Video In A Hybrid Classroom

Refactoring a training room to be suitable for hybrid learning seems elementary at first glance. A deeper dive quickly uncovers challenges that need to be thought through and addressed in the planning stages. In a previous blog post, I discussed audio challenges when setting up a hybrid classroom. But what about video considerations?

When thinking about video in a hybrid classroom, you need to start by cataloging all the “views” you would have in a live classroom. Primarily there are three:

• The instructor can clearly see all the participants and their work, even while walking around the room.

• The participants can clearly see the instructor and any classroom teaching aids (whiteboards, flipcharts, etc) throughout the day.

• The participants can see each other clearly, whether they are sitting at their desks in conversation or standing in the front of the room making a presentation.

It’s these three views that we want to try and replicate so that attending remotely will provide the same learner experience as being there in person.

At LearnerFirst our approach to video for hybrid events is built around a satisfying remote learner experience. This is not the average. Unfortunately, most corporate learning environments, meeting room companies, and hotels fall far short of providing this type of experience.

Let’s take a look at some of the more common video setups right now and see how they stack up.

Screen and Webcam in the Front of the Room.

This is the most common setup that you will see in meeting and event venues, including hotels. Essentially, the room is set up boardroom style with a monitor and webcam at the front of the room. They may include a second monitor that may even be a touch screen acting as a collaborative whiteboard.

Typically these rooms are small and not reconfigurable. They need that one camera to capture everyone in one frame, and that means keeping everyone close together. Which sucks for breakout exercises. If the table is too long, the image of the live participants needs to zoom out and that makes each individual that much smaller in the frame. There are cameras that adjust to the number of participants around the table by zooming in and out automatically. These are a little better, however, you still have the one major problem with this setup — the view for the remote participant.

Under this setup, ALL participants including the facilitator are in one frame in the remote platform. Imagine coming onto a hybrid training program on a platform like Zoom with six live participants and six remote students. In the gallery view you would see each of the remote participants individually, and all the live participants in one tiny gallery window. And moving to the speaker view wouldn’t help much because the camera in the meeting room can’t identify and zoom in on a particular speaker.

With this set up of course the instructor can easily see the remote students in either gallery view or speaker view, as can the live participants. But that’s not really the challenge is it? What we are trying to do is ensure the remote learner has an equal experience to the live learner.

Screen and Webcam System in a Zoom Room with Smart Gallery

The second setup is really an attempt by Zoom to address some of these problems. And good on them, they are on the right track and I personally hope this technology continues to be developed. 

What Zoom has done is work with some of the camera manufacturers to allow them to feed multiple feeds from one camera into Zoom. Using AI the camera feeds are able to recognize individuals, zoom in on them, and feed them as an individual into their own frame in a Smart Gallery. Unfortunately Zoom restricts the number of feeds, and the number of cameras that can be strung together. My understanding is that this restriction will be changing in the future, and when it does this will likely give Zoom a big advantage in the education market.  

This still doesn’t completely address some of the issues with the first set up, but it's a start. And unfortunately as of writing this blog post it requires special camera equipment and is exclusive to Zoom.

Individual Cameras for Each Live Participant

The third setup is the one we feel is the best solution for hybrid learning environments. It allows for remote students to feel like live students, and it allows for setting up breakout groups that mix live and remote participants.  

With this setup, each live participant is given a computer and monitor with a camera. Each live student signs into the Zoom meeting. This allows them to show up in their own zoom window for remote students. To avoid having audio feedback loops, the computers are not equipped with speakers or microphones. Instead, having a proper hybrid audio system installed will enable two-way communication between both live and remote students as a total classroom. This is how we do it at the LearnerFirst learning studio.

To enable breakout rooms that contain both live and remote students, we simply set up the breakout rooms as normal, inviting the live students into rooms with virtual students. Then we supply the live student with headsets with integrated microphones to be used during the breakout sessions.

It’s About the Learner Experience

When planning a hybrid learning program, it's important to ensure that your remote students are not treated as an afterthought. Too often meeting spaces that claim to provide hybrid solutions simply miss the mark. Not wanting to invest in the computer systems or the setup time required ends up with substandard hybrid classrooms. 

If you are planning a hybrid training session consider reaching out to us at LearnerFirst. Toronto’s best hybrid learning classroom.