WiZiQ Blog

Online Classes Updated - More Reasons to Celebrate

More reasons to celebrate :-) We are excited! The promised upgrade to Online Classes has just been released. For those who have not seen this presentation yet, here's what just changed:

New Classes Interface on WiZiQ

Uploaded by Harman-Singh on WiZiQ Tutorials

To elaborate what more a teacher gets with this new version:
Improved interface
The new look interface now has:

• A "Quick Links" section for easy navigation
• More organized class information
• Statistics, like minutes a student spent in class, number of recording views and downloads, etc.

Schedule paid Public / Private Classes
This section gives teachers more control on resources, and convenience in scheduling the class. The enhancements will enable the teacher to:

• Set up Public / Private class fees and students can enter the class only after making the payment
• Reschedule the Public / Private class that was already set up before
• Allow (with ‘Mark as Paid’ option) a student if s/he makes an offline payment, like cash or check

Resend invite to members
A teacher can resend invitation to the students as many times as required.

Choose a contact list
Teachers can group contacts, save them as separate lists, and use these lists to send invitations.

Change Class Date and Time
A teacher can now reschedule the Private Class that was already set up before, and the attendees who paid for that class will get an instant automated email about the change.

Set Recording price
Once a class is concluded, the teacher can set a price to grant access to the recording.

Recording access permissions & statistics
Teachers can allow/disallow attendees to download/view recordings. Besides, teachers can also view statistics on number of views & downloads by the members.

View Attendance Report
A teacher can view the number of minutes each student spent in the class.

Manage Class Comments
Invited students can post their comments and they get published instantly on the Class Details’ page of the teacher. The teacher can moderate to delete, report abuse, reply or keep the comments.

Review Class Feedback
A teacher can choose to display any feedback on the Class Details’ page or remove it from there.

Track your class payments
A summary report of all the payments made by students along with the details of net amount that can be withdrawn and WiZiQ’s commission are also available.

We look forward to your feedback and comments.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays - Rounding up 2009

We wish all you teachers and students a Very Merry Christmas and we wish that you enjoy your holidays and have super fun! We also wish that you get all happiness and prosper even more in 2010 and beyond.

Christmas Greetings

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The year 2009 has proved to be significant not only for WiZiQ, but also for the entire family of teachers and students. With membership growing consistently, WiZiQ has come a long way with the support and feedback from teachers and students. WiZiQ introduced a blend of rich features and add-ons in 2009 and we have even more ambitious plans for 2010. Let us take a quick look at all enhancements that happened in 2009:

Paid Online Classes - Teachers earn from Paid Classes

Some of the features in Paid Online Classes will be released tomorrow so watch the blog. Update!! [23 Dec]This release just went through. See More reasons to celebrate

• User friendly interface
• Schedule Paid Classes
• Resend invite to members
• Change class date and time
• Set recording price
• Manage recording access for each attendee
• View attendance report
• Manage class comments
• Review class feedback and choose to display on your profile
• Track your class payments

Learning Requests - Students make Learning Requests

• Submit your Learning Request
• Get unprecedented choice of teachers
• Teachers who can best handle your request contact you
• Start learning online from anywhere in the world in the Virtual Classroom via the Internet

Learning Request Alerts for Teachers - Teachers get Learning Requests

• Receive students’ Learning Requests right in your email inbox
• Get direct contact access (email & phone numbers)

Class Recordings – New and improved recordings

• Better interface
• Better synch of the audio and video
• Screen sharing recording
• Full screen view
• Swift switching with the time-line--no more slides
• Set recording price

Screen Sharing - Teachers and students share each others' desktop screens and thus share files

• Simple click start and stop functions
• Full-screen sharing
• Improved quality with faster performance and shared screens also appear in class recordings 

WiZiQ Communities - Members participate in community discussion forums

• Connect with members from around the world
• Participate in discussions and increase your visibility
• Learn from the experiences shared by other members
• Ask questions and get answers in community discussions

Online Courses - Teachers can sell courses and earn more

• Teachers can submit requests to build courses
• Courses enable teachers to consolidate and sell "learning objects" as course materials
• Variety of file formats accepted as "learning objects", like PDF, Video, Audio, PPT, Word, PowerPoint, Flash, etc.

Online Practice Tests - Teachers can create tests and students can attempt and practice

• Enhanced test creation console for teachers
• Teachers can now share tests with students and get their score
• Free-hand drawings tool added to test creation console
• Mathematics symbols also added
• images can be uploaded and included in tests now

WiZiQ for Organizations – Enterprise version of WiZiQ

• Give or attend a class without signing up on WiZiQ
• Integrate WiZiQ Virtual Classroom with your website
• Simultaneous Classes

Virtual Classroom for Moodle - (Part of the Organizations offering above) Teachers and students can interact using the new improved Virtual Classroom module in Moodle 

• No sign-up on WiZiQ is required to give or attend a class in Moodle
• High quality recordings are available for later reviews
• 30 day Trial version with up to 10 participants, 3 recordings and unlimited classes
• Choose from flexible, no-strings-attached pricing packages with more participants 

We are all ears for your feedback so that together, we can build WiZiQ and make it the platform of choice to solve all education needs.

New and Improved Recordings for WiZiQ Premium Members

Perhaps, one of the most useful features on WiZiQ is the ‘Class Recordings’. And we understand that our users were expecting improvements in the quality of the recordings and the addition of a few drops like inclusion of screen sharing, and audio/video files in the recordings too.
With the usage of the Virtual Classroom and recordings on the rise, we feel that our teachers and students will welcome this edition of Class Recordings.

An insight into what’s new in recordings

Here’s what to expect in the new version of Class Recordings and how it comes close to the actual class:

•    Better Interface
•    Better synch of the audio and video
•    Screen sharing recording
•    Full screen view
•    Swift switching with the time-line, no more slides




Now, the recordings have an interface that quite resemble the lay-out of the Virtual Classroom - the whiteboards on the left, audio and video window on the top-right and chat window on the bottom-right. The view has been zoomed to 100% for better clarity and quality.

You don’t find slides on the left; instead, we now provide a long time-line (progress bar) at the bottom, so that you don’t have to wait for the recording to play all the way to see the recording, say, at a given point on the time-line. Simply, drag the time-line pointer to view the recording at whatever point you would like to.

Better synch of your voice and video with your actions on the whiteboard is now ensured. Your audio or video doesn’t fall behind the movements on the whiteboard. This lag has now been minimized to under 2 seconds.

Screen-sharing events also get captured in the live class and now show in recordings. Additionally, the audio and video files or links that you play live in the Virtual Classroom are also played in the recordings.

Please note that these enhanced recordings take a bit longer to build than the earlier version. The wait is not too long though :-)

Just to mention, a thing we couldn’t yet achieve: if you download a recording, the audio and video files played in the live class won’t play in the downloaded copy.

WiZiQ will continue to build upon improvements and additions to this new version of recordings.  Post us your feedback and what next you would like to see in the recordings at support@wiziq.com or on the WiZiQ forum. Or join the discussion on the e-teaching community to send us your comments. Your feedback helps us to improve!

Online Education Beats the Classroom - SRI International Study for Department of Education, United States

“On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.” This is the conclusion of a SRI International Study for Department of Education, United States.

The study itself reviewed 99 studies over a 12 year period from 1996 to 2008. The studies and reports analyzed were majorly from work done in colleges and adult continuing-education programs of various kinds, from medical training to the military. Some of it was also, based on work done at K12 level. According to a NYTimes article: The analysis found that, on average, students doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile. That is a modest but statistically meaningful difference.

Although, some questions have been raised on the sweeping conclusion [for instance: people have asked whether you can compare the results from different testing environments or not - it was not like the study compared students of same background preparing for TOEFL in face-to-face/ virtual classroom environments], it does indicate that online learning and teaching would see a major adoption especially at college and professional levels.

WiZiQ, with its open and flexible tools for both teachers and students is perfectly positioned to be amongst the leading technology tools, helping the spread and adoption of online learning and teaching.

Now Conduct an Online Class/ Session/ Webcast/ Web Conference with 500 Attendees - For Free

Yes, you got that right.

WiZiQ, is now the only platform in the world that lets teachers, presenters, experts, workshop organizers, conference speakers and consultants to hold online classes or sessions with as many as 500 attendees - free of cost.

As of last week, you could conduct an online class with 50 attendees after signing up for free with WiZiQ. All it took was a valid email address. This limit of 50 attendees per class was already higher than other similar offerings in the market. And now, this limit becomes even more flexible. You can now have up to 500 attendees in your online class/ session/ conference. All you need to do is: register for free with WiZiQ>>schedule a class>>invite attendees and conduct the class. If it sounds simple, it is.

This enhancement is in keeping with continued addition and refinement of features available to both Free members and Premium members on WiZiQ. We plan to add and refine more features, over the coming month. So, keep watching this space :-)

Best Practices in Live Synchronous Online Teaching

Moving from an offline classroom teaching to live online synchronous teaching [teaching face to face, and not using pre-recorded videos] is a giant leap not only in terms of technology but also preparation, etiquette and conduct.

A lot of what worked offline [preparing for your class well in advance, making your class interactive, using illustrations, explaining using an example, giving meaningful homework] continue to work well online too. Somethings change however. We look at some of these in this post:

1. Keep all your equipment ready and test it in advance : There is nothing worse than checking if the mic/ webcam/ headphone is working or not right in the middle of the class. Test once, twice and as many times as you need all your devices : computer/ laptop, mic, headphones, webcam. Try and use standard equipment to minimize the compatibility issues. If possible, test the devices with the students as well.
2. Check your connection settings : You can never have enough of bandwidth. Keep at least 512 kbps or more connection and make sure you do not download, use Skype/ messengers, stream videos during the live online class. The more the bandwidth you will divert to the virtual classroom software, the better would be the experience.
3. Processor Speed/ Memory : Whiteboards and Online Virtual Classrooms are memory intensive applications. Try and close all heavy applications like Adobe Photoshop, PowerPoint, pdf Writer and have maximum processor usage as well as memory available for the Virtual Classroom.
4. Always do a test : Even if you are a seasoned pro, always do a test for students new to your classroom. This will help you see if they suffer from device incompatibility or poor bandwidth issues. Doing this before the actual class can make the difference between a smooth or haphazard class.
5. Schedule your class in advance : Always schedule your class in advance [one week at least] and it is best to have the class at same day/ same time to set a rhythm and predictability to online learning for the students. This also helps students plan their day and week in advance. In case of any doubt, always ask the students for their preference for class time.
6. Prepare your class in advance : Attention spans on Internet are low. Hence, you need to be ready the minute the clock says "Go". Have your whiteboards ready with graphs and drawings as well as  the files [pdf/ PowerPoint/ Word/ Excel] you need and check the links [YouTube/ Slideshare/ Scribd/ authorStream] again to see that they work. The smoother you can make your class, the better the learning experience would be. Premium teachers can get their class ready beforehand easily on WiZiQ.
7. Have a moderator : If you are not that familiar with technology or you have more than 10 students in a class, consider having a moderator who can transfer controls to the students [speaking, writing, streaming video] and answer any technical queries from the students.
8. Have a holding slide : Say your online live class starts at 10 AM. Everyone starts logging in at that time and it can take everyone about 2-3 minutes to join the class. Have a holding slide with class title, objectives and welcoming the students [Please wait for 02 minutes and we will start the class in a few minutes]. Here is a good example of a holding slide : Simple Tips for Feng Shui for Abundance and Wellbeing 
9. Use Illustrations : Computers and Internet open up opportunity to go visual and aural. Make use of graphs, diagrams, emoticons, images, video and audio. This will bring your class alive and help students learn by associating with visuals and sounds.
10. Anonymous Feedback/ Chat : One of the advantage online classes provide to the learners is that they can communicate privately with the teacher [without worrying about what the rest of the class says]. Make use of this feature to the fullest. Let the class know they can send you a private message. This will allow each participant to get their doubts and queries resolved and answered.
11. Audio, video and writing controls : The more the people with audio, video and writing controls, the more chaotic the class can become. Limit the number of students with access to speaking in a class or writing on the whiteboard. This will allow others an opportunity to listen and wait, and if they have something to contribute, they can always type it in the chat area.
12. 02 hours is an epic online : Try and keep your classes under 02 hours. This means each of your class should be focused on key learning objectives and fit in only as many learning objectives as you can in 02 hours or less. If needed, meet daily but keep the live meetings/ classes short.
13. Engage students asynchronously as well : Students should be able to take back class material/ notes [through content sharing] and class recordings at a minimum. This allows students to leverage online environment for their own learning benefit. If possible, also have tests at the end of one/ few classes to check if the students have been grasping the subject. Apart from that, send students interesting videos, content, blog posts periodically as well.
14. Analyze student feedback : Best practices in how to conduct an online class are being currently written and researched. Your best guide would be your students. Talk to them, gather feedback and analyze their behavior. This will help you in the next class(es).
15. Handling Exigencies : You should know how to handle exigencies. If a class can not be conducted for whatever reason or one of the attendees is having some issues, try and extend the session, reschedule the session or ask the attendee to watch the recording later and spend the next class touching on the topic of the previous class.

Vikrama Dhiman