Conferencing

Web Conferencing is a way of bringing two or more people in different locations together at the same time. Web conferencing apps usually include a range of features useful for meetings and online seminars:

• audio
• video
• whiteboard/drawing space
• desktop/application sharing
• polling
• chat

Web conferencing is increasingly used in higher education, especially for postgraduate and distance learning courses.

Zoom has quickly become a popular tool for conferencing, meetings and video calls because it's easy to use, quick to set up and reliable. One downside is that the free version limits scheduled calls to 40 minutes. Your institution might have a site licence.

MS Teams meetings provides an online meeting space as part of the Office 365 suite, which your institution might provide.

Skype, which is now owned by Microsoft, is one of the most popular and wide-spread apps and is free to download and use for Skype-to-Skype communications (although you can pay to use Skype to call phones as well).  You need to create an account or use your Microsoft account, and the app sits on your device or computer. There is also a browser version with limited features.

Blackboard Collaborate is another popular choice for online meetings and seminars. It was created for e-learning as part of the Blackboard learning environment but is available as a separate app. If your institution uses Collaborate, you may find it being used in your courses.

Adobe Connect is yet another popular system, which, like Blackboard Collaborate, your institution might use for online seminars and collaboration.

"Meeting online can be great for working on group projects" Viktor, 2nd-year student