Guidance for overflow teaching

This guide provides advice on how to deliver teaching across two physical locations. We strongly advise that a colleague is scheduled to support the second overflow space. 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. 

What to do in advance of the session 

1. Set up a Team in teams for all the people involved in the delivery of an overflow course (i.e., the lecturer(s) and the facilitator(s) who will be in the overflow room. Do not include the students.). 

2. Set up Teams to automatically send your recordings to Panopto in your Blackboard course. 

What to do in the teaching session 

1. Login to the lecture theatre lectern PC and run Teams. 
2. Ask your colleague to login to the lectern PC in the second location and run Teams. 
3. Start a meeting with your colleague in the overflow team that you have set up. (Be aware that anyone in the Team will be notified). 
4. You will both need to check the Device Settings in Teams (via the 3 dots at the top of the screen). Ensure that the audio, speaker and camera feeds match those you are using in the room.
5. You will both need to check the sound is turned up on the room audio-visual control panel.
6. Start recording the Teams meeting. 
7. Deliver the lecture. See Further Information (below) for various options to enhance the video call and introduce interactivity.
8. When the lecture ends, stop recording and end the Teams meeting.   

Help guides 

• Creating a Microsoft Team – a best practice guide
• How to change which camera Teams is using 
• Panopto – How to automatically import Teams videos into a course 

Further Information 

1. 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.  
2. There needs to be an agreed mode of communication between the person in the overflow room and the lecturer. You could chat in the team which has been set up; sharing phone numbers might be helpful. 
3. 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. 
4. 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. 
5. If you want to allow some (but not all) students to join the session online, they will need to be invited individually to the meeting and removed afterwards. If students choose to join with their cameras off, there may be more than one student choosing to watch the call. This cannot be prevented. 
6. Ask your colleague to turn on captions. These will not be 100% accurate but may improve the experience for some students in the overflow room. 
7. The presenter can share their PowerPoint using any of the usual Teams options, but sharing the whole screen will more easily allow the presenter to share other windows, share any sound within the slides and replicate typical lecture delivery.
8. If you need to play a video in the main room, you must ensure that you share sound from your computer.
9. The colleague in the overflow room should keep their microphone muted until they need to speak, to avoid duplication of the sound.
10. Vevox can be used to receive questions from those in the main and overflow rooms. Another option is using the chat in a Class Team associated with the course that is being delivered (if one has been set up). It is recommended that the lecturer and their colleague have access to a second device for this (such as a smartphone, tablet, or laptop). It can be helpful to have an additional colleague in the main lecture theatre dealing with the backchannel. If this is not possible, schedule regular breaks where the lecturer can check what has come up. 
11. 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.
12. When you’ve finished sharing your screen, spotlighting the video feed from the other room can help encourage interaction. If you lose the video from the other room this may also resolve it.