Guidelines for Hosts

This document is a work in progress.

As a session host your primary role is encompassed in being the Host of the Zoom session. In this role, we ask that you arrive at least 15 minutes before the session starts to get ready. We recommend logging into the Zoom session as yourself, and then using the “claim host” key you were provided to become host. The below sections describe the tasks that we expect all hosts to do in their sessions.

Orienting Speakers

In the 15 minutes prior to session start we also ask that all speakers come early. During this time please help orient speakers as needed to Zoom, and ensure that their microphone and camera are working appropriately. Make sure that any who need to share their screen practice this. Answer any questions that they have regarding the technology of the session. Ask them if there are any specific ways that you can assist them during their session when it comes to the technology of Zoom, like helping to run polls, breakout rooms, etc. It may be appropriate to assign some or all of them as co-hosts so they have more powers in Zoom. Ask that speakers invite you to say any final announcements when they are done, as invariably some will be needed.

Recording

Unless this is a session that has specifically asked not to be recorded, just before you speak the following speech at the session start time turn on session recording to the Zoom Cloud.

Live Translation

Plenaries have live translators for Spanish and Korean. These special roles should have been assigned ahead of time when setting up the Zoom meetings. The translators are hired from Humanly. Hosts at plenaries should make sure that the translators are all set and answer any questions they have in the 15 minutes before the session starts.

Enable Live Transcript

Some attendees may need closed caption or a transcript to facilitate better understanding of the proceedings. While the Zoom auto captions are far from perfect, they are much better than nothing. So we recommend that you enable the Live Transcripts before you get started. This will allow these users to view captions or a transcript.

Welcome Speech

At the time of the session start, we ask that you say the following brief statement in welcome to all participants in the session:

Hi, my name is __ and I am part of the REA tech support team. Welcome to this session in Zoom. I have just muted everyone. Please keep your audio muted during this session unless called upon to speak, but share your thoughts using the chat whenever you like.

We are putting a link into the chat for our announcements padlet. This is where all announcements for REA2023 are being made. If you have an announcement you would like attendees to see, please add it to the announcements padlet.

This session is being recorded for those who couldn’t make it at this time. After this session is over, please remember to fill out an evaluation form, we’ll give you that link before the session is over.

Before sessions that will include translators…

This session is being translated into Spanish and Korean. If you want to listen to one of these translations, use the language selector in your Zoom session to choose that option.

For all sessions, end with…

Now let’s get started!

Visibility

We ask that during the bulk of the session you remain both audio, and if desired video, muted. If the speakers want your involvement to help in specific ways that require visibility that is fine, but during the session your role is primarily a behind-the-scenes one.

Managing Mics

During the session please make sure that anyone who shouldn’t have a hot mic is muted. Though you’ve muted all as you spoke the above speech (and speakers subsequently unmuted themselves again) participants may come and go, or accidentally unmute themselves. It is important that only those who are speaking are unmuted to keep the session audio clear for all participants. To aid in this you should change the setting to make all participants be muted on entry, and depending on speakers’ wishes may want to disallow unmuting entirely.

Attendance

Since this is an all-virtual annual meeting the tracking for Annual Meeting Attendance cannot be done at a registration desk, since there is no such desk. So instead please take screenshots of the participants list sometime during your session so that we can later ensure that participants were marked as having attended this annual meeting. This also gives us a tally of all those who attended this specific session. The only trick is deciding when to take such screenshots, since folks may come and go counts may fluctuate.

Feedback Link

Towards the conclusion of the session please copy the session’s feedback link into the chat. These links can be found in Airtable. When the speakers ask if there are any final announcements you need to give, one can be to remind people to send feedback. Remind them that the links will be available for the rest of the week from the details of this session on the schedule.

Also paste the padlet link into the chat one last time.

Ending Early

If your session ends early, you might want to consider staying logged into it until the end of the assigned time. Some people come very late, even in the last 5 or 10 minutes of a session. Consider screen sharing a slide with a simple notice such as “This REA2023 session has already concluded.”

After Session

When the session concludes please stop the recording. Also send the attendance screenshots to tech [at] religiouseducation [dot] net noting the name of the session. We will store these screenshots, along with the session recordings, in the REA Media Google Drive, so if you have access feel free to just drop the screenshots off there yourself instead.

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