Download Centra Symposium

October 24, 2000
Centra Symposium 4.0
Live, Interactive virtual Learning
by
Ahmet Uyar
Computational Science and Information Technology
Florida State University
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.
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.
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 and 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.
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.
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 eLearning 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.
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.
Comparison with WebEX
• WebEX does not sell the server software, only sell the
services. On the other hand, Centra sells both the server
software and the services.
• Centra provides breakout rooms but WebEX does not.
• Centra provides recording and editing facilities of live
sessions (audio, video, data), but WebEX supports only
content saving(data).
• Centra supports Oracle 8 to be used as the database,
WebEX does not support a database connection.
• Centra requires 28.8kbps network connection, WebEX
requires 56kbps network connection.
• All of the other features are the same.
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.