Caucus Introduction Page
Caucus

CAUCUS (Conferencing System) is a University of Arizona conference system utilized to improve the communication process among Faculty and Staff and Students. To find out more about WWW electronic conferencing and why you should consider using it in your college, department, office or classroom, please investigate conferencing USES. Faculty can get ideas for their classroom by looking at Instructional Uses.

This guide is intended for new organizers of Caucus conferences. Prospective organizers may be familiar with conferencing in general, and Caucus in particular; however, there are certain features and issues with which organizers need to be familiar and which deserve special emphasis. These are examined in the following sections.

Starting Up

  1. Types of Conferences

    Each conferencing application will have a variety of conferences suited to that environment. In general there are two types.

  2. Obtaining Computer IDs for Participants

    Using Caucus requires some kind of computer account or "id". Typically these ids will either be assigned by your organization, or else can be selected by the users themselves. If you as an organizer are running a restricted conference, you will need to know your members id's so that you can identify them.

  3. Starting a New Conference

    In some applications, users are free to start their own conferences. In other settings, a conferencing system coordinator may restrict the number and type of conferences. Restrictions prevent duplication of discussions and conserve system resources. (For information on how to start new conferences, see the Caucus Conference Organizer's "How To".)

  4. Learning to Use Caucus

    It is very important that participants know how to use the system before engaging in any "serious" conferencing. Introductory training sessions led by experienced users, practice (fun!) conferences, and provision of quick reference guides to users are suggested.

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