eLive White Paper
Meeting on the Web
Social networking over the Internet has exploded in recent times and has led to the on-going development of tools that allow people to communicate as interactively as we do face to face. Early online Bulletin boards, for example, evolved into Discussion Boards in Blackboard. And the evolution continues. Most recently, Yahoo and MSN Messenger have evolved into quasi-web meeting tools that allow for realtime sharing of text, documents and other types of media. Web conference tools have been developed to be a complete online meeting tool, allowing for a synchronous exchange between instructor and students.
Web Meetings
Elluminate Live! (a.k.a., eLive) is the premier web meeting tool in the state of Alaska. Hosted by UAA, it serves all three state universities and their affiliated community campuses in providing real-time, online, multimedia web conferencing capabilities. Access to eLive is via two distinct paths. For course instruction, web meetings have been incorporated into UAS Online. For student, staff or faculty meetings access is through the UAS Online Portfolio system.
What eLive has…
eLive offers not only voice over the Internet for talking, it also integrates features, such as an interactive whiteboard where students can sketch out ideas. Also a chat area is available for sidebar questions and conversations. Additionally, there is the capability of displaying spreadsheets, documents and other applications for students or meeting participants. These can be viewed or can be used for collaboration. Students or participants can also be easily polled and, if desired, the results can be displayed.
eLive Benefits…
There are many advantages to using eLive in meetings
- Easy exchanging of information through talking
- Recording capabilities for later review
- Allows for those who “miss” to still get caught up on the meeting
- Ease of bringing together people from all over the region or state without travel
- Sharing of documents for the entire group
- If needed, documents can be created by the group in a session
- Multiple ways of communicating – everyone can get their ideas expressed
- Works with low bandwidth, so access is not limited to those with broadband
- Older computers with speeds of 500 MHz will work, too
For additional information, how-to links and support contact information, visit the UAS eLive site at http://www.uas.alaska.edu/helpdesk/coursework/webmeeting/.