Instructions for Parallel Session Organizers

Technical Session Organization

This year’s annual EAERE conference will be an online-only event.

While there will be some centrally organized (semi-)plenary sessions, the regular parallel sessions will be decentrally organized by the session presenters and organizer.

Presenters and organizer must coordinate the details of the session together. This includes:

• the choice of an online conferencing tool
• the temporal arrangement of papers in the session
• the moderation
• the decision about discussants (optional)
•  etc.

Please carefully study and consider the guidelines for online session organization. These will facilitate your decisions in terms of tools to use, provide a checklist, and set you up for a successful online session.

Session Recordings

If you as a session organizer decide to record your decentrally organized session and to provide the recording online, feel free to send us a link to the video and we will add it to your session on Fleximeets. Please ask for permission to record and distribute from presenters and participants before/during the session. Please exclude everyone from the video, who has not indicated his or her consent.

Checklist for Session Organizers
(more information in the Technical Guidelines)

Your online tool 

• Optimally, you already have experience using the chosen tool
• The tool provides all mandatory functions (see below) and all presenters are able to use it
• The tool is convenient for other participants to use/access
• Check and adapt the settings of your tool to your needs

Before the conference

• Distribute the session roles (Who chairs/moderates the session? Who manages the online tool? Must roles be swapped during the session? ...)
• Coordinate with all presenters to have a test run
• How can people attend? Make sure the access code is made available in the conference programme by the Programme Committee

Before the session

• Collect presentations from all presenters beforehand in case somebody has technical problems. If people have a bad internet connection, it can be beneficial if they only contribute audio while you (or somebody else) shares their slides.
• Many tools allow interactive polls, which can be a great way to involve participants and to initiate discussions. Talk to your presenters, whether you are able/want to include polls in your session.
• Have your presentations ready in an appropriate format (.pptx, .pdf)
• Get there on time! Chairperson should be present 15 minutes, presenters 15-10 minutes before the start of the session
• Consider showing a single slide with session rules and description of the functionality of your tool before the session starts so participants can get familiar
• Name tags: all presenters should use their own name and institutions as identifier
• Prepare your presentation environment (glass of water, phone muted, surrounding free of distractions - if possible, use the EAERE-branded background which you can download here
• Prepare your technical devices (camera and microphone, good light, 
• Turn off applications such as email, browser and instant messaging (e.g. Skype) that could send noisy notifications)
• Recorded sessions: Obtain the agreement of all presenters if you plan to record your session

During the Session

• Make sure all participants and presenters are muted when not speaking (somebody should keep an eye on that during the session, usually the moderator is too busy to do this). Optimally, people who join the session are muted by default.
• Educate people on the best way to participate in the discussion parts (e.g. chat, request to speak by hand raise, ...). Remember that the chat might be distracting during the presentation time.
• Recorded sessions: Notify all participants that this session is recorded and later made publicly available and make sure nobody objects (If people object, they should disable their camera and their questions have to be removed from the final video)