Why would a student join a livestream when they're in the room?
The Q-Review livestreaming experience has been updated recently and now allows participants to choose whether they're joining in-person or remotely. But why would anyone join a live stream when they're in the room?
Q-Review now offers an in-person or a remote live stream experience, with participants making the choice when they join. The team recently demonstrated this in the Mason lecture theatre on the Mile End campus. Some colleagues joined us in person and some online to find out what the feature is like.
The obvious question is "Why would someone in the room join the live stream?"
While it seems a strange concept, there are a number of reasons why this might be useful:
- You can use the Q-Review built-in notetaking and bookmarking features. Didn't understand what the lecturer just said? Hit the bookmark icon and it will mark the place in the recording. You can then find it easily to review. Make notes during and after the lecture and create your own study guide. Your bookmarks and notes are private. Noone sees them but you.
- You can use the confusion flag to highlight to your lecturer a point in the session that you didn't understand. Staff can see confusion flags during and after the session.
- If the Q&A feature is enabled you can use the discussion function with the lecturer and other participants. Discussions are visible along with the recording after the session. Discussions can also be timestamped to a particular point in the recording.
- Sitting way at the back of that huge lecture theatre? You can see what's being displayed on the projector on your own screen.
Coming towards the end of the calendar year are features such as live captioning, which will further improve accessibility.
So, even if there's no one attending remotely, live streaming could be useful.
What's the difference between in-person and remote?
The user experience is slightly different depending on which you choose. Choosing "in-person" mode:
- Your audio is automatically muted, meaning the lecture theatre isn't immediately full of noise and feedback as everyone joins.
- The user interface gives more priority to notetaking and participation in discussion, the content area is less prominent.
Points to note
- Participants can choose to attend remotely even if they're in the room and vice versa. It's not a reliable mechanism of monitoring attendance.
- This is still a live streaming experience and is not intended to be a full virtual classroom. Participants cannot share their cameras, microphones or screens.
If you'd like to know more, or take part in a future demonstration of live streaming, please get in touch on telt@qmul.ac.uk. Or why not sign up for one of our Teaching Space awareness training sessions running in early September.