Centra Webconferencing

	Centra enables you to:
	•	share presentations, websites, and applications
	•	present quizzes and surveys
	•	populate breakout rooms for small group discussions
	•	interact with attendees using voice over IP, video, and text
	•	record presentations for asynchronous viewing

May 18, 2009

eMeetings for Everyone, Everywhere

Webconferencing has become an essential way of effectively communicating and collaborating in today's highly connected world. The Texas A&M University System uses Saba Centra for its rich set of enterprise-level webconferencing capabilities. You can use Centra to meet with anyone online—across campus or around the world—to teach classes, present guest lecturers, and hold webinars.

Set Up Your eMeeting

You can streamline the entire process of coordinating and conducting eMeetings from directly within Centra with its Web-based event-scheduling and registration tools. Pre-enroll participants yourself or have them self-enroll on their own and then send custom confirmation and reminder emails to attendees. Track registrations through user-friendly reports and use calendaring tools to list scheduled sessions.

Centra provides a secure environment for you to assemble your session content. You can organize materials beforehand or determine the agenda on-the-fly. Additionally, you can include up to five co-presenters, either for assistance with the session or for panel presentations.

Conduct Your eMeeting

With support for up to 500 students for virtual classes and up to 1,000 attendees for Web seminars, Centra has the capacity and scalability that the Texas A&M teaching community requires. Centra supports integrated audio and video streaming, application sharing (with mark-up options), and PowerPoint slideshows (with support for animation).

Beyond its presentation features, Centra enables your students to interact and be engaged in your teaching. Centra facilitates participation and collaboration with public/private text chat, impromptu surveys, yes/no polling, laughter/applause, and shared whiteboards.

After Your eMeeting

Once your Centra session is finished, you can save and trim a recorded version of the event for later viewing. You can also make reference materials available in the included Content Catalog.

Tracking student performance is convenient with reports that cover attendance, participation, and assessments. You can also view pre- and post-event surveys and in-session polls to learn more about your audience and further refine your presentations.

Centra even features an option to automatically remove protected content from participants' systems following the session, which helps retain your intellectual property rights.

ITS Is Here to Help

ITS has more information about Centra, including best practices for holding eMeetings and what type of hardware is required to make the experience successful for everyone involved.

TTVN provides the central administration of the TAMUS Centra system, webconference services, and a help desk that is available Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Contact TTVN at (979) 862-2241 or ttvn.tamu.edu to set up a domain for your department.

ITS offers specialized training and one-on-one consultations for Centra to help get you up to speed quickly with webconferencing. Register for ITS training and let us help you discover your own ways of integrating eMeetings in your curriculum.