Title: Conferences Tool
Course: TOPkit Sample Course Lite > Section: Module 3 - Designing Interactive Course Activities

Notes for Course Facilitator

Summary:

This page provides information and strategies for the Conferencing tool specific to Canvas.

Suggestions:

- This content is provided as an example and should be updated with your institution's LMS materials.

Gentle reminder: Update all content highlighted in yellow to reflect your institution.

Sometimes sharing a document just isn’t robust enough to meet your needs. <Replace - Your LMS> has a web conferencing tool that allows students and instructors to broadcast PowerPoint presentations, documents, or even display whatever is open on their desktop in real time. The Conferences tool also has a chat feature, but in addition to that, it has live audio and video feeds for participants with microphones, speakers, and/or webcams. This is a great tool for online lectures, demonstrations, or office hours.

Note: Both students and instructors can create a new Conference.

Notifications will be sent to all the participants that were invited, and an entry will be added to the Recent Activities feed inside the course. Conferences can be created in advance if you wish. When you’re ready to start, return to the Conferences page and click the Start it now button. Please note that web conferences are synchronous in nature, so all participants must access the conference at the same time.

- The first person to access the Conference will be assigned the moderator role. As an instructor, be sure to login early before any of your students.
- For larger classes you may want to enlist the assistance of a TA or a student volunteer to monitor the chat. It's difficult to facilitate the live audio discussion and an active chat at the same time.

Watch this short video to learn more about the Conferences tool.

TOPKit Sample Course was prepared by the University of Central Florida (UCF). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.