Recommended Procedures for NCIH Session Originators

At the start of the program, introduce yourself, your affiliation with the event, the name/title of the program and the NCIH site from which you are originating.

Acknowledge the participating NCIH sites that are on-line and establish communication with each, one-by-one, using the following procedures:

Introduce appropriate facilitators, guests, contacts, etc. at each site and verify two-way communication with them.
Make sure that you (and all participants) can hear and see all sites clearly, and specifically ask that the video from each site be displayed full-screen (as opposed to a quad-split) while communication with each site is in progress.

After clear communication with every site has been established, establish the following "ground rules" or "housekeeping" protocols:

Announce to the participants that all microphones are "on" and will remain active throughout the entire session. Extraneous noise at any site such as shuffling books/materials, crunching paper/candy wrappers, tapping pens/pencils, whispering/talking to neighbors, etc. WILL BE HEARD BY ALL SITES AND WILL INTERFERE WITH EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION. (An effective mechanism to accomplish this is to demonstrate by rattling paper next to a microphone so all participants can hear the distraction)
Request that if any site begins to have audio or video troubles that the site notify the originator of the session immediately so that the problem may be corrected as soon as possible. (See Calling in Troubles and Troubleshooting Checklist )
Request that anyone speaking during the session identify both who they are and from which NCIH site they are participating.

It is good practice to provide a basic agenda for the participants at originating and remote sites. This should include start and stop times, breaks, topics/issues that will be addressed, any designated Question & Answer periods, etc. Emphasize that the stop time of the session cannot be extended, therefore the last 2-5 minutes of the session MUST be used for wrap-up and housekeeping, otherwise the session will be terminated abruptly. You may wish to establish that any post session follow-up be conducted off-line via the telephone.

Solicit any preliminary questions from the sites, address them, and then begin with your indicated agenda.