Multi-mode Teaching Facilities Pilot – Frequently Asked Questions

Live streaming refers to the delivery of content in a teaching room to both in-room and remote students simultaneously which does not support interaction between the in-room and remote students.

Multi-mode teaching can provide benefits to you and your students by:

• Increasing the numbers of students participating in your teaching sessions above on-site room capacity reducing the need to repeat teach.
• Enabling students who are unable to attend campus to participate in your teaching sessions.
• Enabling the involvement of remote speakers (including international) in interactive teaching sessions.

In-room technology to support multi-mode delivery will initially be installed in eleven teaching rooms.  This technology will allow you to use standard university collaborative software platforms (Collaborate, Teams and Zoom) to deliver your teaching to in-room and remote students.

We will work closely with you as part of the pilot to understand your requirements and ensure you are fully supported in delivering your teaching using the multi-mode technology.  A member of support staff will be available in your teaching room during all multi-mode teaching sessions to provide in-room support for you and your students.

The pilot rooms have been identified by the academic staff who are planning to pilot their teaching in these rooms.  They include tiered and flat lecture theatres, seminar rooms and collaborative teaching rooms.  Further detail on these rooms is available here.

Yes, we are encouraging academic staff to get involved in the pilots and try out the new rooms.  Please contact Amy Russell (a.russell@leeds.ac.uk) if you would like to get involved.

It is likely that changes to pedagogy will need to be made to maximise the benefit of multi-mode teaching.  The focus of the pilots will be to deliver the technical solutions for multi-mode working in conjunction with colleagues in SES and DES, who will lead on the associated impact on pedagogy.

Yes.  However, it is recommended that each break-out group is restricted to include only either remote or in-room students.  It is technically possible to create break-out groups that include both in-room and remote students but is technically more complex.  As a result, this functionality is being considered for future phases of the pilot.

Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence (LITE) is leading the pilot evaluation and will be consulting on the methods for achieving this.  This evaluation will consider the impact of multi-mode teaching on both academic staff and the student experience.

The pilot starts in September 2021, although a number of rooms will be functional and available to use over the summer, see multi-mode Teaching room list. 

This will depend on the evaluation of the pilot.  But yes, it is likely that there will be a larger-scale roll-out across the University if multi-mode teaching is found to be successful.