Your new LMS is certain to be a hit if you have done your homework, and used the amazing resources and products that have flooded the market place. There is another angle to your new LMS that you may not have even realized!
The beauty of an LMS is the ability to offer learners content at their own pace, in their own time...anytime. However, some occasions will still call for face to face to teaching, and your LMS doesn't have to fall short. Not every LMS will have a built in tool for live video conferencing but most do. If yours does not, it will most likely have at least a scheduling tool so you can post an upcoming "classroom" style course with all the pertinent details so your users can sign up just and know where to be to attend the class.
Once you've figured out if you can do video conferencing on your LMS or not, you may want to look into features of actual video conferencing software to help your class have the best possible experience. Like I said, some LMS platforms will have a built in tool that will access your computer's webcam, and micrphone and allow you to round up your students for a face to face learning session. Other times you will need to know what is out there to help you get your students together.
In each of these cases, you will at the very least need a device with a camera, microphone and speaker (which means just about everything like your cell phone, tablet, laptop, and PC will all work).
Everyone likes free! There are a host of free video conferencing tools out there. There are some important things to know about these versus ones that cost money. Quality is the first thing that comes with a better video conferencing program. Video conferencing software, to techy folks, is called a "codec" which stands for compression and decompression. Better codecs can take better quality video and audio and "compress" it to a smaller size, allowing better quality images and audio. If you've ever done a video conference from iPhone to iPhone using the famous and free face time program offered by Apple, you'll know how poor the quality can be. Face Time is a very low quality codec, and this is why your video and audio suffer. You are also doing this across a cellular signal in most cases and that doesn't help your cause. Using wifi will improve things a bit, but it's still a low quality free codec. Other free codecs include Google Hang Out, Skype (wildly popular), and Oovoo. The other limitation to these free codecs aside from quality, is the number of people you can have in one call. For classroom style lessons, it's frequently a larger group of users, and most of these are limited to three users.
The first step up in my opinion, is WebEx.com. WebEx is very popular with small to medium businesses and classrooms alike. For about $40 a month, you can have up to 25 users on a video conference, and only the host has to pay a penny for the service.
Beyond an affordable solution like webex, you can start to look into more of a large corporate business solution. Companies like Polycom, Cisco and Life Size are rolling out amazing software codecs. I spent some time in the medical technology realm, and software codecs where starting to take the forefront over traditional hardware codec systems that cost tens of thousands of dollars.
No matter what route you go, I would recommend making sure your students have a way to reach out to you face to face. Video conferencing systems allow for remote desk top assistance, as well as file sharing, and some other terrific tools for learning and collaborating. Check out this article for a longer list of codecs that might meet your needs. http://www.computerworld.com/s/ article/9234680/7_low _cost_ videoconferencing_services_Which_is_best_for_your_meeting_?taxonomyId=86&pageNumber=1
Resources
www.polycom.com
www.cisco.com
www.lifesize.com
www.skype.com
www.google.com/hangout
www.apple.com/ios/facetime
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