Considerations for Planning and Delivering a Hybrid Lecture

We have set out here the considerations and steps necessary to ensure that your students can participate without delay/issues.

We use the term “hybrid” to describe a teaching activity where a group of students are physically present on campus, typically in a lecture theatre, while other students who are not able to be on campus join the same session using video conferencing tools such as MS Teams or Panopto. The speaker/facilitator of the session is usually on-campus although other speakers may join remotely.

If you are thinking of running a hybrid lecture, please ensure that you read this guidance carefully.

Please be aware that we do not recommend, neither do we support the running of small group sessions in a hybrid format (i.e. Tutorials/workshops/seminars). This is because we do not have the appropriate technical infrastructure in place to support this, neither do we think that Hybrid small group sessions can be achieved without a considerable amount of resources. If you are thinking of running a hybrid small group session, please contact edtech@sgul.ac.uk for a conversation about this.

Should you need to enable an individual student to access a small group face-to-face session remotely for reasons due to self-isolation then you may do so by borrowing university equipment from the library in accordance with this guidance.

General and Pedagogical Considerations for Hybrid Lectures (i.e. Large Group, Typically in a Lecture Theatre)

Lectures may be delivered, broadcast, and recorded using either MS Teams or Panopto Webcast. We are recommending the use of MS Teams to run your live hybrid lecture. At this stage, we do not recommend the use of Panopto Webcast as there is a delay of up to 45 seconds for remote students.

There is currently only one lecture theatre within St George’s that is fully equipped for hybrid lectures: Curve. We strongly advise that you only consider running a hybrid lecture in this room – this is essential for maintaining a high-quality student experience for both on-campus and remote students.

It is important that you communicate clearly the standards and expectations of both staff and students.

To ensure engagement with the students we recommend that you consider including short activities, such as online polling (using Mentimeter), which all students can engage with simultaneously irrespective of their location. This will allow you to get a feel of topics that are less well understood and may require more explanation during the lecture.

Use Canvas to plan and integrate student activities which may be carried out either before or after a teaching session. There is a range of resources available on the St George’s website covering matters relating to technology, accessibility, pedagogy, online education, exchange, and student views around what works. You can access these guidance and resources here.

Useful tips

Share the session plan in advance. Use Canvas to plan and integrate student activities which may be carried out either before or after a teaching session. There are a range of resources available on the St George’s website covering matters relating to technology, accessibility, pedagogy, online education, exchange, and student views around what works. You can access these guidance and resources here.
Tell remote students to turn off their cameras. You can also do this by turning off all participants camera and muting their microphone. This will ensure that you can run the session without interference. We also recommend that you avoid the need for a student to share their screen at any stage during the lecture.
Record the session. Record the lecture and make the recording available on Canvas course so that all students can access it at any time.
Encourage questions. Encourage active engagement from both groups of students (those on campus and those remote). Both sets of students can use the chat functionality (on-campus students can use their phones to participate in the chat). There is a range of guidance and resources available to you here.
Use polls. This is a good way to get engagement from all students. You may want to consider asking onsite students to use their phones so that they can participate. Use Mentimeter for your polls (if you do not have an active Mentimeter account, please contact lts@sgul.ac.uk).
Post links to resources for discussion. Post useful links to external resources in the Teams chat especially if you want students to spend some time looking at the resource. However, you should consider during your planning whether this is best placed as a pre-class activity.
Offer students advice about what to do after the live session. If there is any follow-up activity, what is it and when is it due? This is particularly important if students will not see one another after the class, whether in person or remotely.

The above considerations are necessary in order to ensure that your students (both those on campus and those joining remotely) can be ready for the session.

Challenges

There are challenges you must consider with running a hybrid session.

A hybrid lecture in particular is very challenging for one facilitator/presenter. We strongly recommend having a colleague to support the delivery, and that you ensure in advance that there is a clear way to get support from ITAV in the case of any difficulties.
- When using MS Teams, there are privacy-related concerns that means that careful planning is necessary – for example, onsite students will have a full view of the facilitator/lecturer’s MS Teams app. Please refer to the technical considerations for guidance.
In a typical on-campus lecture, it might be relatively easy for you to measure the level of understanding in the class. This may be more challenging to determine for remote students and underlines the importance of having a second colleague to support the facilitation, as they will be particularly important to ensure a good experience for remote students.
Wi-fi provision in the room may be insufficient if on-campus and remote students are all running video on their laptops at the same time. We recommend that this is avoided.

Lecture Theatres For Hybrid Teaching

We have six lecture theatres at St George's which have been equipped with the necessary cameras and microphones to enable hybrid teaching:

1. The Curve

2. Lecture Theatre A

3. Lecture Theatre B

4. Lecture Theatre C

5. Lecture Theatre F

6. The Michael Herron Theatre

We strongly suggest that any hybrid teaching session is run from one of these four rooms. Other rooms may not have cameras at all, may have cameras unsuited to the task or have microphones which are unsuitable to the task. Any of these would create a poor experience for students experiencing the hybrid session remotely.

Hybrid Teaching in The Curve

The Curve Lecture Theatre comes equipped with two cameras that can be used for hybrid teaching: one tracking camera which will follow the speaker around the room and one static camera that shows a wide shot of the front of the theatre.

Either camera can be used for hybrid teaching. We suggest that the tracking camera is used if the speaker is intending to leave the lectern and move around the space.

The following are the settings as of November 2021 for the Curve Theatre's cameras and microphones. These settings should be used in MS Teams to ensure that the correct equipment is selected prior to starting the session.

Camera 1: Tracking = D206191219342

Please see the section in this guide on 'Considerations for Tracking Cameras'

Camera 2: Static = AXIS P5624 E-MkII

Speakers = Creston Intel (R) Display Audio

Microphone = Microphone (USB Audio Codec)

Hybrid Teaching in Lecture Theatres A & B

Lecture Theatres A and B come equipped with one tracking camera which will follow the speaker around the room by default.

The following are the settings as of November 2021 for the Lecture Theatre A and B's cameras and microphones. These settings should be used in MS Teams to ensure that the correct equipment is selected prior to starting the session.

Camera 1: Tracking = AVer PTC310U

Please see the section in this guide on 'Considerations for Tracking Cameras'

Microphone = Microphone (2 - USB Audio Codec)

Hybrid Teaching in Lecture Theatre C & F

Lecture Theatre C comes equipped with one tracking camera which will not follow the speaker around the room by default.

The following are the settings as of November 2021 for the Lecture Theatre C's cameras and microphones. These settings should be used in MS Teams to ensure that the correct equipment is selected prior to starting the session.

Camera 1: Tracking = AXIS M5525-E

Please see the section in this guide on 'Considerations for Tracking Cameras'

Microphone = Microphone (USB Audio CODEC)

Hybrid Teaching in The Michael Herron

The Michael Herron Lecture Theatre comes equipped with two cameras that can be used for hybrid teaching: one tracking camera which will follow the speaker around the room and one static camera that shows a wide shot of the front of the theatre.

Either camera can be used for hybrid teaching but we suggest that the tracking camera is used as it has a closer shot of the speaker. The camera at the back of the room captures some of the students sitting in the back rows of the theatre and is therefore not ideal for hybrid teaching.

The following are the settings as of May 2022 for the Michael Herron's cameras and microphones. These settings should be used in MS Teams to ensure that the correct equipment is selected prior to starting the session.

Camera 1: Tracking = D206191219342

Please see the section in this guide on 'Considerations for Tracking Cameras'

Camera 2: Static = AXIS P5624 E-MkII

Speakers = Creston Intel (R) Display Audio

Microphone = Microphone (USB Audio Codec)

Considerations for Tracking Cameras

The tracking camera can be used to capture a relatively close shot on the speaker. It uses tracking technology to physically follow the speaker as they move around the space. This is ideal for hybrid lectures as the speaker will be properly framed in the shot, facial expressions and gesticulations will be captured and conveyed to the online audience, and the final product will benefit from looking curated and professional.

The tracking camera will focus on the speaker's lectern by default and will track the quickest moving object in that space. There are a couple of considerations to be aware of with this:

1. Make sure you do not have any speaker on MS Teams or other video conferencing software projected onto the screen while using the tracking camera. If you have a speaker calling into MS Teams, and are displaying this speaker on the screen, do not use the tracking camera. As the default position for the camera is facing the lectern, which also necessarily captures a large portion of the screen next to the lectern, the camera may get confused between the movement behind the lectern from the speaker on site and the movement on the screen from the speaker who is calling in. This can cause the camera to focus on the incorrect speaker.

2. If a student or colleague walks into the lecture theatre and crosses the central space in front of the lectern, the camera may identify them as the quickest moving object in that space, follow them to their seat and stay focused on them without returning to the speaker. If this happens the camera should be reverted to it's default state. To do this press the '1' button on the remote control and wait 10 seconds. The camera will stop focusing on the subject it has picked up, it will zoom out and return to base on the lectern and the speaker behind it. This will also disable the tracking by default and will return it to a static shot of the lectern. To enable tracking again press 'On' under 'Tracking' options on the remote control.

Hybrid Teaching: A Step-By-Step Guide

Microsoft Teams:

Microsoft Teams was widely used across SGUL in the 20/21 academic year to facilitate remote learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. As we transition to more hybrid teaching sessions, where some students will be on site and some will be accessing remotely, we can employ many of the same processes and principles for hybrid teaching as we did with remote. Microsoft Teams is a useful tool in this regard, as many students and staff are already very familiar with its use from the previous academic years. It is also straightforward to set up a meeting on a module in Canvas, as will be explained in detail below.

Preparation:

Hybrid 3.png

1.1 Log into Canvas and navigate to the module that this hybrid session will be a part of

1.2 Go to the page you have created for this hybrid session and click 'Edit' in the top-right of the page to enter the Rich Content Editor

1.3 Place your cursor on the line of the page where you would like the meeting link to appear. Click the plug icon from the top of the rich content editor and select Microsoft Teams Meetings.

1.4 Give your session a name, a start time and an end time as shown below

1.5 Click 'Create' when you are finished to create a link to the session which will be available to all students on this Canvas module to see and access if they are learning remotely.

Hybrid 6.png

An example of a MS Teams meeting link being embedded on a standard Canvas session page.

Before the Live Session:

There are two main areas to concentrate on when preparing for a hybrid teaching session: ensuring the room and technical equipment are present and set-up to facilitate the session and ensuring that you have enough staff to effectively monitor the digital aspects of the session. We strongly recommend that no fewer than two members of academic staff are present during any hybrid teaching session.

1) Make Sure the Screen is Clear of Pop-ups

It is important to consider pop-ups which may appear on your screen while you are presenting and to consider disabling these ahead of the teaching session. MS Teams, Outlook and any other messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Slack, Signal, Telegram, Discord etc. will by default push notifications to the lower right of your screen when people message you or add new activities to these platforms. Many of these may not be suitable to display when sharing your screen with students for the purposes of hybrid teaching. The safest way to ensure that no popups interrupt your teaching is to disable them in the settings of your operating system.

Windows:

Hybrid 2.jpg

Go into your Settings App and select 'Notifications and Actions' from the left-hand navigation menu.

Select any apps which may push notifications to your screen and disable them. These will include MS Teams, Outlook and any other messaging apps installed on your computer.

Mac OSx:

On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Notifications.
In Notifications preferences, select an app on the left, then deselect the Allow Notifications option for the app.

All other notification options for the app are dimmed. You don’t receive notifications for the app until you set the option to allow them.

2) Ensure there are Enough Staff for Monitoring

We recommend that no fewer than two members of staff are present to monitor a hybrid learning sessions. This is to enable one member of staff to concentrate on delivering the session and presenting, while the other(s) monitor the platform, adds any attendees from the lobby, monitors the chat and responds to any queries from students.

During the Session:

Hybrid 7.jpg

2.1. Log into the meeting at least 10 minutes before its scheduled start time in order to check that the microphone and webcam are present and set up as the devices for use my MS Teams.

You can check which devices are going to be used by MS Teams by clicking on the cog icon to enter settings, then ensuring that the microphone and webcam that you want to use are the ones displayed here. If they are not these should be selected from the drop-down menus at this stage.

2.2 When you have the settings you require press 'Join' to start the session.

2.3 Admit any waiting attendees to the lobby by pressing 'Admit' when the on-screen popup appears

2.4 Mute the microphones of all participants except the speaker to ensure that unwanted or background noises from students joining remotely do not interrupt the session. To do this enter the Participants pane in MS Teams and click the microphone icons next to students to mute their microphones or select Mute All to disable all remote microphones.

2.5 Disable incoming video from all students. This is important as the cameras in our lecture theatres track and focus on the speaker in the room. If you have incoming video from students on the screen the camera in the lecture theatre will get confused, could focus instead on one of the videos on the screen and could lose the speaker.

To do this click the three dots main menu from the top, then go down to 'Turn Off Incoming Video'

2.6 Select any presentations to share by going to the 'Share Content' icon from the top menu (ctrl + shift + e)

If you have a presentation which includes and audio or video then please toggle 'Include Computer Sound'

To share your presentation you have two options:

Option 1) Click on the pane under 'Screen' to share your entire screen with your audience. This option will display your presentation in full-screen to the participants but you will not be able to simultaneously see any comments being made in the MS Teams chat without switching out of your presentation to view it

Option 2) Select the presentation file itself from the PowerPoint Live menu. This will open your presentation in a reading pane, present any lecture notes to you and enable you to see the MS Teams chat to check for student comments, but you will lose some screen space on the presentation itself as these features will take up room on your screen. Additionally these elements will also be presented to any students physically present in the room watching the screen.

2.7 When all participants are in the session, the presentation is loaded and and everyone but the speaker is muted, begin recording the session by clicking the three dots from the top menu then select 'Start Recording'.

2.8 Once the session has started, remind all attendees that they can access the chat function in MS Teams from the device they are watching it from at home, or from their mobile phones if they are present in the lecture theatre by joining the meeting. Advise attendees either on site or remote that they should add any questions to the chat in the MS Teams meeting. Questions can then be collated and vetted by the additional member of staff who is appointed to monitoring the chat of the MS Teams meeting and relayed to the presenter at an appropriate time during the session

After the Session:

After the conclusion of your session, the recording will be saved in the OneDrive folder of the user who instigated the recording.

That user should:

3.1 Download the file from their OneDrive folder onto their local computer

3.2 Upload the file to that module's Panopto folder as per this guide

3.3 Embed that Panopto recording onto the hybrid session's Canvas page as per this guide

Useful Links and Contacts

Technology in Education
MS Teams site for Online Education Exchange
IT Services contact: itav@sgul.ac.uk (for technical issues in the room)
LTS contact: lts@sgul.ac.uk (for learning technology support)
EdTech contact: edtech@sgul.ac.uk (for conversations around Hybrid teaching)