Findings: Best Practices Synchronous

Among the best practices we identified:

• Establish license and vendor restrictions (if any)
• Establish netiquette for the synchronous classroom ahead of time
• Be sure class is well prepared to use the tools
• Allow participants extra time prior to session start to perform audio/video tests
• Make sure user privileges are as equal as possible
• Establish recording procedures
• Plan for plenty of sidebar discussions via email/phone between faculty members
• Understand that there may be students who could be overwhelmed by the need to speak into a microphone and hear their own voice
• Open classroom to avoid scheduling problems
• Consider using asynchronous tools such as Google docs or wikis to assist in organizing