Running Webinars

Last year I started running teletutorials for a Distance Learning Masters course in Occupational Hygiene. The students were spread out across the globe, so it's not practical to get them together in any other way. I soon found that trying to run them over the telephone was hard work, so decided to try supporting the discussions with software that allowed me, and the participants, to show Powerpoint presentations and other documents on screen as we talked. Effectively, I'd turned the telephone tutorials into webinars.

This has been a new experience for me, and I've very much had to learn as I've gone along. So it was interesting to view a short introductory webinar on:

3 Things Every Presenter Should Know about Webinars | myBrainshark.

presented by Roger Courville, the author of the Virtual Presenter's Handbook.

The key points for me were

• Adapt to the medium - i.e. don't treat the webinar the same as a face to face seminar


• Engage the participants early and often


• Break up the presentation - use polls, Q &As and discussion

Actually, I think the 2nd and 3rd points are pretty valid for face to face seminars too. Certianly I try to keep the group involved whenever I run one. So in reality good practice for both types of session is very similar.

The joys of LEV testing - Part 1

Quite often when testing a local ventilation system it isn't possible to access the hoods when the process is operating due to safety considerations. Many woodworking processes fall into this category, but there are plenty of other situations where this is the case. It's only possible to measure face and capture velocities when the process isn't running and as the process itself will affect the airflow, measurements taken when the process is down are not representative.

In such cases it's often best to measure the static pressure behind the hoods (in a location that can be accessed safely) but the results are only meaningful where there is data from an initial evaluation obtained when the system is performing as intended and when it is known that control is being achieved. You also need to know what variance in pressure is acceptable (i.e. at what pressure the system stops being effective). Of course, most companies do not have such data!!