6 Tips for Lecturers To Live Stream a Classroom Online

When most of the industries, schools, and colleges are locked down due to the COVID-19 outbreak, distance learning is the major educational system that helps students and teachers during the global crisis. To offer an uninterrupted learning experience to students, interactive live streaming is a significant tool to stream your classroom sessions to students. The classroom live streaming helps teachers to provide in-person classroom experience and engage students with face-to-face interactions.

Digital distance learning would be much useful during emergency situations during hurricanes, natural crises, and epidemic situations like these. In order to help educational professionals to live stream classroom sessions, let us take a look at how to set up live classroom streaming, equipment, and technology needed to host live classroom hosting.

Before getting into the actual setup, let’s be clear on the difference between e-Learning platforms and online live classrooms. People often find themselves difficult to have a clear picture of e-Learning isn’t the same as the live classroom sessions.

The Core Process of an e-Learning platform

• e-Learning is completely composed of a portal where students have access to it based on their issued time.
• These online portals allow students to work on respective tasks independently and complete the tasks within the due date such as a day or week.
• All the learning materials are based on soft-copy materials like lecture notes, PowerPoint slides, worksheets, PDF documents, a video explanation of lectures, and more.
• Their learning process and evaluation is based on written tests, homework, assignments, and more.

How the Live Online Classroom Sessions Usually Work?

• Live virtual classrooms are completely “Live” where all the classes are real-time and interactive.
• Both the student and teacher communicate in real-time through one platform where it’s equivalent to a physical classroom session.
• The live online classes can be either one-to-one or one-to-many or group of sessions. (Teacher to one student or many).
• Instead of a physical classroom board, here we have a virtual whiteboard to solve any problematic questions or anything in real-time where the students can raise questions, doubts in the on-going class.
• Teachers can host virtual classroom sessions based on students’ preferred time and preferred mode of communication such as video or audio.
• To make the online classroom learning more interactive, the online live classroom platform comes with engagement factors like Live polls, Q&A, Live chat, and more.

Irrespective of platforms, it’s all about delivering a better learning experience, personalization, Interactiveness, and Guidance to students during the online learning sessions.

Delivering Interactiveness Throughout the Session

e-Learning platforms lack in creating interactivity with students since it’s completely an independent portal system. Live online classroom platforms are real-time, thus they provide chat functionality, two-way communication to create interactiveness. 

Creating a Personalized Learning System

Online classroom platforms are on the top delivering personalized learning experience to students since it allows teachers to focus on individuals (students) in real-time. More than eLearning platforms, online live streaming classes create a personalized impact on students’ learning experience.  

Guiding students throughout the journey of learning

Students always require someone to look after when they experience any sort of doubts. Live online classes provide real-time interactivity to students as result they will have end-to-end guidance from experts and teachers irrespective of remote learnings. 

The Core Benefits of Going With Virtual Live Classroom Sessions for Students & Teachers

Creates Better Learning Experience

Online live classes are equivalent to the physical classroom learning experience with the help of virtual whiteboard systems, one-to-one interactivity, and two-way conversations. Live classroom sessions help teachers to focus more on each student based on the teachers’ convenience time.

Accessible Across Devices

With proper internet connectivity, students can access the live classroom sessions irrespective of regions, countries. Remote students can access the online classroom sessions from any device, laptop, desktop, or even mobile devices. 

Understanding Students’ Learning Habits

Live streaming of classes empowers educators to understand students learning patterns right from the beginning and helps to shape every student based on their interest. Live streaming technology also delivers some analytical platforms to track every students’ watch time, engagement, and more.

Revenue Generation Opportunities for Educators

The online virtual classroom platforms not only deliver a personalized learning experience to students but also aids in creating revenue opportunities through subscription-based monetization for content materials, or entire courses. 

Institutions Can Use Platforms As a Marketing Asset

With live streaming of courses, institutions grab the opportunity to attract new admissions by delivering the best possible learning experience to students during this COVID pandemic. 

Record On-going Live Streams

With record live capture features, educators can record their live streams for the purpose of re-publishing or marketing the content based on various materials such as on-demand content or broadcasting.

Pieces of Equipment Required to Live Stream a Classroom Session

• A highly reliable video camera probably a DSLR or other high-definition camera with a proper Microphone.
• High memory storage, for storing, editing the footage for video-on-demand services.
• A secure and reliable network connection.
• Proper lighting, if filmed in closed doors.
• A flexible tripod
• And scalable and effective encoder to live stream.

Just like other professional live streaming verticals, investing in professional high-grade equipment isn’t necessary for the live stream of class until you use presentations. After setting up all the equipment listed above, picking an ideal online video education platform is the main objective. 

1. Choose the Right Streaming Provider for Your Educational Content

With all the equipment fixed properly, choosing a live streaming provider is the ultimate step to broadcast the classroom session. Since the market is overflowing with a great number of streaming platform providers, selecting a reliable live streaming platform with a Content delivery network is a bonus. 

The reliable CDN ensures the distribution of content across all the geographical areas without jamming your own server. Choosing an education video solution like Vplayed helps you to live stream classroom sessions to students over an application or website that can be easily accessed by the students. A powerful live streaming solution offers all the necessary technologies to build a platform for streaming classroom and educational content equipped with analytical tools to track the number of viewers etc., 

It’s a bonus point for educational professionals that offer a wide range of classroom live streaming benefits and features beyond live streaming capabilities. Make sure the live online class videos are available for playback after watching the live stream. Determine whether the streaming provider offers video-on-demand capabilities.

2. Configure Your Internet Connection With Robust Security and Speed

Live broadcasting educational content or classroom is no exception, but make sure a stable internet connection has a wide number of screens at a certain speed. Make sure the streaming platform is configured with TLS and other internet security protocols to safeguard streaming content from being stolen. 

To stream high-quality video to students and educators without any glitches, a reliable internet connection with a speed of 750Kbps to 2Mbps minimum to offer smooth streaming of educational content to students. 

3. Prepare Most Out of Your Educational Content For a Clear & Intuitive Streaming

Live classroom broadcasting or educational content streaming, prepare your lessons, and use your years of experience to offer a clear understanding with engaging educational material that resonates with your students.

Presenting the content with the use of interactive tools works out best. Make sure to use whiteboards, smartboards, or recorder screens with voice-overs that all get fit into the camera’s view without distorting the view. Adjust all the teaching materials based on the capturing area to cover the materials entirely into the screen.

4. Creating Backup Plans and Consistency Is A Must

Whatever the streaming sector, consistency is a must for any streaming ideas, whereas education streaming demands consistency at a high rate. Make sure to live stream the content to students or educators on the promised date and time. Creating consistent educational live streaming can be more effective in creating interactivity between you and students and facilitate a better learning experience. 

With everything going well, implement subscription-based access to streaming content or on-demand content. Start the subscription model initially with rates based on the session’s importance. Determine to create better interactivity, confidence, and incomparable educational resources for students that make them subscribe to your channel or content library. 

5. Prepare a Clear Outline of the Live Streaming Courses

Unlike other video-on-demand courses, educational live streaming is way complicated where it requires a definitive preparation of live streaming courses. Research, plan, and create complete course details that last a certain duration of period, simply say for 3 months to 6 months. 

Regardless of subject matter, creating access to relevant knowledge and reliable resources is the objective of your live streaming courses. Live streaming of educational content creates a better relationship with your students and the engagement rate would be high compared to video-on-demand courses. 

6. With Everything On-hand, Start Your Live Classroom Stream

After setting up all the live streaming equipment, a live video streaming platform for the classroom, educational materials, and resources, it’s time to go live.

Every educational professional, teachers have their own teaching style, but make sure of some basic tips for broadcasting live classroom.

• Speak slowly and clearly that makes your students understand and align with your moment.
• Allow students to participate in questions when running a discussion on board or study materials.
• Make sure all your equipment is charged and the storage card has enough memory space.
• Check Your Internet connectivity before start streaming. 
• Pause the session during interactions. 

Set up your camera and all the equipment before 24 hours from the time of live streaming to check the lighting and filming location for better live streaming. Once you have passed all the checklists, make sure to relax. The ultimate goal is to educate your students with the utmost resources, this improves your personality and helps to connect you with students.   

Wrapping Up

Once you have ticked all the tips and offer the best online education video platform, your connectivity with students will increase and the reach would probably triple. Distance learning is such a great alternative for students to connect with teachers outside of the classroom irrespective of situations like the closure of schools or emergency crises.