UiBhelp's public knowledge cards

KI 0914 How to host and stream a digital seminar?

Mitt UiB and the associated tools Zoom and Panopto are used for regular teaching of courses.
For digital seminars, workshops, conferences, etc. which are not part teaching, we give some advice and recommendations here.

It may be useful to differentiate between
  • interactive meetings where several or all participants may be active, and
  • streaming of one or a few speakers/lecturers to an audience
Interactive meetings, seminars, workshops
Such events can usually be hosted sucessfully in Zoom. (See also our recommendations for using digital meeting and collaboration systems.)

Familiarize yourself with the recommendations for secure behavior in digital meetings! This is especially important for meetings with many external participants.
Streaming of seminars, panels etc.
For smaller groups, you should use a regular digital meeting in Zoom.

If a small group is going to talk and a larger (large) group is going to listen/watch, Zoom Webinar can be a good alternative. This provides better security and simpler functions for participants than a regular Zoom meeting. See more information in KI 0945.

It is important for a successful event that you agree in advanve who does what during the event. For example, you may want to have one or more co-hosts or administrators who take care of letting people in from waiting rooms, conducting debates, watching the comment field, etc. With Zoom Webinar this is a prerequisite, since the audience may not write to a chat, but instead send their questions or comments to the administrator. (Please see KI 0994 if you want to use Zoom Webinar.)
Equipment in rooms
If some of the participants are gathered in a teaching or meeting room, while others participate or watch online, it is important to provide good audio and video equipment in the room. A conference microphone/speaker will provide significantly better sound than built-in devices in a laptop!

If more than one participant is active in the room, e.g. in a debate, equipment specially designed and fitted for a room will be preferrable. A separate webcamera and a conference microphone/speaker may also work. Please try the equipment and placement in advance!

See also our information about purchasing audiovisual equipment for teaching and meeting rooms.
Streaming to YouTube?
We sometimes get questions about streaming to YouTube, perhaps because this is something we have heard about. In practice, it is just as easy for the participants - and much easier for the organizer - to watch the event on Zoom. If it still is desirable to stream an event on a UiB YouTube account, this must be planned in collaboration with the Communications division well in advance.
Distribute recordings of the event afterwards
Zoom (and Teams, if you should prefer to use that) has a function for recording video of the event. This recording can be distributed in all ways and channels video files are normally shared.