Elluminate - A Web Conferencing Tool

by Frank Roberts

The University recently purchased a site license for Elluminate, a web conferencing tool. Elluminate allows you to conduct live meetings via the web, where each participant can be at their own computer - either on campus or off. The meeting can present PowerPoint presentations, websites or other applications, and participants can interact with each other or the moderator in a number of ways. It is also possible to store the meeting so that it can be reviewed later. This is a great tool for delivering instruction to students at remote sites or for students who can't attend class due to illness. It can also be used for engaging guest lecturers or experts that can't come to campus. In addition to these instructional uses, it can also be used for meetings across campus or with people from other institutions.

Our site license is for the Elluminate Learning Suite, which includes Elluminate Live! Elluminate Plan!, and Elluminate Publish! Elluminate Live! is the application you run when you are conducting a live meeting or class. To use Elluminate Live! you create a meeting room, and then you send the URL (the web address) to the students or colleagues you want to attend.

As the moderator of the meeting, you get to control the sequence of events that occur. The standard meeting includes a presentation window that can display a PowerPoint presentation, an Excel spreadsheet, a web browser view or any other application that runs on your computer. Everyone else attending the meeting can see what you are showing in the presentation window - you can show your PowerPoint slides, demonstrate calculations on a spreadsheet, or point to features on a web page.

During a session, participants can type in questions to the moderator, 'raise' a hand to be called on, talk using voice over IP, show an image using a live camera feed, and much more.

The tool also supports many other features. It is fully integrated with Blackboard, so you can restrict your sessions to just the students enrolled in your class if you want. Using Elluminate Plan!, you can organize your class session so that it always follows the same sequence of events. Elluminate Publish! allows you to publish the recorded session in a variety of formats. To find out more about how to sign up for using Elluminate, go to www.wwu.edu/elluminate.

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