The Talk Time feature helps you decide which student to call in order to achieve an equitable balance between speakers.
Viewing Talk Time
To see the current Talk Time, press and hold the ‘t’ key on your keyboard. This displays a color overlay on each student in the participant bar and a key to remind you of the meaning of each color. Students with orange have notably less Talk Time and should be called on.
Orange indicates a student has spoken less than 20% of average Talk Time
Green indicates a student has spoken between 20-80% of the average Talk Time
Blue indicates a student has spoken more than 80% of the average Talk Time
Since these colors represent a percentage of the average Talk Time, there may be some classes where you don't see any students with one of the color overlays. For example, there may be no students with the Orange overlay because all students have a Talk Time of at least 20% of the average.
How is Talk Time calculated?
Talk Time for any participant or instructor is recorded whenever they either use the Push to Talk function, or they speak loudly enough into their microphone while unmuted. When either of these events happen, the participant or instructor's video will be outlined in green.
If a participant is speaking and their video is not outlined in green, then they are not accruing time towards their Talk Time. If this is the case, they may be experiencing issues with their microphone. See this article for more information: Troubleshooting issues with my microphone.
The average Talk Time is calculated by taking the total student Talk Time in the classroom and dividing it by the number of students present. Note that the calculation for color overlays does not consider how much students talk in breakout groups.
Viewing Talk Time in the Directory
While the Talk Time feature is activated and the directory is displayed, the Talk Time color overlays student profile pictures. When the instructor deactivates the Talk Time feature the overlay stops. The Talk Time overlay is only visible to instructors, administrators, and other staff.
Focused on Forum
In addition to the colors, triggering the Talk Time overlay also shows an icon indicating students who are focused on a different application or tab other than Forum. This detection is based on the focus of their computer inputs (mouse and keyboard), and so does not necessarily indicate where a student’s cognitive attention is directed. It can be useful, however, to know which students have clicked away from class.
