Webex launched new functionality on Tuesday, October 27th. These new features include the ability for meeting hosts (teachers) to lock participants (students) in a muted setting. Please note the following:
In the desktop application, you will need to install the latest update. To do that: Open Webex, click Cisco Webex Meetings, select Check for Updates… and install the update.
In the “Participants” menu you will now see a new option for “Allow participants to unmute themselves”. If you leave this setting checked, participants in your meeting can mute and unmute themselves as they wish to join the conversation.
If “Allow Participants to Unmute Themselves is unchecked, you will have to individually or collectively unmute participants once they are muted. When you unmute participants with this setting on, the following popup will appear on their screen:
Students MUST select “Unmute Me”. This new privacy enhancement no longer lets presenters unmute their participants without a participant’s permission, so students will need to be taught this functionality if teachers choose to lock them in the mute setting.
From the “Participants” menu, teachers can also choose to “Mute on Entry” “Mute All” or “Unmute All”. The behavior of “Mute All” and “Unmute All” is also impacted by the “Allow Participants to Unmute Themselves” setting described above.
These settings can be a bit confusing initially! We highly recommend that teachers do a test run with one or two students to test them out and get to know the functionality before deploying them with a larger group.
Here is a video overview of this feature: ttps://youtu.be/kme40VzPW3Y