Live Streaming Instructions

If you are planning to live stream from a campus facility, please reach out to support@usa.edu for any assistance or support required. Please be sure to provide as much detail as possible, including the classroom location, time, camera requests, etc.

Guidelines for Live Streaming from Home

If you are planning to live stream from home, please follow the guidelines below:

1. Ensure that you have a microphone/headset that provides clear, good quality.

   1. The headset that was provided to you during the RingCentral rollout can be used. If you do not have an external microphone or headset, place a support ticket to support@usa.edu. IT will arrange to deliver the microphone to you.

2. Ensure that your laptop or external webcam can record acceptable quality images. Your USAHS laptop has a built-in webcam, which can be used for basic video recording.

3. Ensure that you have bright lighting.

4. The minimum speed Internet connection is 1.5 Mbps. If your connectivity does not meet this minimum standard, consider pre-recording and posting video content rather than live streaming. To run a speed test, go to www.speedtest.net. If you have concerns about your connectivity or Internet speed, contact support@usa.edu. 

5. We encourage you to use RingCentral or Blackboard Collaborate. In both tools, video can be recorded for participants to view at a later date. It is recommended that you stop the session at 60 minute intervals, save and restart the session in order to keep the files to a reasonable size for uploading.

6. Both Blackboard Collaborate and Ring Central also allow you to take attendance. For more information see: How can we take attendance for virtual labs? and How to Retrieve RingCentral Meeting Participants List

Using Blackboard Collaborate

To use Blackboard Collaborate for a synchronous session, you will need to ensure that Collaborate has been added to your Blackboard course. Reach out to onlineedsupport@usa.edu if you need assistance adding Collaborate to your course. Using Collaborate, you should create a new session for the live stream event. We recommend that you also record the Collaborate session so that students can review it later. The recordings for sessions are available for students in the Blackboard Collaborate area of your course.

Related Tutorials:

• Adding Collaborate to Your Course

• Creating a Session in Blackboard Collaborate

• Recording a Session in Blackboard Collaborate

• Viewing Session Attendance Report

Using RingCentral

To use RingCentral to record your synchronous session:

1. Download the recording to your local computer

2. Upload the recording to Kaltura Media

3. Use the Kaltura Mashup tool to make it available to students

Related Tutorials:

• Recording Using RingCentral

• Take Attendance In RingCentral

• Uploading Video to Kaltura Media

• Using the Kaltura Mashup Tool to Embed a Video in Blackboard

Note: Our policy is to provide students with closed captions for all video content and provide a transcript for all audio content. The Digital Learning Team will assist faculty with this process. Request closed-captions or a transcript.

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