5 Best Virtual Classoom Solutions that won’t burn your pockets

Rucha Gotarkar

Virtual Classrooms- The New Age Solution to Learning

What is a Virtual Classroom?

A virtual classroom is where you can conduct or participate in a lecture, presentation or a seminar, virtually. By virtually, we mean, by using two separate devices- for the speaker and the audience – that are connected by internet on both ends.

Virtual Classrooms is not a new concept but there are newer technologies that keep on reinventing this method of eLearning, every day. With so many solutions in the market, how do you even choose the best one?

How do I choose the best Virtual Classroom Solution?

There are a number of factors that come into play while selecting a virtual classroom for your institute. These are some of the most frequently asked questions people think of before investing in a eLearning solution:

• Is the solution free of cost or paid?
• Is the premium solution worth my money?
• Does it have basic features or advanced features?
• Does it load fast?
• Is the communication seamless or does it have problems?
• How many people can it connect at the same time?
• Is it secure?

We weighed 10 popular virtual classroom solutions and boiled it down to five, based on the answer to these questions and their customer reviews.

Here are the five Virtual Classrooms, we think are the best…and we’ll tell you why.

The Top 5 Pocket Friendly Solutions

Adobe Connect

• Ensures flawless interaction between the trainee and the trainee
• Seamless and clear audio and video quality
• Recording every session is possible. It will let students revisit the lecture as many times as they wish. Also, they will no longer have to spend their lecture so scribbling notes.
• Using Adobe Connect teachers and students can track attendance. This is a helpful feature as the students can see which lectures they have missed and need to cover up with, the teachers can check if a student is going to need help with a topic they’ve missed.
• Separate chat room for the teachers to discuss and clear doubts with the students. These chat rooms are different for every subject.
• Offers Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Note integration as a part of their extended service support.

Adobe Connect being one of the first of such e-Classrooms, has advanced rapidly in terms of functionalities and quality of service. Naturally, it deserves to be on the top.

Digital Samba

• Digital Samba focuses mainly on the convenience of teachers. They make sure that their virtual teaching experience is as close to classroom teaching as possible.
• They have integrated features that every teacher is used to having in the classroom- like hand-raising, Q&A sessions, illustrations on white-boards, quizzes, and polling.
• Lets you save lecture notes directly, instead of having to jot it down
• It is a paid software, but worth every penny, given all the thoughtful features it provides

Digital Samba gives you the best virtual classroom experience, especially for non-technical users.

Electa Live

• Electa Live has the advantage of being usable in both mobile and desktop
• You can host your learning session anytime, anywhere
• Talk about Online meetings, live interactive sessions, online teaching and live instructions that can be shared with the trainees…they have it all!
• They have provisions for file sharing, internal communication and instant messaging
• Work with crystal clear high quality audio even with multiple simultaneous talkers
• Use their various markup and annotation tools

Electa Live is one of the best paid online collaboration tools that you can find over the Internet.

Ready Talk

• Ready Talk prides itself on being an easy to us, lightweight software.
• It promises butter-smooth audio and video streaming
• It has registration forms for participants who wish to join your virtual class
• You can participate in Q&A, polls and quizzes during interactive sessions
• Also, record your entire virtual classes for future reference and revision
• With this solution you get an in-built sharing option which enables you to share all types of files among the participants of the virtual classroom

Ready Talk specialises in Webcasts and Webinars for the corporate world, so you can bank on this solution to give you a reliable classroom training experience with large number of participants.

ezTalks

• ezTalks makes it to this list because it provides plenty of features to boast of…all free of cost!
• Now, share screens easily with the participants
• Enjoy discussions and interactions with a fast loading speed and high quality audio-video streaming
• You get tools like online whiteboard with markers and highlighters to emphasise on the important sections.
• Record all your sessions via ezTalks Cloud Meeting, which is readily available for integrated storage
• They have the provision to add up to 100 members in one single session.

ezTalks is certainly the best option for solo warriors who are just starting up with online teaching. It’s friendly, economical and takes care of your most basic teaching needs.

We hope our culmination of the 5 Best Pocket Friendly Virtual Classroom Solutions was of help to you!

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