Centra Symposium 4 0 Live Interactive virtual Learning

Centra Symposium 4. 0 Live, Interactive virtual Learning by Ahmet Uyar Florida State University CSIT (School of Computational Science and Information Technology) 400 Dirac Science Library Tallahassee Florida 32306 -4120 10/29/2021 1

Introduction • Centra Symposium 4. 0 is developed by Centra Software, Inc. (www. centra. com) • Centra Symposium is designed to create a virtual learning environment on Internet. • It is trying to replicate typical classroom interactions in real time over intranets, extranets and Internet. • It does not require sophisticated hardware and network connections. 10/29/2021 2

How It works (1) • There are two types of people in a meeting, presenter and listener. • The presenter is the creator of the meeting and has full control over the presentation. • The presenter sets up the meeting and invites the listeners. • Listeners attend the meeting with their meeting ID provided by the presenter. • It is possible for the presenter to assign someone from audience as a co-presenter. • A co-presenter has the same privileges as the presenter except the right to re-assign a co-presenter as a listener. 10/29/2021 3

How It works (2) • By default the presenter has the right to talk. When a person from audience wants to talk, first he requests the microphone by raising his hand then when the microphone is granted by the presenter, he can speak. • When a listener gets the microphone, he also gets the permission to put some marks on the presentation. • Up to 250 concurrent users are supported. • The presenter can upload the power point presentations on the fly even after the session has begun. • No telephony users are supported. Only Pc-to-PC full duplex voice communication is provided. 10/29/2021 4

Features (1) • Full-duplex IP audio conferencing, no telephony users are supported. • Real time IP video conferencing is supported, so that everyone can see the presenter or some other users. • Breakout rooms: The presenter can break the main session into multiple breakout rooms for team exercises. • There can be unlimited number of co-presenters. • The presenter can create and hand out an ad-hoc survey. • A whiteboard is provided. It is possible to save the content of whiteboard for later review. 10/29/2021 5

Features (2) • Recording and Editing: Centra Recorder TM lets you record live sessions in an industry standard, and Centra Producer TM lets you edit recordings frame-by-frame. • I believe they use the H. 323 standard for recording and communication among users. It is the industry standard for web conferencing(audio, video and data) • Centra Symposium allows existing databases, Oracle 8, to be used as a e. Learning repository. • Enrolled participants can see the content before or after the live session. • Application Sharing: Users can share any windows application including their entire desktop. • The presenter can take the participants on a synchronized Web tour. 10/29/2021 6

Features (3) • Bandwidth requirements: It only requires 28. 8 kbps network connection. • Content pre-caching: events can be configured so that the event content will be automatically pre-cached on participant’s PC. • Tracking and Reporting: All assessment, user, event and attendance data are tracked and reported. • Distributed Server Architecture. Multiple Centra Collaboration Servers (CCS) can be distributed across the world to optimize bandwidth efficiency and provide additional capacity yet still be centrally managed from a common Web interface. 10/29/2021 7

Comparison with Web. Ex • Web. Ex does not sell the server software, only sell the services. On the other hand, Centra sells both the server software and the services. – Actually Web. Ex focus on ASP (Application Server) business model is very successful and “forced” Centra to follow suit • Centra provides breakout rooms but Web. Ex does not. • Centra provides recording and editing facilities of live sessions (audio, video, data), and Web. Ex appears to only support recording. • Centra supports Oracle 8 to be used as the database, Web. Ex does not support a database connection. • Centra requires 28. 8 kbps network connection, Web. Ex requires 56 kbps network connection. • All of the other features are similar although Web. Ex’s shared export model is more powerful than Centra’s for Power. Point. 10/29/2021 8

Conclusion • Centra Symposium 4. 0 is currently one of the best products in the market. • It has a lot of cool features and very easy to use. Especially the recording and editing seems very convenient. • Content pre-caching should also improve the performance. 10/29/2021 9

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