Teaching in an Echo360 enabled classroom

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence (CATE), Technology Solutions, and all other technology teams across UIC’s colleges, have teamed up to prepare over 500 learning spaces to provide instructors and students with the flexibility they need to teach and learn once the university reopens in the fall. The main technology being implemented in those classrooms is powered by Echo360, a recording and livestream solution that CATE – and several colleges – have supported long before the pandemic.

This fall, you can use Echo360 to stream your classes so that students can participate fully in live classes, ask questions, and answer polls. The live attendance feature will let you know who is participating remotely and remote student engagement will show up in your instructor analytics, just as it does for students who attend in person. You can live stream using Universal Capture on any Mac or PC computer, as well as Echo360’s Pro and Pod capture appliances. All sessions can be recorded automatically and are available in Blackboard for on-demand viewing. If you are teaching in common use classrooms, you can see the type of technology available in the classroom by searching the space in this classroom database: go.uic.edu/UICclassrooms

Below, there is a curated list of the resources you can use to prepare for the fall semester:

Videos

• Review the Live Streaming process for both a student and instructor (5:22 min)
• Webinar of an instructor using Echo360 to provide students with a flexible learning environment (60 min)
• Online Help Videos for Instructors (+20 videos)

Quick Guides

• Echo 360 guide for recording (UIC specific)
• Polling with Echo360 (UIC specific)
• Live streaming with Echo360 links to resources from Echo360 (non-UIC)
• Livestreaming with Universal Capture (non-UIC)

Classrooms Guided Tours

• Sign up for a workshop or a technical walkthrough: go.uic.edu/CATEclassroomtraining (limited to 10 people)
• Request college-specific classroom technology training: go.uic.edu/Request-classroom-training (minimum of 5 people)

Workshops

• 2021 Echo360 Community Conference is fully online July 27-29, 2021. This year’s theme is: “No going back: how to reconfigure learning for a post-COVID world.” The conference is free and offers workshops for all levels of expertise. Register here: echo360.com/conference/2021-echo360-community-conference

Tech support

• UIC: Echo360 Knowledge Base and Service Requests
• Echo360 Help Site: support.echo360.com/hc/en-us
• Echo360 Instructors of How-to Videos: help.echo360.com/hc/en-us/articles/360035038892-Instructor-How-To-Videos

Regardless of the state’s policies with respect to social distancing, CATE is ready to help you prepare to teach using the technology in your classroom. If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact the CATE support team at LTS@uic.edu.