Web conferencing allows you to meet with your students synchronously (at the same time) and mimics a face-to-face classroom experience. These are scheduled live online meetings with students using browser-based tools such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom. These tools are available to all NIU faculty, staff, and students for free.
Web conferencing tools provide the following teaching and learning capabilities:
- real-time multi-point video
- voice-over-IP (VOIP) audio
- integrated teleconferencing
- public/private text chat
- shared whiteboard
- document or presentation sharing
- polling
- desktop sharing
- record, edit, and playback meetings
- break out rooms
The above list sounds fairly technical. Here are some examples of what you can do with web conferencing tools:
- Have students give live presentations from a distance
- Invite a guest speaker to interact with your students
- Poll students on their thoughts about a current event
- Hold live office hours and use the white board to draw an example of a statistical equation
- Demonstrate how to use a software application
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a unified communications tool that allows for persistent 1:1 or group chat, video/audio calls and conferencing, and has integration with the full suite of O365 applications we’ve come to rely upon at NIU.
Zoom
The university has purchased an educational site license of
Zoom and all NIU faculty and students now have access to use Zoom. To learn more about use of Zoom and to get started, please see the
available resources and answers to frequently asked questions.