Are you having technical issues in your online sessions? Is your sound or video signal cutting out and ruining your virtual meetings? Learn more about how you may solve simple technical hiccups with VEDAMO’s blog now!
We at VEDAMO take pride in making our product intuitive, accessible, and easy to use. We’ve also taken it upon ourselves to do extensive research and act on feedback from our users.
In doing so, we’ve deemed it necessary to add this article to our blog in order to give you some useful tips to help you overcome technical difficulties of any kind while using any online platform that utilizes a web camera and microphone connection.
The next few paragraphs will contain some empirically tested advice that you can use if you ever encounter a technical challenge while in an online conversation, regardless of whether you are a tutor, a student in an e-learning session, or simply a participant in an online meeting or dialogue of any kind.
How do I recognize internet connection issues in an online conversation?
Most instances of audio or video connection issues that occur while in an online conversation are due to a slow or choppy internet connection. If one participant suddenly loses the ability to hear or see the other, an interruption in the student’s internet connection is the most likely culprit.
Some other symptoms of this could be freezing of the screen or an error message saying “Video connection interrupted,” depending on the platform you are using.
What do I do when experiencing internet connection issues?
- The measures you can use to mitigate this problem are very simple. In order to have the fastest and most consistent possible internet connection, you need to be using an Ethernet cable.
This will inevitably lead to the best possible results for your setup. If you are already using an Ethernet cable, check if you have fully inserted the cable into the network interface card.
- If you are unable to obtain and use an Ethernet cable, you should check whether there are any other devices currently connected to your Wi-Fi network (for example, other computers or mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets).
A larger number of devices connected to your wireless network will most likely cause you to lose internet speed and/or destabilize your connection. Disconnecting any device that you are not using is a step in the right direction.
- Another way to make sure that you are using all of the internet connection resources currently available at your disposal is to check if there are any other open applications besides the one you are currently using. These applications (applications used to download torrent files, streams, or additional open browsers or open tabs in your current browser) will take up some of the available resources and can slow down your system. Closing them should help with any issues.
Keep in mind you can always test your internet speed here.
What do I do when experiencing sound issues during my online conversation?
The second most common issue while conducting online sessions is audio related. Thus, we thought it would be useful to include a paragraph in this article explaining what could go wrong with your audio devices while in an online conversation and how you may go about dealing with them.
What is causing them? How do I solve them?
One of the possible types of sound interference that you may experience is hearing your own voice through another participant’s audio feed with a few seconds delay. Another type of interference that could take place is acoustic feedback while you or your partner are talking.
The reason this is happening is that said participant is not using a headset and their audio feed is being captured by their microphone while simultaneously projecting your voice. This creates a feedback loop and generates acoustic feedback, which has the potential to be rather unpleasant.
- You will need to make sure that you and your conversational partner are both using headphones at all
times.
Naturally, there is always the possibility that a hardware issue, either with your microphone or your headphones, has occurred before or during your online conversation.
Another very reliable way to check if there is anything out of order with your microphone is the Online Mic Test.
Simply allow the website to access your microphone and see if the bars move around when you speak. If they do, there is no hardware issue with your microphone. If they do not, then it is possible that your microphone levels have been lowered or your microphone has been completely muted. Another possibility is that your Windows Operating System has blocked its usage.
You can read more about the last issue here.
So far we’ve tackled several potential issues that may harm the quality of your virtual meetings.
However, we’ve only just begun!
Stay tuned for “Troubleshooting for Online Tutors and Learners 102”, where we will continue to empower you in your use of online communication platforms in the hopes of ensuring smoother and more productive virtual conversational spaces.
