Guidance for overflow teaching with Panopto

This guide provides advice on using Panopto to deliver teaching across multiple locations. Panopto should be used as a one-to-many delivery of a lecture with little to no interactivity expected from participants. 

If you wish for interaction with other locations, please refer to our overflow teaching with MS Teams guide.

We strongly advise that a colleague is scheduled to support the overflow spaces. If this is not achievable, there are security concerns with logging into the second PC, health and safety concerns with a group of students using a teaching space with no one responsible for them, and the student experience will be impacted. 

Reasons to use Panopto

• It provides a high-quality quality consistent one-to-many stream.
• It provides a quicker startup.
• Content is uploaded up to Panopto for playback.
• Remote students will also have the option to join in the livestream; there is a link on the Blackboard courses’ Panopto area.

Limitations of using Panopto

• A second member of staff is still required in the overflow location.
• There can be a delay of up to 60 seconds on the livestream.
• Does not allow for easy direct interaction between rooms.
• Does not allow guest presenters to join in remotely.
• There are no live captions on the stream.
• Depending on the room equipment and size of your writing, whiteboard capture might not be perfectly viewable on the video stream.

What to do in advance of the session

• Make sure you have Panopto set up on your Blackboard course.
• Make sure whoever is in the overflow location is either on the same Blackboard course or is contactable by a messaging service.

What to do in the teaching session

1. Log in to the lecture theatre lectern PC
2. Load the Panopto recorder and make sure to select the ‘Webcast’ button in the top right of the recorder. These steps are also covered in our Panopto live stream guide.
3. Make sure that you select the correct destination folder for the Panopto recording as normal with Panopto use and check sound levels.

4. Utilise “CLS Camera Control” (icon on the desktop) to check whether there is a more appropriate Camera view / preset for your session. NB. There will not be a Camera preset for an “audience view” – room Cameras were installed for lecture capture only. They do not point at the student seating.
5. Physical Whiteboards captured via a camera can be compromised. It is best to use digital whiteboards/visualisers, wherever possible.
6. Ask your colleague to log into the lectern PC in the second location and load a web browser.
7. You will both need to check the sound is turned up on the room audio-visual control panel.
8. Press the red record button on the Panopto recorder, you will then see the link to the livestream appear at the bottom. You can either copy and paste the link and send it to your colleague in the other location, or your colleague can go to the Blackboard courses Panopto area and select the livestream indicated by a red dot from the list.
9. Deliver the lecture.
10. When the lecture ends, stop recording on the Panopto recorder as normal.  

Help guides

Creating a Panopto live stream

Creating a Panopto recording with a whiteboard capture camera

Further Information 

1. Remind students that they are on a livestream that is also recorded. 
2. Communicate with students in advance to let them know which room they will be in. All students should have some opportunities to be in the main room.  
3. There needs to be an agreed mode of communication between the person in the overflow room and the lecturer. Using MS Teams private chat or sharing phone numbers might be helpful. 
4. It is useful for the person staffing the overflow room to have knowledge of the content so they can interact with their audience and field any questions. 
5. Give yourself time beforehand to test the portable mics before using them. In the unlikely event they do not work, remain at the podium throughout the teaching session and log a ticket with ServiceLine afterwards.  
6. If you wish to share more than PowerPoint, make sure screen capture is selected.
7. If you need to play a video in the main room, you must ensure that you select the checkbox on the Panopto recorder for ‘Capture Computer Audio’.
8. Vevox can be used to receive questions from those in the main and overflow rooms. Once again, there is at least a 60 second delay on the Panopto livestream, so live polls are harder to manage. 
9. If students ask anything in the main room, those in the overflow room are unlikely to hear. The main speaker should therefore repeat or paraphrase the question before answering. Alternatively, if there is a portable mic in the room, the main speaker can take this to students as they ask questions.