Recommended set up to host live lessons
This article provides advice and tips to ensure your live lesson runs smoothly for you and your attendees.
You do not require any additional software to host your live lesson/webinar. You will host the webinar from a unique link that will be sent to you by email upon publishing the course.
Note: Your learners however will access the live lesson from the course overview page, in the same way they access videos, presentations and other learning resources.
Upon clicking this webinar link in the email you will be required to login to your platform using your email address and password as normal. Then you will be automatically redirected to the webinar page from which you can host your event.
For optimal performance, we recommend the following setup (and recommend sharing this information with attendees).
1. Hardware
The webinar should be hosted from a desktop or laptop computer. The webinar functionality for presenters is not supported on tablet or mobile devices at this time. Your attendees (learners) can access the webinar from any device, though we recommend they use a desktop or laptop computer for the best user experience.
2. Close other programs
For all users we recommend closing as many apps, windows or programs that may be connected to the internet as they may lead to an inferior user experience and conflict with the ClickLMS patented active learning tracker if you are using it.
3. Use the Google Chrome Web Browser
We recommend that you use Google Chrome Web Browser to host (and attend) your webinar for optimal performance.
Chrome has the best support for web real-time communications (WebRTC) which our platform uses to share audio, video and screen with other users.
Firefox and Safari are also supported but do not guarantee the same levels of sound quality, especially in lower bandwidth conditions.
Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Samsung Internet are not supported.
4. Headset
We recommend using a fixed headset for optimal audio quality. You may also use your in-built microphone on your computer, but this can affect the quality of the sound for your attendees. It is important for the presenter to maintain a constant distance from the microphone during the webinar presentation otherwise the sound may be crackly/broken up for attendees. This is why we recommend a fixed headset as it mitigates against movement away from the microphone.
5. Internet Speeds
For optimal performance, we recommend connecting your desktop or laptop computer directly to a wired connection for internet.
However wireless internet that has strong enough upload and download speeds should work without problems. A user may have very good experience with wireless internet, but if others hear their audio as broken or choppy, that user can either move closer to the wireless base station, try a different wireless network, or (best) connect directly to a wired connection.
We do not recommend using public wi-fi or mobile (3G/4G) networks as speed and quality are more variable and it may result in the attendee being disconnected during the event.
You can check your internet speed by going to https://www.speedtest.net/
Both download and upload speeds are important and we recommend you advise all attendees on these minimum requirements:
- The download speed needs to be at least 8MB/second
- We recommend an upload speed of at least 1.0 MB/second - anything below 0.5 MB/second will lead to a very poor sound and video experience.
6. Allow your Web browser to use your microphone
At the time of joining the event with microphone and/or audio only, you may be prompted to allow the platform access to your microphone and/or audio - please allow access otherwise the webinar will not work.
7. Allow your Web browser to use your camera
If sharing your webcam or desktop as the presenter, you may need to accept a Chrome extension first.
The browser will prompt you if and when you need this. Note for both audio and webcam sharing it can take up to 10 seconds for the connection to be successful.
8. Mute all attendees and lock their cameras
We recommend that you mute all attendees and lock their cameras. This helps reduce audio feedback, and also ensures that the presenter, and their materials appear more prominently on the screen.
You can always unlock these at any time during the live lesson when you want to encourage active participation.
9. Upload presentations
We recommend you upload presentations rather than share your screen for long periods of time. Screen share uses large amounts of bandwidth and memory and can cause issues for you or your attendees if they have poor internet connection or low memory on their devices.