At a Glance

In this guide for faculty and staff, you’ll learn how to broadcast a class live from the MIT Sloan Teaching Studio. (This is the Broadcast session type you’ll see when you reserve the studio.) When you teach from the studio, you can stand up, move around, write on a whiteboard, and see your students on big screens. Instructors tell us it feels less like joining a Zoom call and more like leading an in-person class.

Here are a few highlights:

  1. Design a class session that includes a variety of activities, not one continuous lecture.
  2. Choose a cohost (for example, a TA) who can manage breakout rooms and help watch the chat.
  3. Review our Choose Your Outfit page to pick clothes that will look great on camera.

Book Your Session

If this is your first time in the studio, you’ll complete an orientation before teaching live. See Reserve the Studio for booking links and timing. Live sessions can run any length within studio hours (8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, Monday through Friday).

If you’d like professional live captioning during your class, request it when you book, at least 3 business days ahead.

Design the Session

Consider dividing your agenda into a series of short activities. Some ideas that work well in the studio:

  • Keep opening lectures short. A lecture of up to 10 minutes works well to introduce concepts before moving into an activity.
  • Try a think-pair-share. Students think through a prompt individually, discuss it with a partner or small group in a breakout room, then share takeaways with the class out loud, in a shared document, or in the chat.
  • Try a fishbowl discussion. A few students discuss a prompt in front of the class while the others take notes, prepare to summarize the conversation, or come up with follow-up questions.
  • Use a poll. A Zoom poll or Poll Everywhere activity (multiple choice, Q&A, word cloud, and more) is a quick way to check in with your students.
  • Invite a co-presenter. A colleague can join over Zoom, present alongside you, and share their screen. When the focus should shift back to you, have them stop sharing so your image returns to full size.

Tip: Choose a cohost, for example a TA, who can manage breakout rooms and respond to chat messages during your session.

Choose Your Outfit

Review our Choose Your Outfit page to learn how to pick clothes that will look great on camera.

Practice Your Presentation

Practice at home and during your studio orientation. Keep these tips in mind:

  • Be expressive and energetic.
  • Remember to enunciate.
  • Use your normal speaking voice and volume.
  • Feel free to use hand gestures if they feel natural.
  • Use good posture and open body language.
  • Look directly at the camera lens as often as possible.
  • Pretend you’re talking to a friend who’s behind the camera.

Attend Your Studio Session

Plan to arrive about 30 minutes before your class starts so we can test your audio, camera, slides, and Zoom together. A member of the studio team stays with you for the whole session, ready to help if anything comes up.

Review this checklist before your session:

  • Notifications: Put your phone on silent and mute notifications on your laptop or iPad.
  • Waiting room: The studio is already signed into the Zoom meeting at the start of your session. Use Zoom’s Waiting Room to control when students join.
  • Slide sharing: Plug the studio’s HDMI cable into your laptop to share your slides, just like connecting in a classroom. You don’t need to share your screen in Zoom; your students automatically see you and your slides together. (A program manager or TA can still share their own screen in Zoom for announcements or handouts.)
  • Zoom display name: Have a host update the studio’s display name in Zoom. Otherwise it will show as the studio room number.
  • Chat: You can read incoming chat on one of the studio’s monitors and respond out loud. No separate laptop needed. For busy sessions, a cohost watching the chat is still the way to go.
  • Live captions: If you didn’t arrange captioning when you booked, remote participants can still turn on Zoom’s automatic captions for their individual use at any time.

Tip: Help your students get the best view. Early in your introduction, direct them to the View button in the top right of Zoom and ask them to switch to Speaker view so the studio fills their screen. Let them know they can raise a hand using the React button (or physically, on camera) and that you can see the chat, though a raised hand is the surest way to get your attention.

After Your Session

If your live class was recorded and you want to share the recording, our team will add captions to the video within seven business days after the video is posted.

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