Platform

The Professional School of Behavioral Health Sciences maintains a high-performance Webinar Learning Platform as its real-time learning and communications environment, provided and customized by ZOOM Communications. All live events including diploma, certification, certificate, proseminar, special event, and podcast programs are presented and coordinated on the Professional School’s Webinar Learning Platform.

Students and faculty attend courses and proseminars while in their own environments, home or office, where sources of distraction and stress can be minimized and factors that enhance attention and learning can be maximized. These outcomes, however, are dependent on a high-speed Internet connection. Plan on a minimum upload speed of 10 Mbps and download speed of 50 Mbps, This will prevent problems such as garbled audio, slow video frame rates, frozen video, and session bump out. Suboptimal Internet not only compromises your experience, but also that of your colleagues and the faculty as well. 

Investing in the right equipment is an important consideration:

There are surprising benefits of conducting learning sessions on webinar platforms, including:

• Participating in a live webinar is like having a front row seat in class, at all times.
• Seeing people and materials being presented is easier than in a classroom and more personal.
• Observing live demonstrations, interviews, and events is a “bird’s eye” center-stage experience.
• Students ask questions more frequently and more readily and are generally less inhibited.
• Faculty seek feedback more frequently and directly than in a conventional learning environment.
• Communication lines among student-colleagues develop more quickly and more comfortably.
• Group cohesiveness and sense of identity form more easily.
• Attending webinars is much less fatiguing and disruptive than physically attending classes.

Students can share their own resources in real time with their colleagues, such as:

• computer and cloud-based files, including documents, articles, and data;
• physical environment, e.g., office configurations, clinical environments, books, and objects;
• equipment or instrumentation that can be operated in real time for all to see;
• clients or patients who may volunteer to be interviewed or participate in a demonstration; and
• colleagues who may be invited to share questions and comments.

Learning on the Webinar Platform offers many advantages, including:

• Slides, data, documents, articles, and photos can be shared at any time, by anyone.
• Demonstrations, interviews, and physiological monitoring sessions are live for all to see.
• Multiple modes of presentation may be utilized, including whiteboard, slides, videos.
• Individualized positioning of webinar functions makes it possible to customize screen layouts.
• Icon feedback is easily provided in real time to faculty, without disrupting the class.
• Question icons provide for asking and answering questions in the order received.
• Written questions can be asked and files uploaded for all to see using the chat mode.
• Private messages can be privately communicated from one participant to another.
• Polling by faculty for student input can be done in real-time at any point in the lecture.
• Students can be divided into breakout groups (pairs) for practice sessions (therapist and client).
• All lectures are recorded and may be reviewed and downloaded at any time.
• AI summaries and transcripts of all sessions are available for viewing.