined, family members in shot, strange different locations in the background etc. There were two bad cases, a male and female attendee both joined and the phone camera was pointed at their crotch. Luckily in this time of Covid and working from home they had trousers on! But it did not look professional and had me scrambling to shut off webcams!

  As a Facilitator you need to be aware of how the mobile device works in your platform. In the majority of cases, mobile devices can only have one part of the platform open at a time. This means they will have your presentation open, but if they want to type in chat, the screen will now become chat and they won’t be able to see the presentation, in some apps this is the same if they want to raise a hand or use an emoticon. Allowing extra time for interactions and chat, repeating the question you want them to answer in chat as the visual reference might not be on their screen.

  The tools available on mobile devices are often limited or not there at all! This primarily impacts the annotation tools. Annoyingly more often than not the text tool is not available for them to type for say a brainstorm and the stamp tool likely won’t be available either. They normally still have access to the pen tool. This is a bit backward when it comes to interactive sessions as the pen tool can have a limited use case compared to the others so keep this in mind. You might need to focus more on chat.

  From a Producer point of view. I earned my money in these sessions as I was spending a lot more time trying to get audio connected on multiple different devices. I would say in a normal session where the majority of attendees are joining via a desktop computer, perhaps 10-15% of users have an audio issue. In these sessions it was more like 30-40%. I would say half of that was user error and a lot of the issues were resolved from leaving the session and returning. Keep it in mind that you may well need a Producer to manage this, manage the chat window and potentially provide additional information for mobile users on how to access tools or interact in the session.

  These are my inital thoughts on mobile devices in sessions!

  Mike

   

   
  • Ally Yates > Michael Cook September 10, 2020 at 12:29pm

    Brilliantly helpful. Thank you for sharing your experience Mike.
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      Michael Cook > Ally Yates September 10, 2020 at 12:30pm

      I hope it helps and good luck!