Live Events

Hosting a Live Event Using ConexED

ConexED includes two separate tools:

Cranium Cafe
Classrooms.

Cranium Cafe - This tool is used for small group interactive session and is limited to 10 simultaneous participants at a time.

Classrooms - This tool is used for large group session and is limited to 100 simultaneous participants.

Both of these tools are described in greater detail in this tutorial.

NOTE: The Chrome browser is required when using ConexED.

The first step is to go through the basics of setting up a live event using ConexED.

Navigate to your Canvas course and select the ConexED tab in the navigation menu.

If this is the first time you've used ConexED it will ask if you want to authorize, select the Authorize button
On the left hand side you will see several options in the Menu
1. Your "card" that shows personal information regarding your profile in ConexED
2. ConexED Cranium Cafe
3. ConexED Classroom

Select the button for the tool you would like to use and it will open a submenu.
Select either Enter your Classroom or Enter your Cafe

To share your room with you students
1. Click the Meeting Invite Link button
2. Copy and paste the link into a Canvas Announcement, Outlook email sent to your class or anywhere else you would like to make this available.
3. Paste an email address into the field and click Send Invite.

NOTE: The URL for your Cafe and your Classrooms is a permanent link that will not change. Any time you want to use your Cafe or your Classrooms it will utilize the same URL. Therefore this URL can be bookmarked and reused without having to go through these steps each time.

Cafe vs Classrooms

Cranium Cafe and Classrooms have different functions and limitations and different reasons to use them.

Here is a brief overview of each.

Cranium Cafe - This tool is used for small group interactive session and is limited to 10 simultaneous participants at a time. It allows everyone to activate their webcam and microphone at the same time and has features you might already be familiar with such as document sharing, screen sharing and real time chat.

Cranium Cafe is ideal for:

Conducting Office Hours
Advising
Small group discussions

Classroom - This tool is used for large group session and is limited to 100 simultaneous participants. It will create more of a one way webinar experience where only one person has permission to speak at a time. It has many of the same features as Cafe like Chat document sharing and screen sharing, but it also has more advanced features such as breakout rooms and polls. The presenter can promote other participants to presenter mode, allowing them enable their microphone and speak, but this is primarily designed as a lecture style experience.

Classroom is ideal for:

Large group lecture
Guest speakers

Other Things to Know

When you launch a Cafe or Classroom meeting it will automatically start recording.

To turn off the recording click it.

To retrieved your recording click on the Archive in the ConexED landing page
From this same page you can Publish, Play, Link, Embed, or Delete your recording.

ConexED will automatically caption your meeting

To turn off automatic captioning click the green toggle
To Hide captions click Hide Captions

A Note About Facilitating Live Events (Webinars)

Having a synchronous lecture through a webinar tool is common, and tools to facilitate this are plentiful. If you absolutely must do this we recommend using ConexED Classroom as it is FERPA compliant and supported by the University. You might use other tools if you have access and are are more comfortable using them, however please understand that they are not supported by the University. At this time the university does not have the institutional contracts with Zoom around university data and student privacy. While Zoom Pro is fine for remote work with university offices and staff, university leaders ask that student-facing interactions, especially advising meetings, use ConexEd rather than Zoom.

Depending on the size of your class, live video sessions can potentially be the most complicated way to conduct class online. Universities and industries around the world are converting many more of their activities to online delivery and this is putting a tremendous burden on the resources and servers of companies that host and sponsor these tools.

In addition, students are also potentially unfamiliar with how to login and how to enable their audio and camera. The smaller the number of students in your class the lower the risk for these challenges become.

In most cases, we recommend sending recorded lectures through Kaltura Capture via Canvas Announcements.