Design & Layout

Web Conference Widget Deprecation - October 2021

  • 6 October 2021
  • 9 replies
  • 410 views
erin.brisson
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge

At the beginning of 2021, we announced the merge of classroom courses and webinars into one entity, ILT (Instructor-Led Courses), as part of the Transition to the New Management of Classroom Courses and Webinars. This allowed for greater flexibility in the definition and management of both classroom and webinar courses (which was essential when the pandemic turned everything virtual!:computer:). 

 

As a part of this transition plan, we announced the plan to deprecate the Web Conferencing widget in E-Learning courses on October 7, 2021.

 

This guide to help you understand why this change is happening and what you can do if you’re still using this widget to create new webinar sessions.

 

What is the Web Conferencing Widget?

The Web Conferencing Widget is a Course Widget that allows Superadmins and Power Users to create webinar sessions from E-Learning courses, and allows learners to access webinar sessions from E-Learning courses.

-KcqYl6g5PeM03QDe2wRQhqrX_lCqATrlB-S3-izw4rpjo0r89vhkesjqaAQRh7Egby6nS55CdD3aUJMSTkSN-N15O9to6lnXdEkE9NgRS32mFoyxp8elct8OuNNnXBk-BQ4GkAg=s0

Admin view of Web Conferencing Widget

 

RkdulCf27KLyTPViopbVnRNvyvUyPIi-4CpALerrS5Vo0FdXqvTzQHfa69zd2TlZEspw7-8Erqayhv5IsQZiZUT3tmq_pMmjqKgbe3cmA9essWnjBXpalvZ2lCt8QOeipsG1pgC3=s0

Learner view of Web Conferencing Widget

 

Why is this change happening?

This change is part of the first phase in the Webinar Courses Migration to VILT Courses that is to be completed with the January 2022 monthly release. This change prevents new sessions from being created with this widget as they will not be part of the migration. This is because their configuration is incomplete based on the comparison to the new way ILT sessions are managed. 

 

What happens after this change?

Starting from October 7, users will no longer be able to create webinar sessions from the widget. Please note, any webinar session created prior to October 7 will still be available but they will not be part of the upcoming migration in January 2022 due to incompatibility. This also means that your learners will not be able to access webinar sessions from E-Learning courses.

 

What do I need to do?

If you haven’t already, stop creating sessions from the widget and start creating them from the Course Management area. For detailed help with this, refer to this Knowledge Base article, Creating and Managing ILT and VILT Sessions. We also suggest that you recreate any sessions planned after October 7 from the Course Management area as soon as possible. 

 

I rely on delivering a combination of E-Learning and ILT courses for my learning program. What options do I have?

We realize that some customers have benefited from the Web Conferencing widget as it allowed them to benefit from the unique characteristics of E-Learning courses while also giving learners a way to join webinar sessions. Here are a few options to continue associating E-Learning and ILT courses with one another:

  1. Use Learning Plans
  • ​​​​Consider creating a Learning Plan that includes both E-Learning courses and ILT courses so that your learners can enroll in and access both
  1. Use the File Repository Area Widget to link to ILT courses from your E-Learning courses
  • Did you know that the File Repository Area course widget supports links? Consider adding a link to your ILT course from an E-Learning course, or from an E-Learning course to an ILT course so that learners can easily discover the other courses you’d like them to complete

 

We’re curious, have you had a use case for the Web Conferencing widget? If so, what processes have you put in place for this transition?

 

If you need any further clarification or information, please let us know in the comments below!

Erin

9 replies

eric.trudeau
Rank
Userlevel 3
Badge

This is pretty disappointing. Nearly all of my learning content is blended and this widget might have helped my students navigate. The ILT/Webinar UX has always been confusing and difficult to navigate for our users. 

The file repository area doesn’t really replace this functionality as it has a giant “File repository area” header that would be very confusing for our users. 

Maybe I’ll try adding the links to the course description widget and see how that looks.

alekwo
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +1

@erin.brisson  While this widget wasn't very sophisticated in functions, it was easy to use and very helpful when we wanted to offer live Q&A or office hours sessions for our eLearning content.

Especially that using it, the learner experience was very seamless, there was no burden and confusion related to enrolling into a course, then into a session, then attending events. 

Those webinars are only scheduled once in a while, so they are not suitable to be created as standalone courses (esp. that you can't set course-level prerequisites), also it was great to have them listed directly on the course page.

-- Alek Oleszkiewicz - linkedin.com/in/aleko
A

We are also very disappointed with this feature being shut down before the vILT/ILT is released with similar features as the e-learning courses.

Currently, it is not possible to add SCORM courses, ILT modules or xAPI modules in the vILT/ILT, so no more possibility to combine an e-learning SCORM course with live Q&A Zoom sessions for the rest of the year.

Learning plans are not a solution since the display of learning plans on the public catalogue is only possible with free access for any visitor, since it does not have admin moderation as e-learning courses do.

On top of that, we also received confused learner reactions on the user interface of vILT/IT. Course information is not intuitive, neither is the enrolment logic already described by Alek.

It would have been nice to at least get support for a conversion procedure from Docebo, to convert our existing blended learning courses to the new configuration.

Loupetron
Rank
Userlevel 1

I just found the widget today and thought wow this might solve all the annoyances I’ve had with ILTs and having to create a separate course to store the video and files after the ILT webinar for those that couldn’t make it and weren’t enrolled.

It’s sad that it’s going away.

R
Rank
Userlevel 4
Badge

I realise that unfortunately the deprecation of this feature forces a change in your working method in some cases, especially in the case of the blended learning experience. Unfortunately this is a deprecation which is strictly necessary for technical reasons and which cannot be avoided. To compensate for this problem, however, we have planned a dedicated development in the ILT courses to enable the possibility of using SCORM, AICC and TinCan xAPI training materials also in that area. In fact, making possible again to create a blended experience; the only difference is that it will use a ILT course as starting point instead of an E-Learning. Our goal is to release this feature at the same time as the deprecation of the legacy webinars scheduled for January next year, in order to limit the problem as much as possible.

Loupetron
Rank
Userlevel 1

Will this also mean people will be able to access training materials like the SCORM files and videos even though they aren’t registered in a session, because that’s the other big problem with using ILTs for webinars that we record to be available afterwards to everyone else. Once a session’s events are done, only the people who were enrolled in a session are able to see the content.

Right now, I have to then create a second eLearning course to allows others to view the webinar. That means two separate enrolments to track and two copies of the same video to upload, and then some will take the eLearning version as well to recap, so now I have people enrolled in two of courses with the same content and no reporting feature to link them. I’ve used Equivalencies but that doesn’t really help the situation and the duplication of work.

A

Hello Riccardo,

Yes, that is why we asked Docebo to wait with the deprecation of the Videoconferencing widget until the ILT is released with the same functionality, i.e. SCORM or LTI online learning + classroom/virtual training. Blended learning is a very frequent training format.

For the period Oct 2021 to Jan 2022, we are quite stuck.

alekwo
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +1

Hi @riccardogalimberti as @Loupetron explained, also for us the key limitation of the ILT courses, is that (right now) people cannot enroll into them if there are no future sessions scheduled. So they can’t access any eLearning content.

We’d rather be scheduling live sessions, once we “collect” enough learners interested in the topic - who are in progress or completed the eLearning part, and not the other way around.

-- Alek Oleszkiewicz - linkedin.com/in/aleko
Loupetron
Rank
Userlevel 1

100% agree @alekwo. I would love to have people enrol in the ILT course access the eLearning content with no session selected, and then we can post a session at a later date. It would make things much more flexible for the learner, the teachers, and my administration!

Reply


Terms & ConditionsCookie settings