Participating in a Web Conference

Web conferences are held regularly in the Department’s Virtual Conference Centre. Some of these are for invited participants only and others are open to all educators or students. For a list of upcoming events, see: Events calendar

There are a number of ways in which you can interact with others as a participant in a web conference:

• Participant list: This displays the names of all people logged into the session. You can hover your mouse over these names to view people’s profiles
• Shared whiteboard: This displays a presentation, usually created in PowerPoint, which will be controlled by the moderator. Participants can also write and draw on the whiteboard, making it interactive.
• Audio: A microphone button allows participants to speak to one another.
• Raise hand: You can indicate that you wish to ask a question by pushing the ‘raise hand’ button
• Chat window: You can send a question or comment to all participants or selected participants via the chat window
• Live video: You can receive video from other participants' webcams and transmit your own video if you also have a webcam
• Polling: You can respond to questions asked by the moderator using the polling tools. These tools will usually display as a tick and a cross (for ‘Yes’ and ‘No’) or letters (A, B, C, D).
• File transfer: You can receive electronic files from the presenter, just like you would receive a hand-out in a face-to-face conference
• Application sharing: This allows you to share your computer screen or a particular computer program with the other participants
• Emoticons: You can use the four emoticon buttons to indicate what would normally be expressed by your body language in a face-to-face room. These emoticons are: laughter, applause, confusion and disapproval.

You can view recordings from past sessions to see how these features have been used in web conferences. To browse our archives, see: Event Archive