This guide provides advice on using Microsoft Teams to deliver teaching across multiple locations. You can use Teams to support interactive teaching in several ways, including sessions delivered between two linked teaching rooms, sessions delivered across multiple linked rooms, and hybrid sessions where participants join from one or more on-campus teaching spaces and remotely. Teams enables participants in all locations to see, hear, and contribute to the session, creating a shared learning experience regardless of where they join.
If you wish for little to no interaction across multiple locations, then Panopto is a suitable tool. Please refer to our overflow teaching with Panopto guide.
It is essential that a colleague is scheduled to support each of the linked teaching rooms. 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.
Advantages of Teams
- Teams facilitates 2-way communication across all locations.
- There is almost no delay from the main linked classroom and other locations.
- Guest / external presenters can easily be invited to join the call remotely.
- Live captions can be auto-generated in real time.
Limitations of Teams
- A second member of staff is required in the linked teaching room.
- If you stream very high quality and graphical content (for example too many moving parts), Teams will dynamically change the resolution of the streamed video, resulting in a poor user experience. Physical whiteboards captured via a camera can also be compromised.
- Due to these limitations, it may be necessary to amend/tweak the delivery of the course content if you wish to provide an equivalent experience for all participants.
What to do in advance of the session
Before teaching begins, ensure that everyone involved in delivering and supporting the session can communicate effectively through Microsoft Teams. The way you set up Teams will depend on whether you are delivering teaching between linked teaching rooms only or delivering a hybrid session that includes remote participants.
- Create a Microsoft Team following the guidance in the Teams best practice guide. Use a private Team to support communication and coordination between all staff involved in delivering the session.
- Linked teaching rooms only: Set up a Team in Teams for all the people involved in the delivery of a linked teaching course (i.e., the lecturer(s) and the facilitator(s) who will be in the linked classroom. Do not include the students.) Be aware that anyone in the Team will be notified when you set up or start a meeting in this team.
- Hybrid teaching (on-campus and remote participants): Create a Team or meeting space that includes students who will attend remotely. You may also wish to maintain a separate staff-only Team for communication between lecturers, facilitators, and teaching assistants during delivery. Be aware that if you add all students to the same Team then students may choose to only attend remotely. Some students may also choose to watch together, so attendance information in Teams may not accurately reflect who was online watching synchronously.
- Set up Teams to automatically send your recordings to Panopto in your Blackboard course.
What to do in the teaching session
Aim to allow for 10-15 minutes to be set aside for setup and testing, to ensure the best possible student experience. Even if you have used a room before, someone else may have changed the setup to suit their session.
- Log in to the lecture theatre lectern PC and run Teams.
- Ask your colleague to login to the lectern PC in the linked classroom and run Teams.
- Start a meeting with your colleague in the linked teaching team that you have set up. (Be aware that anyone in the Team will be notified).
- Select the appropriate camera as the video source for Teams.
- Utilise “CLS Camera Control” (icon on the desktop) to make camera view adjustments from the options available.
- You will both need to check the Device Settings in Teams (via the ellipses at the top of the screen). Ensure that the audio, speaker and camera feeds match those you are using in the room.
- You will both need to check the sound is turned up on the room audio-visual control panel.
- Once you have confirmed that the device settings are correct, spend a couple of minutes conducting an audio test between the linked classrooms. This is of particular importance for the main linked classroom (if the mic level is set too low, or too high, the experience in the linked classroom will be compromised).
- Start recording the Teams meeting.
- Deliver the session. See Further Information (below) for various options to enhance the video call and introduce interactivity.
- When the session 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
Rooms equipped for Linked Teaching [link]
Further Information
- 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 linked classroom.
- There needs to be an agreed mode of communication between the person in the linked classroom and the lecturer. You could chat in the team which has been set up; sharing mobile phone numbers might be helpful.
- It is useful for the person staffing the linked classroom to have knowledge of the content so they can interact with their audience and field any questions. Ideally, they would be at the podium or wearing a portable mic, so they can also be heard in the main linked classroom.
- 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. Please be aware that portable Mics are not present in every teaching space.
- 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.
- Ask your colleague to turn on captions. These will not be 100% accurate but may improve the experience for some students in the linked classroom.
- 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 session lecture delivery. If you wish to use “Presenter View” in PowerPoint, ensure that you change the PC’s display settings to “Extend”, before selecting the screen that you wish to share in Teams.
- If you need to play a video in the main linked classroom, you must ensure that you share sound from your computer and mute your Microphones (in Teams). If the video content is of any length (more than a few minutes) we would strongly recommend that you share the video independently in the Team channel, so that it can be downloaded and played locally by your colleague in the linked classroom.
- The colleague in the linked classroom should keep their microphone muted until they need to speak, to avoid duplication of the sound.
- Vevox can be used to receive questions from those in the main and linked classrooms. Alternatively, if a Class Team has been setup for the course/ module, that chat can be used. 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.
- If students ask anything in the main linked classroom, the main speaker should repeat or paraphrase the question before answering, so students in the linked classroom can clearly hear.
- If there is a portable mic or a blue catchbox in the room, the main speaker can take this to students as they ask questions.