Disable Individual Participant Audio in Breakout Rooms?

Report · Jun 02, 2011

As a host I cannot disable individual participant audio in breakout rooms. Or can I? I can't see how to do this.

This is necessary, as there is always one user who is using speakers and creating terrible feedback problems in the room. The ability to disable audio on a per-user basis during breakouts would allow me to find the offending user and force them to use chat.

Am I missing something?

PH

Report · Jun 10, 2011

I believe if you go to the main menu and choose the audio menu you can revoke microphone rights for all participants and you can select single speaker mode whereby only the host can speak.

Report · Jun 22, 2011

Hi Heyward,

I believe in Breakouts, everyone has Presenter Status and presenters automatically have microphone rights. We could build a pod that allowed a host to remotely turn another user's microphone on or off, or in this case, mute their speakers.

A custom pod from Refined Data would probably fix the problem but unless this is a regular issue it might be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Would it not be easier to just ask everyone in the breakout in the same physical location to turn down or mute their speakers except for one person?

Report · Jun 22, 2011

Interesting. Looking at the Refined Data site....

In an online classroom setting, with 25 students in a 1.5hr session, 5 breakout rooms with 5 students each, it is difficult to start the breakout session and go from room to room verifying microphones, talking students through issues, etc. That would take 15 minutes or so. Too long. We use Connect for actual live classes at a Major American College™ -- and time is not cheap.

As said, using single speaker mode is not possible or good for these rooms, as the whole point of conducting an online class is to enable interactivity, not limit it with half duplex/single speaker mode etc. All I want to have in a breakout room is the same administrative right I have in the Main Room -- the ability to disable or enable any user's audio.

It would also be nice to have the ability to force users to hold down the microphone button in order to talk during breakouts. This would also be a way of preveting echo/noize/etc. I wouldn't use this all the time, but sometimes it would be nice.

~PH

Report · Jun 22, 2011

Peter, what you'll see on the web site is just a small sample of the off-the-shelf solutions from RDS. The real power is in the custom apps that get built to meet specific use cases that we cannot advertise on the web. Our corporate motto is "if you can dream it, we can build it" so there's not much we can't do if you have the need. Of course dreams don't always come cheaply but then what does?...

If you'd like to discuss this further, drop us a line to sales at refineddata.com

If you work in education, we have some other products you might find interesting too.