Webex for Students

Introduction

All UMB Students have complete access to Webex for use with video conferencing and screen sharing. You can reach UMB Webex at https://umaryland.webex.com Although the IDEA Team does not directly support Webex, we do know a few tips and tricks to help you out:

• Tips and Tricks

• Support

Managing Your Microphone Like a Pro

What makes videoconferencing sessions better? Better audio. What makes better audio? Judicious use of the microphone. Here are some tips to Mute Jockey like a pro:

• 1. Keep your microphone muted whenever there are sounds around you that others need not hear or distract from the session. This includes typing, dogs barking, family sounds, sirens, eating, coughing, sneezing and so on. 

  2. UNMUTE your microphone to ask questions, make comments, laugh or provide audible vocal responses. And then MUTE it again. 

  3. If you dial in to a videoconference on your phone, you need to manage the mute button on your phone. Since phones are the most problematic for audio quality and background noise, please keep them muted most of the time. 

  4. Be aware of how to mute your microphone quickly and effectively in any videoconferencing application.

     1. In Webex the Microphone icon is in the lower left portion of your screen:

     2. This microphone is active (gray). If you click it, it will mute it and go inactive (red):

1. In Collaborate, the microphone icon in is in the lower center of your screen. NOTE: by default, when you enter Collaborate your microphone and camera are DISABLED. You need to click the icons to enable them and test them:

2. Use the chat. We recommend you open the chat when you enter a videoconference, as this is a good way to communicate in case there are audio or other issues. Just note that not everyone may see your text chats, in which case you might also need to enable your microphone to speak up.

3. Do people in your meeting say they are having a hard time hearing you? Here’s how to adjust your volume levels: after starting the Webex Meetings app and before you fully join the meeting, click "Settings" in lower right

Speak into your microphone and see the blue lines to see how loud it is. It should ideally, at normal speaking, be at about 75% of the lines blue. If it is lower, raise the volume by dragging the dot to the right. Note that the "Automatically adjust volume" may be handy to make it softer when there are loud noises in your background, but this will also change the volume level automatically and may go very low after there are such noises. You may want to consider unchecking this. 

If you are already in a meeting, you can use the black button/3 dots in the lower right to go to "Speaker, Microphone and Camera" and do the same, seeing how many lines go blue when you talk and adjusting the volume level accordingly:

Webex Support

UMB CITS supports webex and has documentation pages and resources as well as technical assistance at 410-706-HELP or help@umaryland.edu

Webex has a robust Knowledgebase and support website.