Live Sessions: Attendance and Participation

You have to plan how to reward attendance or participation live or later in live sessions. Students who may not be able to join the live broadcast (for time zone differences, scheduling conflicts, etc), can complete an assignment after the session, by watching the recording . Read the suggestions below and look at  “Using video or the Live Sessions recordings “ for further ideas.

Participation points for those who attend or view the recording later some of the best practices that we have seen are:

  • Creating a short multiple-choice (M/C) questionnaire when you plan the live session. Include questions about what will happen at different stages in the live session, so those who did not participate live have a motivation to get their participation points through viewing the recording and responding to the M/C. This questionnaire can be used in two ways
    • Polling: Using polling questions within the zoom session.
    • Multiple choice questions in the course site. You could keep the same or make adjustments to the M/C questionnaire after the live session is over. The questionnaire will be posted on the course site and will release after the live session is over. You can decide on how long it will be open for students to participate.
      Results
    • (a) Participation points are available to everyone and they have the chance and motivation to watch.
    • (b) M/C is self-graded, so students who complete it get their points automatically.
  • Creating a question in the discussion forum or as an assignment that invites them to watch the recording and respond or give their opinion on the results or topics that were discussed in breakout rooms (since breakout rooms do not get recorded, they do not see the discussion among members).
    Results

    • (a) Participation points are available to everyone and they have the chance and motivation to watch.
    • (b) Discussion or assignment needs to be graded by staff.
  • “Advertising” the importance of live sessions by referring to the Live Sessions in different announcements, weekly messages, or forums. One of the faculty members agreed to create a video “ad” that would focus on live sessions, and we compared attendance and viewing in the previous semester, and after the intervention. The results showed improvements when the “ad” was included in the course (Fig. 2).

Figure 1: Comparison of Live Session attendance and viewing before and after advertising the benefits of live sessions via video and text.

Technology help for measuring and tracking attendance and participation:

To identify attendance and viewing of live sessions or poll results and participation, the tools we use for broadcasting and storing live sessions can help. Zoom allows for running poll reports or attendance reports. Illinois Mediaspace allows for collecting analytics of viewers, only users with administrative access can download the analytics from the site.