99 Ultra Conference with Karla Ausderau – 02.09.2018

At the February 9, 2018 Active Teaching Lab, Karla Ausderau shared how she uses Ultra Conference for office hours, synchronous discussions, and guest speakers. Explore the options in Ultra Conference with the session’s activity sheet.

Takeaways:

• Karla started using Ultra Conference for online classes and liked it so well that she expanded to face-to-face courses for student presentations, guest speakers, etc.
• You can always elevate people to presenter or moderator status while in session, but it’s harder to take away that status if you set them up before the session.
• The “No end” scheduling option is good for courses in which people use Ultra Conference regularly (like rolling notes). Ultra Conference will keep content that you’ve uploaded (PowerPoints, files, etc.) but will reset generated content (e.g. whiteboard drawings) between sessions. It processes as soon as everyone leaves the session.
• Check the setting option “Allow recording downloads” to make an MP4 file from the conference. Note that recording stops when everyone leaves the main room, as may occur if you form breakout groups and then join a group to listen in on their discussion.
• Recordings take up to 48 hours to process. Longer recordings take longer, but people report an hour-long session takes only three hours to process.

Active Teaching Labs are held Fridays from 8:30-9:45am in room 120, Middleton Building (1305 Linden Dr.) as well as some Wednesdays from 12:30-1:30pm in room 302 Middleton Building. Check out upcoming Labs or read the recaps from past Labs.

Similar to the Active Teaching Labs, Active Teaching Exchanges feature instructors sharing their teaching experiences with tools and techniques, but provide more time for discussion without the hands-on investigation time. Exchanges are are held Thursdays from 1-2pm in room 120, Middleton Building. See the full calendar of both events. Stay informed about upcoming Labs and Exchanges by signing up for regular announcements by sending an email to join-activeteaching@lists.wisc.edu.