Seminar plugin

The seminar plugin provides interaction capabilities with other hosts and participants. Multiple hosts can control the slides of the reveal.js presentation and the audience can follow the slides on their own phone, tablet or laptop as they are presented. As the hosts navigate the slides, all client presentations will update in real time. The seminar plugin supports bidirectional between hosts and participants and can be used with other plugins:

• chalkboard plugin: chalkboard drawings are updated in real time on the screen of each participant
• poll plugin: presentations can include instant polls in which participants can select one of multiple choices and the overall results are shown, e.g., in a chart on another slide
• questions plugin: allows to collect questions for a Q&A, participants can ask questions and upvote questions that they want to be answered first

Demo

A demo of the plugin is provided at https://rajgoel.github.io/reveal.js-demos/seminar-demo.html. In the demo anyone can open a seminar room to become a host and share a link with the room name to anyone else. Everyone with the link can follow the hosted presentation.

Requirements

The seminar plugin needs socket.io server to manage the communication between hosts and participants. The seminar-repository provides such a server. A sample deployment can be found at https://reveal-seminar.herokuapp.com/. You are very welcome to point your presentations to this socket.io server, but availability and stability are not guaranteed. For anything mission critical we recommend running your own seminar server.

Configuration

First, make sure to include the plugin and the require socket.io scripts:

<script src="../reveal.js-plugins/seminar/plugin.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/socket.io/2.3.0/socket.io.js"></script>

Optionally, include the chart, poll, questions, and chalkboard plugin:

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/Chart.js/3.2.0/chart.min.js"></script>
<script src="../reveal.js-plugins/chart/plugin.js"></script>
<script src="../reveal.js-plugins/poll/plugin.js"></script>
<script src="../reveal.js-plugins/questions/plugin.js"></script>
<script src="../reveal.js-plugins/chalkboard/plugin.js"></script>

and the respective style files

<link rel="stylesheet" href="../reveal.js-plugins/poll/style.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="../reveal.js-plugins/questions/style.css">

Example configuration:

Reveal.initialize({
  // ...
	seminar: {
		server: 'https://seminar.eu.openode.io', // change server as necessary
		room: 'Some room name', // put your room name here
		hash: '$2a$05$hhgakVn1DWBfgfSwMihABeYToIBEiQGJ.ONa.HWEiNGNI6mxFCy8S', // a hash is required for every seminar room and can be generated on the URL of the socket.io server
		autoJoin: true // set to true to auto,matically join the seminar room
	},
  // ...
	plugins: [ RevealChart, RevealSeminar, RevealChalkboard, RevealPoll, RevealQnA  ]
	// check the respective documentation for the configurations of the other plugins
});

You may want to take a look at the source code of the demo presentation.

API

The presentation can use the following API of the seminar plugin:

• open_or_join_room( password, username ): Open or join a room as host. The password is required and is validated against the hash. The username is optional.
• close_room( password ): Closes the seminar room and kicks out all participants. The password is required and is validated against the hash.
• join_room( username ): Join an existing room as a regular participant. The username is optional.
• leave_room(): Leave the seminar room. When the last host leaves the room the room is closed and all other participants are kicked out. kicked out.

If autoJoin is set to true all participants will join the room once it is opened. To open a room as a host we can add a button with id host and an input field with id password and the following code to our presentations.

document.querySelector("#host").addEventListener('click', function(e) {
	e.preventDefault();
	RevealSeminar.open_or_join_room(document.getElementById('password').value);
});

License

MIT licensed

Copyright (C) 2021 Asvin Goel