A chat protocol for remote lectures | Hacker News Reader

A chat protocol for remote lectures

spinellis.gr

74 pointsprogre12 comments

FWIW some video meeting apps have "raise hand" function (jit.si, and Zoom IIRC) that give an ordered list of who raised their hand - works well for turns at speaking.

I'd have thought Teams insistence on only allowing 4 feeds to show at a time would be deleterious for lectures.

Imho this is such an important feature that i don't understand why it's not more common. And even for Zoom and jit.si, the button is hidden in a submenu on mobile.

What would be even better is allowing the meeting chair to simply unmute a single person and mute everyone else to ensure some order.

> Imho this is such an important feature that i don't understand why it's not more common.

I would assume this is the case because until now we haven't had the mass adoption of the technology on offer in the sheer numbers we are seeing with COVID. I know remote and recorded lectures have been around for years. But these companies haven't had the need to push these features simply because the call for them was relatively small. I'm going to assume that Zoom and jitsi and their competitors are now drunk with the data they're receiving and will move to adopt these features more readily.

My personal interaction with these in the past has been largely passive just sitting watching and taking notes, and clarifying later on an internal moodle forum. It's great to see growth in the area and an emphasis on active engagement.

Webex too, though bizarrely, for the presenter, they have to scroll through the participant list in order to see if anyone's got their hand up - really needs to bump those people to the top of the list.

> What would be even better is allowing the meeting chair to simply unmute a single person and mute everyone else to ensure some order.

On jitsi you can do precisely that, click on the menu of the person's screen and click "mute everyone but this user".

Microsoft Teams does allow unmuting individuals and muting all participants. They just need to show video for all participants. I read they accelerated the work - https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/su...

Seems like the next step would be for the video conference tool to create a transcript of when questions were asked for recorded meetings so you can skip to the point when a question was asked if you're rewatching or missed the live version. Do any tools out there do this and I just don't know about that feature?

We use https://babylon.house

It's got all these features built in.

> Overall, I find remote lecturing an emotionally challenging and less rewarding activity than a physical lecture

I guess that's the main reason why we don't have remote lecture yet

We do similar, also with "c" meaning "clarification needed", and it's higher priority than a hand or a question.

When there's a "c", then the speaker pauses ASAP to out what needs clarifying. These are important to ensure the context is correct and understood by participants.

For visual meetings, a person can indicated "clarification needed" by raising their hand while making a "c" shape.

while probably more common i thought its somewhat foreign to prioritize based upon who is first to have something to say. I don't remember it like that in school. If anything the first people to raise their hands were those that always did that and most of the time the teacher kinda ignored them in order to find someone else to answer to. I specifically remember me not bothering anymore and only attempt to participate if nobody else did and i could.

Indeed: I try to give priority to people who haven't yet been heard. But giving also some priority to those who were first incentivizes students to participate more actively and energetically. Being first to raise your hand is more difficult than tagging along the others.

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