Tutorial for moderators and chairpersons

Tutorial for moderators and chairpersons

This tutorial will guide you through the steps and options available for the session you will be chairing. If you are not a chair, but a speaker, please read carefully this article.

Please make sure you can log in to the conference platform ahead of your sessions time. Write to the helpdesk if you have any issues.

Please note that as a moderator or chairperson you will need to:
  1. Click on the Zoom link sent by the Production team. The Zoom room will be open 30 minutes before the start of the session. This link will be sent to you on 19 October at the latest (more details can be found below and in the tutorial).
  2. Access the conference platform ahead of time, enter your session 10 minutes prior the start time and get ready to moderate it (more details can be found below). Please note that your session will only open 10 minutes before.

You should have both Zoom and the session on the conference platform open on your screen (the tutorial will show you how to do it). 


TUTORIAL FOR CHAIRS AND MODERATORS



When listed as the moderator/chairperson or speaker of a session, you will have exclusive access to a number of tools based on the session’s format.

These tools include:

  • Participant List
  • Q&A
To get started, head to your dashboard by clicking on the down arrow in the top right of the platform (next to your profile image) and select "My Profile". You can then select "My Sessions" to access all the sessions you are a speaker or moderator/chairperson. This ensures that you will have correct access to the session when it is live. If the session it is not listed in you profile, please contact scientific@theunion.org immediately.


For complete clarity, a countdown timer is shown next to every session. This allows you to know exactly when the session is going live. 10 minutes before the start of the session, you will be able to click the "Join Session" button to go into the session room. 



















Remember that as a chairperson or speaker, you will also receive a Zoom link on 19 October at the latest. The Zoom room will be open 30 minutes before the stary of the session. Make sure to test that the video and audio are working.

A technician will arrive in the Zoom room a few minutes before the session to assist you. Only yourself, the co-chair, the speakers and the technician will be in the Zoom room. You can use the Zoom chat whenever necessary during the session to chat with the co-chair and/or the speakers. The audience will not read the messages posted in this Zoom chat.

Please note that you should have both the Zoom call window and the session window from the conference platform open on your screen. 

Please make sure the sound on the video in the conference platform is off to avoid any echo. This can be done from the video screen where you are watching the session in the platform:



You and your co-chair start the live introduction for the session once the producer gives you the go ahead.

IMPORTANT: Please do not exceed the introduction time allocated to you. Going over the time allocated for introduction will result in a shorter Q&A segment. The session must end to allow the next session to start as planned.

INSIDE THE SESSION ROOM
Inside the session room on the conference platform, on the right-hand side of the screen, you will see the following icons: these are (top to bottom):
  1. Room Settings,
  2. Connected Participants,
  3. Open Chat,
  4. Hand Raise (not applicable in live streams),
  5. and Q&A. 

The moderator/chairperson is expected to read and select the questions to ask the presenters during the Q&A. Moderators/chairpersons and speakers can write in the public chat.






















ROOM SETTINGS
  1. Show room title - Enables and Disables the room title banner. e.g "Welcome Keynote" 
  2. Show popup Messages - Enables and Disables the popup messages displayed to the users. e.g. "A poll was published" 






CONNECTED PARTICIPANTS
This lists all participants currently in the session room, including moderators.














OPEN CHAT
The open chat is an environment for participants to chat with each other or post content that is not a direct question to the speaker or moderator/chairperson. You can search messages and export these to Excel if desired (moderators/chairpersons only). 














QUESTION AND ANSWER
Questions can be submitted to the moderator
/chairperson using the questions section. These can be marked as anonymous by the user if they desire.
















As a moderator or chairperson, you will be tasked with receiving, sorting, publishing and asking the questions from the audience to the speakers. To enable this to happen as smoothly as possible, our platform Q&A tools are simple to use. 



















Questions from users come in under the "New" heading. All questions are invisible to the audience until they have been published by clicking the "Publish" button. Once published, all questions will display under the "published" tab and will be visible to the audience. Questions can also be dismissed if they are not appropriate. 



Published questions can be upvoted by the audience to distinguish which questions are most interesting to the wider group. This is displayed with the number next to the thumbs up icon. 



If you select to "type answer", you will be provided with a text box to input the answer. This will then be displayed to the audience in their respective Q&A panel. 










If you are answering the questions live in the video call, you can select "Answer Live". Once pressed, a popup appears over the live stream displaying the question and the name of the participant who asked it. 


















All questions that have been answered appear under the "Answered" tab. You can also type an answer to any question that was answered live if you desire. All questions received during a session can be exported to an excel file at the end of the session. 

 

Please note that questions must be exported before leaving the session as these will not be available once the session has closed. 
LEAVING THE SESSION
At the bottom of the session page, you will find the "Leave Session" button. This allows you to leave the session at any time. You will also find the "Time Remaining" counter. This starts to count down from the session start time in black font. This turns red and begins to count up if the session is over running. Please ensure your session has come to a close before the end of the time allocated. 



Note that the session must end on time, so that the next session can start as planned. The producer will warn you that the time is up and ask you to wrap up. Once the producer leaves the zoom, it will close the zoom for everyone. 


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