Planning for live-streamed sessions

Live-streamed sessions

Live-streamed sessions are both recorded via Lecture Capture and live streamed from the LMS, giving remote students the option to tune in to the class as it happens.

If they choose to watch the live stream, remote students can also participate in any online activities that teaching staff may conduct during the class, such as Poll Everywhere polls, live LMS discussions, and Padlet or Office365 interactive document activities.

During the live stream, remote students may interact with teaching staff and each other using the LMS chat channel. Where a teaching assistant has been engaged to support dual delivery subjects, it is recommended that they moderate the chat channel while the lecturer leads the class.

What does the plus in 'LSS+' mean?

A small number of venues and classes may carry the label 'LSS+'. The '+' in venues or classes labelled as 'LSS+' indicates that the live stream and recording of the class includes two outputs to students, instead of the usual single output. This means students watching the live stream or recording will see the usual output of the lecturer's presentation, as well as a second view.

The number of projectors in the teaching space determines the number of outputs to the live stream that the lecturer can control.

In LSS+ spaces that have only a single projector, the first output to the live stream will show whatever is on the room's projector. This is the output that the lecturer has control of. The second output will only stream the camera view of the lecturer or whole teaching space. (This is to ensure that nothing is streamed to the remote students that is not visible to the in-class students.)

In LSS+ spaces that have two projectors, the lecturer decides what is shown through the two outputs to the live stream by changing what is on each projector. Viewers of the live stream or recording will see a camera view of the lecturer as 'picture in picture' within the right projector's content.

Which class types will be live streamed?

If your class (lecture, seminar) is scheduled in a Lecture Capture-enabled venue, it will be automatically live streamed via Lecture Capture (commencing Semester 2, 2021).

The recording and live streaming of the session will start automatically at the scheduled time of the class. Staff do not need to start the recording, set up the live stream, or stop the recording at the end.

Staff may opt-out of live-streamed sessions by submitting a request to the appropriate Associate Dean of Teaching & Learning.

Events scheduled in the timetable as a tutorial will NOT be automatically recorded or live streamed via Lecture Capture.

Student experience of live-streamed sessions

To join a live-streamed session, students need to click the Lecture Capture link in their LMS subject.

Be aware that the students watching the session live may experience up to a 10 second delay from real-time and the frame rate of the live stream can be low, depending on students' connectivity. Allow a few moments for remote students to respond to polls or discussion questions.

Tracking student attendance in Lecture Capture Live

During your session, you can see which students are attending via the live stream by:

1. Using an alternative computer or tablet, go to the Lecture Capture link in your LMS subject.
2. Click on the event row to enter the live session (ensure your sound is down to avoid feedback loops).
3. Click Show Live Stream to see the stream (live streams will not auto-play).
4. Click the Live Attendance button to view attendees and/or instructors as needed.

After the session, the Analytics tab in your Lecture Capture subject will show who attended your session via live-streaming in the Attendance % figures in Classes, or in the Attendance % column in Students. This data can be exported for further analysis.

Live-streamed sessions may be difficult for students to attend if they're in different time zones, so teaching staff are encouraged not to make attendance and participation a requirement.

Resources

• University of Melbourne guide - Live streaming in Lecture Capture
• Echo360 guide - Live streaming for instructors
• Echo360 guide - Viewing live streamed classes

Planning a live-streamed session

To be a positive learning experience for both on-campus and remote students, live-streamed sessions require careful planning. In live-streamed sessions you cannot rely on spontaneous arrangements or activities and the session flow needs to be planned.

Live-streamed sessions require careful planning, particularly in terms of when and how the remote students' activity (chat messages, questions, etc) will be integrated with the in-class activities. A written session plan which is shared with any teaching staff co-teaching with you is a minimum preparation requirement for a successful live-streamed sessions. Sharing a session plan with students is also good practice. Read our guide on active learning in lectures for advice and activity ideas for active lectures. See the example BSL active-lecture lesson plans.

Tips for live-streamed sessions

• For sessions with more than 30 students, it is strongly recommended that you have a teaching assistant on hand to help manage the two cohorts.
• Brief the teaching assistant on the support you need during the session such as:
  • Monitoring the LMS chat tool, or discussion forum, and interactive activities such as Padlet activity or polls
  • Typing campus-based students' questions into the chat so remote students can see the questions and responses - if the TA has subject matter expertise, they may provide direct support and answers to remote students in the chat tool
  • Reading out questions from remote students, or curating the remote students activity and representing that to the lecturer and the in-room students
  • Helping manage the technology etc.
• Design activities with remote students in mind first
• Where appropriate, ensure you wear the lapel microphone provided in the room and return it to its charging dock at the end of the session
• Be mindful of your position and whether you are in frame or not of the venue's camera
• Preferably upload your slide deck to Lecture Capture so students can take notes during the session linked to your slides (NB these notes are private to the student and cannot be viewed by any other students or any staff)
• Repeat questions and any responses from on-campus students that are asked in the room for the benefit of the remote students
• Encourage students in the lecture room to log into your LMS subject site and access your LMS discussions, chat and interactive activities (if using)
• If no teaching assistant is available, monitor the discussions or chat to respond to remote students’ questions. Consider asking a student in the room assist you in highlighting questions in the LMS discussion or chat.
• It is recommended that you bring a separate computer or tablet to monitor the LMS discussions and interactive activities
• If presenting from the document camera, remember you can flip the camera up to view larger objects
• Demonstrate to students how to use tools before asking them to engage with them
• Keep activities simple and start small, giving students time to get familiar with the interactive activities and related technology you will be asking them to use during the session
• Consider learning how to create Poll Everywhere polls on the fly to generate polls in response to what is occurring in the session
• Provide support and clarity on how lectures will operate in your LMS subject site including such things as your Poll Everywhere link, Padlet links, student support resources for technology etc.

Activity options for live-streamed sessions

Remote students will be attending your session via Lecture Capture live-streaming. They will be able to view whatever is displayed on the primary screen in the lecture room, whether that is your slide deck displayed from the lectern computer or items or drawings you are displaying via the document camera.

Possible activities for a live-streamed session include:

• Poll Everywhere activities embedded in your slide deck
• LMS chat to replicate Zoom chat functionality
• Whole class, group or section discussions using LMS discussions
• Whole class or group collaborative brainstorming activities in Padlet
• Whole class or group collaborative writing in collaborative documents in Office365.

Technology options to support student engagement during live-streamed sessions

LMS Chat as a communication channel with remote students

Students have become familiar with the chat functionality in Zoom as a back channel for conversation between students and as a place to ask the presenter questions.

You can make a chat functionality similar to the Zoom experience available during your session by enabling ‘Chat’ in your LMS subject and instruct students to access the chat in the LMS subject during your session.

This is a simple chat tool that allows whole class chats. Chat conversations are stored in the chat tool and staff have the ability to delete any student entries. For review reasons, we suggest entering the name of the session at the start of the session, as chats from all sessions will be visible in the tool. All posts are time and date stamped and instructional staff are flagged as such with an identifying badge under their name when posting.

It is recommended you have a second device to monitor the chat during the session.

To enable chat in your subject:

1. Go to Settings > Navigation.
2. Drag Chat from the Hide from students section to where you wish it to be located in the subject navigation area.
3. Click Save.

Considerations

• Deleted chat posts can’t be recovered
• The chat tool can’t be organised into groups or events and exists as one continuous chat for all events it is used in within the subject
• Thought should be given as to whether the chat tool or the discussion tool may best suit your particular class and subject needs.

Resources

• Canvas Chat guides
• Student Chat guide.

Live-streamed session activities with Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere is a powerful tool to foster student engagement in sessions and is particularly useful for engagement in a session when students are attending remotely. Polls can be embedded in slide decks and responses can be displayed in the room and discussed. Poll responses can be anonymous, or you can ask students to log onto Poll Everywhere via SSO to track their responses.

Poll types include:

• Multiple-choice polls - provide a question and set of answers for students to choose from.
• Open-ended questions - students can respond with free text, and responses can be displayed in suitable styles such as a text wall, word cloud, cluster or spotlight.
  Note: we encourage moderation of responses to ensure they are appropriate in the circumstances.
• Clickable images - upload an image so that students can click on an area in that image as their response.
• Q&A - students can respond to a question using free-text to submit questions or ideas and up vote or down vote student responses.
• Ranking - provide a question and set of answers which the students must rank from first to last.
• Competition – a set of questions which students race to complete as fast as possible and a leader board is displayed

Possible Poll Everywhere activities in a live-streamed session include:

• Open ended questions to foster discussions which the lecturer can then talk to
• Checking of knowledge or understanding with multiple choice polls or clickable images
• Cohort building or gauging of mood with open ended discussions or clickable images
• Prioritisation of ideas or concepts with ranking polls.

See our active learning in lectures guide for further ideas of activities you can conduct with Poll Everywhere.

Resources

• Poll Everywhere guides for staff
• Poll Everywhere for students.

Live-streamed session activities with LMS discussions

As remote students will not have the ability to be heard or ask oral questions during the session, consider setting up an LMS discussion tool to foster session discussions. Carefully consider whether the discussion tool or the chat function is the best option for your situation.

To meaningfully bring the cohorts together, the class discussions should be used by both on-campus and remote students. Students’ ability to post questions in a session, to receive in-the-moment feedback and reduce ambiguity is an important part of the session. You will need to encourage on-campus students to log onto your LMS subject-site during the session and navigate to the discussion page to post questions or take part in the session discussions.

To respond to questions in the LMS discussion read them out and reply verbally rather than typing your response in the LMS discussion. If you have a supporting TA available, it could be part of their role to type the answers into the discussion forum, or to verbally bring them to your attention for you to deal with.

Possible uses for the LMS discussion tool in a live-streamed session include:

• Students respond to questions you are asking verbally during the session or have set up previously in the LMS discussion
• Students respond to posts a teaching assistant is adding to the LMS discussion during the session
• Students post general questions about material being presented and discuss together as a back channel during the session
• Students share resources on a given topic
• Foster discussions on questions you pose by putting students into sections (tutorial groups) or groups (preferable for large cohorts but you need to consider how to share different groups' responses)
• Think-pair-share activities set up with small groups of 2 or 3 people, allowing time for an online discussion and asking students to report back to a central whole class discussion
• Set up an LMS discussion for remote students only, allowing you to ask on-campus students to discuss questions in groups in the room, and remote students to discuss in groups using the LMS discussion space.

Carefully consider which questions you ask students to respond to in the LMS discussion. Questions that are not well suited to LMS discussions could discourage students from participating. See our active learning in lectures guide for suggestions of good discussion questions.

Considerations

• LMS discussions do not automatically update when new posts are added, so you and the students will need to refresh the browser window to see the latest posts
• Thought should be given as to whether the chat tool or the discussion tool may best suit your particular class and subject needs.

Resources

• LMS discussions staff guides
• LMS discussions student guides
• University of Melbourne Sections guide
• University of Melbourne Groups guide.

Live-streamed session activities with Padlet

Padlet is an online tool that supports virtual brainstorming, collation and collaboration activities.

Possible Padlet activities for live-streamed sessions include:

• Adding post-it-notes to a whiteboard
• Brainstorming activities
• Mind mapping activities
• Social and collaborative annotation of a resource
• Discussion forum alternative
• Group discussions using shelf layout (1 shelf for each group)
• Student presentation of work for discussion
• To support active learning approaches (1 minute papers, think-pair-share, jigsaw technique, buzz group, roll plays, debates, project based learning, world café activities)
• Visual boards.

See our active learning in lectures guide for ideas.

Considerations

• Padlets can be embedded in an LMS page for easier access and interactions for students
• Padlets automatically refresh when new content is added
• Padlets can be exported to a PDF.

Resources

• Padlet staff guides.

Live-streamed session activities with interactive documents

Office 365 documents can be shared with students, so students can collaboratively write on a document together. This could be done in small groups or as a whole class activity.

Careful sharing and tracking of document links are needed for these activities to run smoothly.

Possible Office365 collaborative document activities include:

• Collaborative note taking of the session
• Group activities creating a group response to a question posed in the session
• Group response to a templated document supporting the session.

Resources

University of Melbourne Office365 resources.

Example lesson plans for live-streamed sessions

Example lesson 1

This example would be for later in the semester after you have slowly built up students’ familiarity with the technology used in these activities.

Example lesson 2

Live-streamed session support

For in room support during a lecture, Field Services and Learning Spaces provide support.  Please call +61 3 8344 0777 for an urgent support during a session.

Lodge a room support request with Learning Spaces.

For support on LMS discussions, groups, sections, Poll Everywhere, Padlet or lecture design lodge a support request with Learning Environments.