Hybrid Meetings - Best Practices

Hi @Lulu0913 

Audio can actually big your biggest challenge. 

All your remote participants should be on headphones and good quality microphones at close proximity. They should also stay muted in Zoom when not speaking.

Try to advise against remote participants using wireless headsets, or wireless earbuds, or even WiFi internet. Getting your remote participants on hard-wired audio devices and hard-wired internet will improve everyone's experience dramatically. 

In the Conference Room, you will want to use the best microphone system you can (preferably some kind of array) with a well-calibrated noise and echo cancellation system. Try to avoid using telephone-based audio.

For video - multiple screens in your Conference Room can be a good idea. Ideally three - one for Gallery View, one for Active Speaker and one for shared content.

Try to have someone (at least one person) in the Conference Room who is advocating for the remote participants - watching for raised hands or unmuted mics, or asked questions.

If you have presenters in the Conference Room, try to ensure they do not turn their backs to camera (and to the remote participants). Multiple cameras in the room can be very useful - PTZs if possible. 

If your remote participants are going to be on camera, try to set that expectation with them in advance - and do anything you can in advance to level up their camera-framing so everyone looks relatively well matched in Gallery View.. You can run a pre-meeting or rehearsal  event to run through this.

Make sure you have some Co-Hosts in your meeting in case you need extra hands to handle logistics. 

Make sure your remote participants can see the room participants.

For hybrid to work, remote and local participants need to be treated equally. 

Check out https://officehours.global/ for all kinds of other tips.

Hope this helps.

Rupert

We're looking at hybrid classes, but struggle with how to incorporate assessments for in-person and Zoom attendees. We can use Zoom Polls for both, but how do we ensure that audio feedback or echoing isn't a problem if the in-person attendees access the Zoom Meeting?