Centra Symposium 4.0 Live, Interactive virtual Learning by Ahmet Uyar Computational Science and Information Technology Florida State University October 24, 2000

Introduction Centra Symposium 4.0 is developed by Centra Software, Inc. ( 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.