How to run a live lecture/meeting

Contents

1 Before you start
2 Running a live lecture or meeting from Teams desktop app

Before you start

Will you be recording this session?

Recording Guidance for Staff (updated Autumn 2020)

Advice on devices

You cannot setup/create a team video meeting from the mobile app. You can however join an existing team video meeting from the mobile app.
You can run team video meetings from the browser version of Teams, however for the best experience, install the Desktop PC/Mac app.

Is your session a formal committee meeting?

Please check the Academic Services Virtual Committee guidance.

Running a live lecture or meeting from Teams desktop app

Select a channel in your Team, usually one would use the “General” top-level channel in a team for a lecture or meeting.
Select the Meet button at the top-right of the channel area.

Enter a topic (e.g. lecture topic, or Meeting name) for your session (1)
Turn on your camera (or don’t) and feel free to choose a ‘background’ if you wish (2)
Choose your computer audio. (This will ‘find’ any audio devices you have attached to your computer. (3)
Once you’ve selected all the settings, the Join Now button will become active. Click this to start the meeting (4)

A pop-up window will appear, asking you to ‘invite people’. Usually you can just close this window, as your students will know when and where the session is (as you’ve already told them, haven’t you?)

A menu bar will appear. The buttons in the menu are as follows:

Participants
Chat Window
Hands-up and reactions
Breakout Rooms (only the presenter/meeting starter can see this button)
More Actions menu (device settings, record meeting option, other options.)
Camera button
Mic/Audio button
Share Screen
Leave Meeting/End meeting button

How to improve your your video or sound quality

See these tips for improving your video or sound quality.

How to share your lecture slides or screen

Click on the icon in the toolbar .

This will open up the screen-share options. You can share your entire Desktop (1) or a particular window/application(2) The Microsoft Whiteboard Tool (3) or a Powerpoint Presentation (4)

If you are using PowerPoint, and your PowerPoint is already open you will see it appear and you simply click on it. If it’s not already open there is a browse button, use this to browse and locate your PowerPoint slides.

If you’ve stored your PowerPoint slides on My Studies you will need to download your slides from there and save onto your local computer before presenting.

NOTE – if you share your entire screen from here using the Desktop option. For data protection/GDPR reasons, be mindful of what you have on screen when sharing your desktop. Everyone on the call will see your screen, including any Outlook pop-up messages. You may want to close Outlook before sharing your screen to minimise interruptions.

Controlling Contributions

If you have concerns about individual students/participants recording the meeting or trying to share content themselves you have various options at your disposal. All of these options are available by clicking the Participant button from the meeting toolbar (1) Clicking on the three dots (2) and then choosing Manage Permissions (3):

Make students/participant attendees

You can make individuals ‘attendees’ on the fly, or apply this setting at the start of a session to ensure all particpants join as attendees. Attendees cannot start/stop a recording, mute or remove other users, nor can they share their screen. They can still use their microphones and the chat feature. We recommend setting all students as attendees during teaching sessions.

- To ensure all users join as attendees, initiate the session as you usually would, and immediately click the 3 dots on the main meeting task bar. This will open a panel allowing you to change permissions.
- The key one is setting ‘Who can present’ to ‘Only Me’ which defines you as a presenter and everyone else as an attendee. Click Save
- Attendees cannot remove people, mute people, share their screen or start/stop recordings.
- You can change these permissions at any time – its just suggested you do this at the very beginning of the session
- You can change individuals’ status at any time from the People pane. For example, you may need to upgrade an attendee to ‘presenter’ status so they can share their screen.

screenshot of teams meeting options button

Mute or remove participants

With large groups it is recommended that initially only the presenter is unmuted. Presenters can mute specific users, or even ‘mute all’.

Again click the Participants button in the main toolbar during a session. Then, in the People pane that appears, click the 3 dots next to a participant’s name. You should have options to mute that participant, make them an attendee/presenter (see above) or even remove them (although they can simply rejoin).
You will also notice in the top right of the People pane there is a ‘mute all’ button that appears. This will mute all users except yourself.

If you share your screen, participants may ‘request control’ allowing them to operate your computer and run the session. People you give control to may send commands that could affect your system or other apps so use with caution.

Refer students to the Remote Learning Code of Conduct for Students (new – May 2020).

Avoiding Interruptions

You can also change your status to ‘Do Not Disturb‘ which means you can’t be interrupted with other Teams invites during your live session. This may also be useful to set out of hours. Remember to set it back to available after the session:

Change your status to ‘Do Not Disturb’ during lectures

Dealing with questions

Best practice is for a presenter to be the only person unmuted, unless you are in a small group discussion. However that doesn’t mean that students/participants cannot engage with the presenter and ask questions.

Using the Chat

During a live lecture you have access to a chat feature, where all users can type messages, as well as post links and files. This can be incredibly useful for students/participants and forms a ‘backchannel’, or live discussion as the session unfolds. This can be used in different ways:

Some presenters may encourage discussion and questions to be posted in this area during the session. A presenter may then choose specific points in the session to ‘look’ at the chat and answer any questions that have arisen.
In some cases where there are multiple presenters, one presenter could be assigned as the ‘moderator’ who answers any questions, as to not disturb the main presenter.

Raise Hands

During a video meeting/lecture, users can click the ‘raise hand’ button to notify everyone that they wish to ask a question.

teams user with hand rasied

You will know if someone has their hand raised in a number of ways:

- You will see a notification next to their name on-screen.
- You will also see a notification next to the participant’s button that shows you how many people have their hands raised.
- When you click on the participant’s button, you see a list of your participants. Those with hands raised are clearly identified and will appear at the top of the list.

Users can click the same button to lower their hand, or other users in the call can click the 3 dots next to their name in the participant’s panel to lower for them. Currently, it doesn’t look like the raise hand feature is available on iPhone.

Best practice here would be to encourage users to use this feature perhaps during a Q&A part of a lecture. Tutors can then ask those users individually to unmute to aks a question.

Polls

There is a basic polling feature within Teams, please contact your Learning Technologist if you need help with this feature.

Managing breakout rooms

See this information on how to manage breakout rooms.

How to record a Teams lecture (video)

Before recording you must seek the consent of all participants and if anyone objects you must not record. Remember to also ask participants who join the meeting/lecture late. Equally, students should be informed of this rule in case they wish to record sessions for themselves (note: you can stop particpants making a recording by setting them as an attendee).

Note: If your Team is set to public, the recording will also be available to all students and staff. Instructions will be added on checking this setting.

We advise you to record and share lectures so that students who are unable to join the live lesson can still gain access to the content.

Recording will aid students who have children, are in a different time zone, are ill etc.

To record your lecture:

Select the ellipsis (…) menu
Click Start Recording
At the end of the lecture the same menu will allow you to stop recording.

Understanding Meeting Recordings on Teams

Recording Guidance for Staff (new – March 2020)

Including how to delete a recording and control who can record your session

A video is also available demonstrating how to run a live lecture

Attendance

Beginning April 2021, MS Teams generates an Attendance Report after every meeting in a Teams area. This will not ‘automatically’ appear. You need to leave the Team, and come BACK into the team, for the report to appear. (Hopefully this ‘log out, log in’ step will change upon later updates of MS Teams). Only the meeting organiser (the person who starts or schedules the meeting) will see the attendance report.

Useful Slides

We have a slide available that you can copy into your own presentation, which just covers some basic etiquette and guidance for students and staff attending lectures and other sessions via Teams.

The powerpoint file itself: The session will start shortly March 2021.pptx

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