I've been designing and co-moderating training webinars for over two years now.  From Day One, I've deliberately avoided passive sessions, whereby the participants merely listen to the trainer and watch a set of slides.  My webinar designs have called for lots of interaction with the on-screen content and system tools.

I started out using WebEx, which was excellent for annotation tools, but the constant issues resulting from the required plug-in meant I migrated last year to Adobe Connect Pro.  This solution always gives a great first impression, which is important for my audience.  I've been trying to stick to the same session designs, but I'm finding that the sections that require annotation of a whiteboard or a PowerPoint presentation screen can be problematic.

I set the permissions at the start of the session so that everyone has annotation rights, but that puts a lot of "power" in the hands of each participant, meaning that if someone clicks on the "eraser" button, they wipe everyone's annotations - they soon forget my earlier pleas to use the "undo" feature instead.  You can sense that people get frustrated if they have to redo and then redo again they posting, etc.

People also find that it's hard to accurately place a mark or text and this only means they try to delete it (see above) or end up bumping into other people's contributions.

And even before they've got going, the way in that you have to call up the annotation tool bar can cause more confusion.  I do show an instructions slide at the start of the session, but later when it comes to putting into practice, there can be problems.  At least with WebEx, the annotation menu was always in the same place and was more intuitive.

And whereas with WebEx,the colours were automatically allocated to each person (unless you got the light yellow  ), with Adobe, everyone starts off the same, so I'm having to show people too how to change their colours, etc. Even then you can't tell which colour belongs to whom.

I don't really want to assign annotation rights one-by-one, as that will mean everything taking much longer.

So I'd love to know how others use the annotation features, e.g. text, stamper, etc.  How do you overcome the issues I face?  What best practices could you share?  Any great exercises you've devised that are simple to deploy using the current interface?

Hi Tim,

Adobe has a wonderfully polished looking interface and gives a very good first impression for your presentation, but it is not the most intuitive solution I think. This is fine for a seasoned presenter, but when you are passing control or trying to get feedback from your attendees, you want as little learning curve as possible.

My company, Great America Networks Conferencing, also offers a conferencing tool and I think would address some of your problems. It is a full featured tool, and incredibly intuitive to use. A couple of features that would help in your situation:

• Annotations will show the name of the person if you hover over them
  The toolbar is in an obvious place for everyone, but it is movable if desired.
  The attendees that you give annotation ability to have no ability to erase anything but their own drawings.
  If someone places a mark in the wrong place, it is easy to just drag it to the right place and not have to delete it.
  The color options are plainly visible (similar to the way this text box shows them available).

It is the simplest conference to get into for attendees as there is no install or configuring needed, and works cross-platform. All they have to do is click the link you send them and enter their name.

I would be glad to do a demonstration of the software with you or go over your specific uses. Feel free to contact me or visit my companies website at www.ganconference.com

Good luck,

Anthony

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