 Hi, this is Susie Henderson with EDUCAUSE. Thanks for joining me for Online Presenter Coaching, a series of recorded sessions about a variety of topics brought to you by the EDUCAUSE Speaker Concierge. Our goal is to provide you with the tools and information you need to be a successful online presenter. During this session, we will learn about Adobe Connect features and functionality, how to practice in an Adobe Connect room, and finally discuss the professional support you can expect when delivering your presentation with an Adobe Connect for an EDUCAUSE event. Let's get started exploring Adobe Connect features and functionality which will help you to effectively use Adobe Connect. For those of you presenting an exclusive online session for a conference, those sessions are always delivered with an Adobe Connect web conferencing software. Here is a typical Adobe Connect layout with six pods. Starting from the upper left, the pods are speaker identification. In the lower left corner, you can see chat and ask questions, and then going across the bottom to the right, real-time polls, the roster with one-on-one chat, and information such as audio issues. The largest window is where the slides are displayed. Just remember, Adobe Connect is like the blank canvas that you see here. Certain elements or pods need to be there such as the chat or the video or headshots, but there is flexibility to relocate, resize, or introduce new pods for an experience. We will spend the next few minutes talking about recommended fonts, pods which are the building blocks of Adobe Connect and features and uses of pods so that you can effectively design your presentation or seminar experience. When developing your PowerPoint, it is critical that you use a supported font. A supported font is one that is available from within Adobe Connect. Why is this important? Non-supported fonts are automatically changed into Arial during conversion. Let's repeat that. Independent fonts, such as the popular Calibri, are automatically converted into Arial. I suggest that you start with Arial as you develop your presentation so words and charts are created and displayed appropriately. Use the master slide to set Arial as a default font within your PowerPoint template. Otherwise, you will have to reformat each and every slide. Just want to know who their presenters are. To indicate who is speaking within Adobe Connect, we can display a headshot with your title and name and rotate among the headshots if there are multiple presenters. We can also do live video of one or more presenters, as you can see in the lower video capture. The third option is to do a combination of headshots and video. Video is desirable if you are participating in a discussion or panel format. In the roster and the one-on-one chat, notice that there are three roles listed and everyone with that role is listed under the heading. The three roles designate the level of permissions within the Adobe Connect system. If you are a host, you have complete control of all features within the system and are designated an expert who is there to support the operation of Adobe Connect. A presenter and the host can view the presenter-only area within Adobe Connect that enables private communication during the session and controls features of the system. We will take a look at that just a few slides later. A presenter can control their slides by moving the arrows in the lower left corner of the presentation slide pod. A participant views the public portion of the interface and can respond to polls, communicate through the chat and send private messages to other participants. One of the most common uses of Adobe Connect is to deliver a PowerPoint presentation. Some features of PowerPoint are not available within Adobe Connect when a PowerPoint presentation is uploaded to Adobe Connect and converted for delivery. If you are using word art, stacked text, smart art, charts, text effect, effects on shapes or images or non-aerial fonts, please carefully read this chart for more details. Any type of content that you can access from or create on your desktop can be displayed to an audience through the Adobe Connect Share My Screen pod. This includes a PowerPoint presentation, a specific application or multiple applications, websites or documents, and video which is a powerful communication tool can be shared through an FLV, SWF, or MP4 file. Remember pods can be added or removed during your presentation. For example, if there are files that you would like participants to be able to download from within your session or URLs to directly link to, there are pods that you can bring into your session to offer file downloading or access to websites. When done using that pod, it can be removed. For instance, you may have developed documents or spreadsheets that you would like attendees to work on during an online seminar. You simply upload the files to the file pod and display it within Adobe Connect. This will help you to add those files to a file pod or the web link pod and display it when appropriate and remove it when appropriate. So consider this an option when you're planning your session. You might say, well, how do I interact with session participants when I can't see them and often not hear them? This is where prior planning is very important and knowing the features of Adobe Connect are also critical. For large groups, the three main opportunities for interaction are chat, polls, and the notepad. It's important to understand the difference between these tools. Chat is a standard of each Adobe Connect room. Anyone can type a message and send it to all the attendees or send a private message to an individual. It's how you use the chat that makes it more or less engaging. You can use one or more chat windows. One of the most effective uses of chat is to ask a question such as, what are the three most important characteristics of an IT leader? And then ask participants to type their answers in the chat. Or you could ask, what is the single most pressing issue on your campus this year? Please type your answer in the chat. Another way to use chat is to have two chats open on a page to ask people to respond with opposing viewpoints on a topic. For example, have one chat labeled like and another labeled dislike. Ask participants to respond to a question that asks them to distinguish between their answers and list them in the like or dislike boxes. These are just a few examples of how you can use the chat. Answers are also an effective tool to ask a question and offer predetermined answers for participants to respond to. You can now also ask for short answers. Respondents may also provide short answers. All responses are returned in real time so that you can display both the number of responses and the percentage for each answer. If you wish to use a poll, please embed the poll in one of your PowerPoint, Prezi or Keynote slides. An example is provided. As a presenter in Adobe Connect, there is a special area on the right side of the screen that we mentioned earlier. This can be viewed only by those who are designated in the roster as a presenter or host. It is called the presenter only area, which is shown just above the blue arrow. The EDUCAUSE moderator will help you by calling questions for the speaker from the chat and ask questions pod and place them in the private presenter only area that you see on the right hand side. As questions are asked and you answer them, we typically delete those questions from the presenter only area. A poll pod can remain displayed in the layout throughout your presentation or a poll pod can be embedded in a slide and then the actual poll can be displayed when you are ready for it in the public area and then closed when completed. Here is an example of a slide with your poll question and the answers included in it. This enables the host to create a poll within Adobe Connect and serves as a cue for the moderator or technical help to display it during your presentation. There are a number of additional ways to use Adobe Connect to foster interaction. On the top navigation bar is located the raise hand status icon button. If you click on the small down arrow to the right of the raised hand, the following status buttons are available for participants to use. Participants could raise or lower their hand when asked a question. These interactions can be planned or even spontaneous during a session. In addition, you could ask participants to vote by clicking on agree or disagree. And of course your participants can indicate laughter or applause. These actions are all displayed within the roster pod to the right of the participant's name. Upon request, EduCaws will offer live captioning of an event. Captioning requires a specific pod, as you can see shown above. A court reporter listening remotely enters text to capture the words of each presenter in real time, which is displayed in the captioning pod. Captioning requires prior planning with a captioning service. EduCaws wants to provide you with an opportunity to practice your presentation within Adobe Connect. An Adobe Connect has been made available for you to use. In order to access it, please contact Victoria Fanning or Lauren Benevente at online conf that's O-N-L-I-N-E-C-O-N-F at EduCaws.edu. You may schedule a time to use the staging room with them. Get familiar with the environment, upload your presentation, practice moving your slides forward and backwards, test the pods out, try out your engagement strategies. There is no better learning opportunity than record your session and play it back or have a friend give you feedback. And finally, I'd like to tell you about the professional support provided by EduCaws staff for your Adobe Connect session. To make your online presentation experience easy, EduCaws provides you with professional staff support for your exclusive online session. Typically there are two staff members in each production room, a moderator and technical help. The moderator will introduce speakers and the session, looks for questions and moves those questions to the presenter chat area for you to respond to, interviews presenters and provides other types of support as needed. Technical help will upload the slides for your session, create and display polls based on your slides. Will technical issues for presenters and participants and manage audio and video files. Please note that presenters tip advance their own slides. Shown here is a typical exclusive online session production room. If you submitted your presentation and polls ahead of the event, everything will be loaded into Adobe Connect and tested prior to your presentation. You simply join the EduCaws staff in the production room. A few things to notice in the room, the two speakers are on the left, a video camera on the right broadcasts their live images to the web and the large screen in the upper right hand corner displays the participant view of the live session. The EduCaws moderator often sits across from the presenters for easy communication. Technical help often sits at the end of the table. It provides a real cozy environment and you're welcome to bring a colleague or two to listen to your presentation and act as your audience. This is all about helping you learn to become the most effective presenter possible. As you finalize your presentation, capture those great ideas for layout, polls and interaction by entering them into the EduCaws online speaker form which is available on the speaker information web pages. This will help the session moderator and technical help to effectively support you during your session. We love your feedback. Has this tutorial been helpful? Or do you have unanswered questions or feedback? Please feel free to send an email to speakerconcierge.edu with your thoughts and opinions. We listen. There are additional presentations, documents and information to help you along the way within the speakerconcierge web pages. We're here to help you. So good luck on your presentation. This is Susie Henderson for EduCaws.