The Questions and Answers Pane allows attendees and presenters to enter text questions that anyone logged in as a presenter can answer via text. Answers can be sent privately to a single attendee, or to the entire group. The Questions and Answers Pane also has a hand raising feature that enables attendees and other presenters to indicate that they have a question without entering the question via text. To use the Questions and Answers Pane, it must be enabled in the Attendee Permissions Window.
When an attendee opens the Questions and Answers Pane, they have an area to type in their questions.
To ask a text question, they simply click in the top part of the pane and type. After typing the question, they click on the Ask button.
Once the Ask button has been clicked, the question is submitted and the Ask button changes to an Edit button. The remove button also becomes active. This is because each computer can only have one question in the queue at a time.
If an attendee wants to indicate that they have a question, but do not want to type it in, they can click on the Raise Hand button in the upper right-hand corner of the pane. When the button has a golden background, it indicates to the attendee that their hand is raised.
When the presenter wants to check questions or raised hands, they open their pane and click on the Manage tab. This will show all the questions and raised hands in the meeting. It will also identify the login names of those asking questions, the text of the questions, and the time the question was submitted or the hand was raised.
There are several options for sorting questions. These includesorting the questions by whether or not they have been checked, selected, have been given the floor, are typed questions or raised hands, and alphabetically by name, question text, or by time posted.
Checked questions are questions that the presenter has placed checkmarks next to. This usually indicates that they have been answered verbally, or that the presenter intends to answer them at a later time. Selected questions are those that the presenter has clicked on. Selecting a question enables the presenter to see the entire text of the question before making a decision on how to proceed. When a presenter gives an attendee the floor, that attendee can post text that everyone in the meeting can see. That attendee will be able to post text continually until the presenter takes the floor back.
When a question is selected, the presenter can answer it verbally or via text, give the floor, open a chat , or dismiss the question. If the question is not relvant to the meeting or class, the presenter may choose to dismiss it by clicking on the red “X” in the toolbar.
Sometimes a question might be asked by several attendees, or the presenter feels that providing the question and answer will be beneficial to the group as a whole. In this case the presenter can type in a response to the question and click the Post to All button.
When the Reply to All button is clicked, the question and the answer will be sent to everyone in the session. The person that asked the question and the presenter that answered it will not be identified.
In other cases, a question may be one that the presenter wishes to answer only to the person that asked it and not to the entire group. In this situation, the presenter types in the response and clicks the Reply Privately button.
When the Reply Privately button is clicked, the question and the answer go back to the person that asked it and to all presenters in the meeting. The answer is identified as a private answer.
When an attendee’s question is answered, they also get a message that it has been answered. This message appears for a few seconds to alert the asker in case they have minimized their Questions and Answers Pane.
If the presenter wishes to chat with the attendee about the question they have asked, possibly for clarification, they can open a text chat with that attendee. The text chat is completely private.
When the presenter gives the floor to an attendee, that attendee receives a special window for typing and posting their text. When they post their text, it is shown to everyone in the meeting.
All questions, whether they have been edited or deleted are captured in the Questions and Answers log. The log indentifies who asked the question and what answer was given, if any.
Saving and editing the log is a good way to make a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document about your meeting that can be emailed as an attachment or posted to a Web site. Doing this allows you to remove the names, fix typographical errors, and provide more detailed, in-depth answers to questions. You must capture this information before your meeting is deleted, as once your meeting has been deleted, the questions and answers cannot be recovered.