4. Improve the Conditions at the Far End Parts

When you give distance education by the use of video conferences, you will often experience that the conditions at the far end parties are not optimized. Examples of this are lack of well-organized seating within specific camera views (you don't see the students properly), microphone solutions (you can't hear comments and questions properly), the students at the far end side are, perhaps unconsciously, making irritating noise, etc.

We have made some conclusions according to these phenomena.

Responsible contact person

Each location should have at least one responsible contact person that is possible to reach by a cell phone, both in advance of lectures and during lectures. This person should be given some basic technical training, so that small technical problems according to sound and picture quality and minor problems with the connections can be fixed quickly. He or she should also be responsible for more trivial tasks like powering the systems on and unlock the video conferencing room, and participate in testing of connections before the lecture starts. We have experienced more than one time to be forced to cancel lectures due to locked rooms, video systems not powered on, and no persons present that are able to fix such minor problems. Besides, it is useful to have a local contact person who easily can get in touch with the students for handover of urgent messages etc.

Train the students

It is common to speak about how to train the trainer. We claim that it is important also to train the students. Most students are sceptic and feel insecure and strange the first time they participate in a distance learning session. They should participate in some training situations that focus on getting used to looking at monitors and speaking into microphones. And some training is necessary to avoid that several parties are speaking simultaneously and not one by one. It is useful to let the students experience themselves how awful noise that are transmitted when one of the parties are whispering or talking to each other or, unconsciously, knocking at the table, placing coffee cups on a table with a table-top microphone on or turn over paper leaves. There are considerable reasons to let the far end parties mute their microphones whenever they are not answering questions or making questions. In that case it is important that one person in their room is responsible to turn the microphone on again immediately when needed. Besides, students should train on speaking loud and clear so that far end parties may understand what is said. Muttering is never appreciated, especially not in video conferences.

In this video the lecturer experiences an intolerable noise level from the other parties. He does the only right thing in a case like this: Stops until the reason for the noise is found and the noise is eliminated.

Seating and camera view

It is important that mostly persons and useful information are visible in the camera view and that all other information is kept at a minimum level (walls, tables etc.).

	This is a good example of what you may expect as camera view if the far end side is not trained how to be seated according to a specific camera view. Often people are spread all around and the camera view covers all kind of useless information; desks, walls, floors etc.
	It could have been like this, where the picture is covered by people and not useless space.
	If a lot of persons are to be covered by the camera, they should be seated in a trapezoidal shape like this.
	Then the screen will show the course participants like this.

Before the lecture starts, it is important that each party have chosen appropriate camera views, i.e. that the other parties primarily can see the persons and not tables, walls, floor etc. Therefore, effort should be done to arrange the seating according to a chosen camera view.

In this video we demonstrate that only small changes are necessary to turn a failure into a success. 

Microphone solutions

You may often experience difficulties hearing comments and questions from the far end parties. This can be due to students talking too silently or muttering, or there could be badly chosen microphone solutions. One big room can not be covered appropriately by only one microphone, so for rooms of a certain size there will normally have to be several microphones present. This is due to the microphones' specific characteristics, such as critical distances and orientation sensitivity or geometry. Experts should be consulted for choice of audio solutions.

A realistic example

The picture below demonstrates a typical example of a room that is not specially designed for video conferences, but the room has at some time been equipped with a video conferencing system for meeting purposes and reception of distance education.

Figure 1. A typical example of a room not designed for video conferences, but at some time equipped with video conferencing equipments.

Video rooms like this one may be found in schools, companies and local libraries and other public buildings. As a starting-point the room will probably not work very well as a video conferencing location. But it is possible to do small adjustments to increase the quality substantially.

The light conditions are often bad, as in this case. It is difficult for the students present to see the pictures on the monitor, and the picture from this room is also influenced by the incoming daylight. Thick curtains in front of the windows and reduction of light in front of the monitors are necessary to achieve better pictures for both local users and far end parts.

If the tables are separated into a V-shape with the opean wide part nearest the camera it will be possible for the far end parts to see all participants (see Figure 2). Otherwise some of the students will be hidden for the other location.

Usually there is a table–top microphone on the meeting table as in this case (see Figure 1). This may be a good solution for the 4 – 5 students nearest the microphone, but it will not cover the students at the end of the table. These microphones are directional, which implies that they receive signal better in certain directions, so placing the microphone at the centre of the table doesn't solve the problem. One solution could be to use two table-top microphones, one at each end. Another solution could be to use a ceiling-mounted microphone, assuming that the critical distance from the students to the microphone is not exceeded. Audio experts should always be consulted in such cases.  

As the microphone is placed quite near the loudspeakers (here they are mounted inside the monitors), it is likely that echo problems could occur. To prevent this, the microphone could be moved further away from the monitors, or the loudspeaker volume should be reduced. It is important, however, that the echo cancellation mechanism of the video conferencing codec is turned on.   

The monitors are OK for watching camera pictures, but they are too small if the lecturer is giving a computer presentation. Details in the presentation are only visible approximately 2 - 3 meters away from this size of monitors. A video projector and a screen could have been used in addition to show presentations from the other parties. Besides, computer presentations is better visualised on media with appropriate solution (video projectors or plasma screens) - TV monitors work best for camera pictures.

Effort should always be done in noise reductions. In this case students will probably make a lot of noise with their papers, coffee cups on the table etc., so the microphone(s) should be muted whenever not used. Carpets on the floor and thick curtains will improve the acoustic properties of the room, and people in nearby rooms should somehow be reminded to be quiet during the video conference.